How the Swedish Sports Confederation's strategy has influenced attitudes towards children's and youth sports

Technology and methodology combined with expertise is a successful recipe

The project’s lifecycle was then divided into a quantitative and a qualitative phase with regular check-ins. During these, experts from both Retriever and the Swedish Sports Confederation could jointly discuss, guide the direction, and ensure the relevance of the results.

The methodology of the project was based on the AMEC IEF framework, which Retriever uses to plan, execute, and evaluate the measurement and analysis of communication.

AMEC is an international organization that exists to promote standards and methods for measuring and evaluating communication and PR efforts. Together with other leading organizations in the industry, AMEC developed the Barcelona Principles – a set of guidelines that establish a global standard for communication measurement and evaluation. Based on the Barcelona Principles, the AMEC IEF (Integrated Evaluation Framework) was created to facilitate the implementation of the Barcelona Principles.

As tools in the project, Retriever's media analysis system was used alongside machine learning models combined with generative AI.

– There were several aspects of this project that were really clever. It involved an enormous amount of data. Finding ways to use AI and machine learning for sorting, for example, I found very exciting, says Anna.

We received confirmation that this approach was truly successful when Retriever and the Swedish Sports Confederation won an award for this project at the AMEC Awards in the category "Best Use of New Technology in Communications Measurement." The AMEC Awards is the Oscars of the communications and analytics industry, where the top analytics projects from around the world are celebrated.

– The results of the analysis provided us with several insights into how the strategic reform efforts have impacted the media and how this has evolved over time. Additionally, the insights serve as a foundation for our upcoming strategic work, says Anna.

Key Insights from the Media Analysis

– This work will have an impact on us at the Swedish Sports Confederation in several ways. So far, we have used the insights internally at our headquarters to evaluate the results and demonstrate the importance of long-term and active work with the media. In the second phase, we will take this to the districts and our federations to educate and create alignment around our strategic work and communication.

– The insights will also serve as a foundation for future strategic initiatives. A great example of how we’ve used the insights is a campaign we recently launched called 'It Should Be Fun to Compete.' This is a concrete example of how we can work with these insights to take ownership of our core issues," Anna concludes.