Cadbury's Club Together Common Ground campaign united 14 football clubs to build a pitch for Grenfell Athletic FC, starring Ian Wright in a 5-minute film by
Cadbury Club Together Common Ground Builds a Home for Grenfell Athletic
Cadbury's Club Together Common Ground is a 2023 United Kingdom campaign, created by Elvis with MKTG Sports and Entertainment and Brothers and Sisters, that pooled the resources of fourteen professional football clubs to build a permanent community pitch for Grenfell Athletic FC, culminating in a five-minute film starring Ian Wright.
Cadbury launched its Club Together initiative in 2020, according to cadbury.co.uk, as a platform harnessing the brand's football-club partnerships to deliver tangible support to local communities across the United Kingdom. By 2023, economic pressures had sharpened the programme's purpose, and the brand identified Grenfell Athletic FC — a grassroots club born from the community surrounding the Grenfell Tower tragedy — as the focal point for the initiative's most ambitious activation to date. The resulting Common Ground project saw fourteen professional clubs contribute physical assets including goalposts, dugouts, training equipment, groundskeeping expertise, grass seed, and soil, creating a usable home pitch for both the men's and women's teams at Grenfell Athletic FC, as documented by marketing-beat.co.uk.
The campaign operated across multiple phases and formats. An initial 45-second film, out-of-home placements, and digital and social activity announced the Common Ground project, as reported by marketing-beat.co.uk in June 2023. Cadbury then hosted a launch football match at the completed pitch, attended by club legends Wes Brown and Carlo Cudicini alongside members of the Grenfell community, as noted by mediapost.com. The Cadbury Foundation also made a cash donation to the club alongside the physical contributions. As the campaign's culmination, Elvis produced a five-minute documentary-style film released in December 2023, in which Wright meets Grenfell Athletic FC founder Rupert Taylor, who recounts the club's origins and its partnership with Cadbury FC. The Drum recognised the campaign in its Best Ads of the Week selection on 28 June 2023, citing the brand's mobilisation of fourteen clubs as the defining creative idea.
Cadbury structured Club Together Common Ground around a consumer insight that runs deeper than brand affinity: in the United Kingdom, football clubs function as community anchors, and supporting them is a form of civic participation, not merely sponsorship.
The confectionery category in the United Kingdom is intensely competitive. Cadbury faces sustained pressure from Mars, whose portfolio includes its own football-adjacent brand activations, and from Nestlé, which competes across the same retail environments and seasonal gifting occasions. Within this landscape, Cadbury's strategy is to leverage its long-standing football partnerships — spanning clubs including Leeds United, as noted by leedsunited.com — to create differentiated brand territory that product-focused rivals cannot easily replicate. By channelling those partnerships toward a cause with unmistakable moral weight, the brand converts commercial relationships into community infrastructure.
The choice of Grenfell Athletic FC as the campaign's beneficiary is strategically precise. The club was founded in direct response to the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017 and carries a community significance that extends far beyond sport. Jenna Russell, Strategic Group Head at Elvis, shaped an approach that frames Cadbury not as a donor but as a convener — a brand that activates its network on behalf of communities rather than simply writing a cheque. This distinction is meaningful in the United Kingdom's post-pandemic environment, where, according to marketing-beat.co.uk, economic pressures have increased demand for brands to demonstrate authentic local commitment. The mobilisation of fourteen professional clubs as resource contributors rather than passive badge partners also grounds the campaign's claims in verifiable, physical outcomes: a pitch that exists, that communities use, and that carries no expiry date.
Elvis built the creative execution across two distinct registers: a campaign launch layer comprising a 45-second film, out-of-home, and social content, and a longer documentary centrepiece released in December 2023 as the emotional summit of the entire initiative.
The five-minute film is the campaign's defining creative artefact. Neale Horrigan, Executive Creative Director at Elvis, oversaw the project alongside Creative Director Alexandru Vasile and Creative Group Heads Bill Hibbins and Rob McEvoy, as documented by marketing-beat.co.uk and next15.com. The film adopts a documentary grammar — observational camerawork, direct interview address, and minimal stylisation — that trusts its subject matter to carry the emotional weight. Ian Wright's presence serves a dual function: he is recognisable enough to extend the film's reach beyond Grenfell Athletic FC's immediate community, yet his evident personal investment in grassroots football lends the film credibility rather than celebrity gloss. Wright introduces the club before handing narrative authority to Rupert Taylor, Grenfell Athletic FC's founder, who speaks directly about launching the club in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower tragedy and about the practical difference Cadbury's Common Ground project made.
