Rugby World Cup – Behind the Scenes

Ewan turns his Caterham passion into a career. Omnia talks to Ewan Turney about his role at the Rugby World Cup and how he got there…

Ewan Turney

(OC 1993 – 1998) HEAD OF MARKETING AT THE RFU

What are your fondest memories of Caterham?

Sport. I just loved the fact that I arrived as an 8-year-old and was able to throw myself into all different types of sport from football, rugby, cricket, hockey, swimming, athletics, even cross-country. I wasn’t the most outgoing, confident or assertive kid, but sport and being part of a team really helped develop that side of me.

I met my best mates at Caterham and they have remained my closest friends to this day, some 20 years later – and that includes my wife!

What impact did Caterham and its teaching staff have on your rugby skills and continued passion for the game. Do you have any good stories from your time in the team?

Clearly rugby has become a massive part of my life and I was first introduced to the game at Caterham by Mr Smith (Richard). I can remember being over on the Beeches field and doing tackling for the first time.

I immediately absolutely loved the physicality of the game – that was the first appeal. Later it was the team spirit and the fact that it took all types of body shapes and personalities to make up the team all driving for the same purpose.

There were kids that I wouldn’t have usually been friends with that you end up building connections with and it really broadened my horizons, outlook and confidence.

We had some great teachers from Richard Smith, Pat Lavery, Daryl Paterson and Andy Furnival, who all had a great impact on me. The passion they showed for the game even on a wet, windy, freezing afternoon on the Hill Fields shone through.

I have great memories about playing in successful teams, beating Whitgift, Reigate Grammar School and Trinity, and the honour I felt to captain the First XV. I still remember Pat Lavery walking me round the pitch to give me the news. Lavs was a brilliant character – again I’d say it was the love he had for the game and wanting us all to be a part of that and experience the best rugby had to offer.

Many people, might suggest that you have based your career around your favourite things? Is this a fair comment?

Very fair. My early career was in journalism and then I transitioned into digital content and then from the corporate world into sport – combining my two passions of creating engaging content and sport.

For me, it has always been a simple equation – you spend so much time at work it’s really important to do something you enjoy. I need to have passion for what I’m doing. It makes it easier getting up in the morning and means you can put something extra into your work every day, even on the difficult ones.

I’ve been in jobs and stayed in jobs too long where I have lost that passion or found it difficult to motivate myself and that’s not a good place to be because it affects the rest of your life. Imagine calling work going to the Rugby World Cup in Japan for eight weeks!

How did you land your role with RFU?

I studied History and Politics at Warwick and left with absolutely no idea of what I would do. I kind of thought that I had a good education and a good degree so I’d just hop on a graduate scheme at some big company and it would all fall into place.

Looking back that was incredibly naïve and I’m glad that I didn’t just fall into something.

I worked for my dad’s business for a few years and then retrained as a journalist. My aim was to cover sports but I actually took a job working on a B2B publication covering pubs and the beer trade.

I worked my way up from junior reporter on a weekly magazine and several years later, the publication decided it would branch out into having a website and social media, which had previously been seen as a threat to a printed publication. No-one wanted to move from the paper to the digital side, so I put myself forward. It was a great experience as I developed new skills and had a great level of responsibility. I could see the way the industry was developing and was excited by the advent of Twitter and social media generally.

My career would have been very different had I not made the jump from print to digital. From there, I took up a role at Unilever HQ in London, building its first in-house digital content team at a global level. That was a very different but a fantastic experience in terms of working for a global giant and the benefits of big budgets and exciting possibilities, but also could be frustrating in terms of the bureaucracy and size of the company. My favourite project there was making a mini documentary from the biggest slum area in Nairobi, Kenya, on an outreach programme Unilever was running around stopping preventable diseases like diarrhoea and pneumonia through handwashing.

When I spotted the job at the RFU I immediately thought this is fantastic – it combines my passion for digital content with my passion for rugby.