Tom Gudgeon, Head of Design at Elvis, and Jason Garfield, Head of Motion at Elvis, contributed to the film's visual language, while George Stovell served as Creative Producer, according to next15.com. Brothers and Sisters, whose executive creative director Andy Fowler contributed to the wider campaign, handled elements of the broader content output alongside MKTG Sports and Entertainment. The launch activation — the football match at the completed pitch attended by Wes Brown and Carlo Cudicini — was conceived as a live creative moment, generating content that fed back into the campaign's digital and social channels and reinforcing the authenticity of the Common Ground narrative with real, documented community participation.
Club Together Common Ground generated measurable community outcomes alongside its media performance. According to next15.com, more than 800,000 fans engaged with the campaign, and more than ten thousand pounds in donations were raised alongside the physical equipment, assets, and professional expertise contributed by the fourteen participating clubs. The permanent pitch at Grenfell Athletic FC — with its installed goalposts, dugouts, and groundskeeping infrastructure — constitutes a lasting, verifiable outcome that most brand campaigns cannot claim.
No verified performance data for Club Together Common Ground in relation to sales uplift or direct revenue attribution is publicly available. No confirmed wins or finalist placements at Cannes Lions, the Effies, D&AD, The One Show, or the Clios have been documented for this campaign. Recognition came from trade press rather than awards bodies: The Drum included the campaign in its Best Ads of the Week on 28 June 2023, according to thedrum.com, and marketing-beat.co.uk covered both the June launch and the December film release, identifying the Ian Wright documentary as an "emotive" account of the club's origins.
Clapboard rates Club Together Common Ground at 69 out of 100. The score reflects a campaign whose strategic integrity and community impact are genuine but whose creative ambition is measured rather than breakthrough. The documentary format is well-executed, the casting of Ian Wright is purposeful, and the physical outcome — a real pitch for a real community — is the kind of tangible proof point that elevates purpose-led marketing beyond rhetoric. The primary ceiling on the score is the campaign's relatively contained reach and the absence of a formal awards-body acknowledgement that would signal peer recognition of creative craft.
Club Together Common Ground is a 2023 Cadbury campaign created by Elvis that united fourteen professional football clubs to build a permanent pitch for Grenfell Athletic FC in the United Kingdom. The campaign culminated in a five-minute documentary film starring Ian Wright and founder Rupert Taylor, released in December 2023.
Elvis created Club Together Common Ground as the lead creative agency, working with MKTG Sports and Entertainment and Brothers and Sisters. Key Elvis team members included Executive Creative Director Neale Horrigan, Creative Director Alexandru Vasile, Creative Group Heads Bill Hibbins and Rob McEvoy, and Strategic Group Head Jenna Russell.
Rupert Taylor is the founder of Grenfell Athletic FC. In the five-minute film produced by Elvis for Cadbury, Taylor appears alongside Ian Wright and recounts how he established the club following the Grenfell Tower tragedy and how the Common Ground partnership with Cadbury FC helped the club build a permanent home pitch.
Fourteen professional football clubs participated in the Common Ground project, according to cadbury.co.uk and marketing-beat.co.uk. Each club contributed physical resources including goalposts, dugouts, training equipment, groundskeeping expertise, grass seed, and soil to create a usable home pitch for Grenfell Athletic FC in the United Kingdom.
According to next15.com, the campaign engaged more than 800,000 fans and raised more than ten thousand pounds in donations alongside equipment and expertise from fourteen clubs. The Drum recognised it in Best Ads of the Week in June 2023. Clapboard rates the campaign 69 out of 100, reflecting strong community impact and measured creative ambition.
Cadbury launched the Club Together initiative in 2020, according to cadbury.co.uk, using its UK football-club partnerships to support local communities. The Common Ground project represents the 2023 phase of the platform, its most operationally ambitious activation, delivering a permanent physical asset to Grenfell Athletic FC in the United Kingdom.
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