Can you explain your role with RFU?

I am now head of marketing at the RFU which covers quite a few aspects. Our content team produces content for and runs the website and all social media channels from Facebook to TikTok. That side of the team is made

up of writers, video producers and social media experts. The campaigns team run campaigns to drive ticket sales for events but also campaigns to drive participation in the game of rugby at a grassroots level. Our CRM team looks after the increasingly important area of customer data and decides who, how, when and where we communicate with segments of our audience. The brand team looks after the creative side – the look and feel of our brand and how and where it can be used. They also look after the match day experience at Twickenham from what you see around the stadium to the bands that play and half time entertainment. My role has certainly developed into a wide ranging one with plenty of challenges.

What is the intention of the campaigns you run?

Our goal is to tell rugby’s story to the nation inspiring more people to play and support the game. The nature of our campaigns very much depends on what we are trying to achieve – it could be anything from trying to grow participation in the women’s game to a fan engagement campaign around the Rugby World Cup. Women’s sport is on the rise and we have a very successful England women’s team that we want to use to inspire young women and girls to take up the sport and give it a go. Women’s sport is a key focus for us over the coming years as this is where rugby will continue to grow. I’m also really proud of the fan engagement campaign the team ran over the men’s Rugby World Cup called Rising Sons. We wanted to inspire the nation to get behind the team by linking the elite players back to their grassroots rugby clubs and communities. We visited all the grassroots clubs of the players and spoke to their old coaches and team mates. It was these people who announced the players into the squad – the message was that all these players started at their local club. The second part of the campaign was to tell the team’s story – both personal and collective. For the personal, we focused on the journey of each player to the top, told in their own words. For the team story, we wanted to show the hard work, dedication, sacrifice and togetherness it takes from players and staff to compete at the highest level. We did this via a weekly YouTube series under the Rising Sons title. It was a minidocumentary each week taking fans behind the scenes and giving them unprecedented access to training, team meetings and down time with the players. We wanted to show these guys are ordinary blokes doing extraordinary things.

What was the best thing about working at the Rugby World Cup and why?

Calling eight weeks in Japan working with a highly successful rugby team “work”! I loved every minute of it. It was hard work but extremely rewarding. It was a special experience from start to finish and one I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.

Most of all, I’m proud of the work we executed in that period. The team on the field, despite falling one short, inspired the nation and as a result more boys and girls will pick up a rugby ball. That’s a powerful thought. What have been your three career highlights to date?

In no particular order: Getting my first job in journalism. Awful pay but learnt a lot and realised it could be a career path. The Rugby World Cup in Japan. A once in a lifetime experience and so nearly the perfect one. Filming a documentary in the biggest slum area of Nairobi. A truly humbling experience to see so many happy, smiley kids when they had nothing – not even a pair of shoes on their feet.

You trained as a journalist and now primarily work in digital communications. How have things changed in journalism since you started out?

When I started out print was everything and digital was almost a dirty word. The kudos was all in getting in the print publication and not online. I think the traditional print media has been slow to evolve into the digital world both in terms of content and revenue generation.

When I started it was OK just to be a writer or just a broadcast journalist. I recruit journalists to my content team and although we have specialisms in the team, I’m looking for people who can write but also have in-depth knowledge and are active on social media, who can shoot and edit video – even if via a phone.

Journalism now requires an all-round skill set and a deep understanding of the way younger generations are consuming content – they are not running out every morning to buy the Telegraph or the Daily Mail, they are immediately on their phones on Instagram. They are more likely to get their news and view of the world from brands, influencers and friends as they are from recognised news outlets – now that has both good and bad associated with it.

What’s next? Can your career get any better?

The Six Nations! Rugby moves pretty quickly so we are already planning ahead. But for me, I’m honestly not sure how or where my career will develop further. One thing I know is that I will remain in sport because it is my passion and gives me so much joy as a result. My view is if you can call your passion work, then you are on to a winner. 