Campaign reports the demise of Sport magazine, concluding that this unfortunate event is the result of the recession. There is no doubt that economic conditions played their part, but they are not wholly responsible. The reason for the fact that general sports titles fail in the UK lies not in the fact that we are, in the words of Sport’s MD Greg Miall, facing “the worst recession in 80 years”, nor in the free distribution model adopted by the magazine, but in the psyche of the UK sports fan.

To illustrate, I draw a comparison between Britain and America. Across the pond resides the great grand-daddy of all general sports titles, Sports Illustrated. This publication carries regular news on all four major US sports and strong coverage of - er - minority sports like NASCAR, golf, football (soccer), tennis and so on. With an audited circulation of around 3m per week, it’s a successful model that many have tried to emulate on this side of the Atlantic. 

Some UK attempts to create a general sports market have been truly outstanding from a journalistic and publishing perspective.Total Sport in the 1990’s was a publishing triumph, a general sports fan’s dream, a commercial disaster. Though constructed very differently, I put Sport in the same high quality category. 

Both magazines failed for the same reason: there are simply not enough “general sports” fans in the UK to sustain a general sports title. This is not the same in the USA, where almost every sports fan is a general sports fan. Britons and Americans consume sports in very different ways.

To illustrate: the American sports fan follows a baseball team, a football team, a basketball team and probably an ice hockey team. This gives him lots to cheer about, all year round. He supersizes his intake by following NCAA teams in all four sports too, so there’s something to watch on telly every single night. Because of the franchise model adopted by most American sports, there’s no promotion or relegation, so he can do this for ever. His interests are well catered for by Sports Illustrated, which knows this market well. 

Contrast this with the UK sports fan. While many of us are perfectly able to observe multiple sports, we generally reserve our passions for only one. We are football fans, or rugby fans, or cricket fans and respectfully observe the breaks between seasons as a rest period in which we allow our enthusiasm to recuperate. To try to address such a collection of individual (and, socio-demographically speaking, quite different) audiences with a single general sports title, is a challenge that so far has proved insurmountable.

Sport in the UK does not unite us; it divides and defines us. It’s unfortunate for Sport magazine, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

By Scott Garrett on April 28th, 2009

Tags: Advertising, American football, Football, Golf, Media

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Whether you’re an existing or prospective sponsor of anything, but particularly of football, I urge you to watch Culture Secretary Andy Burnham being heckled at yesterday’s 20th anniversary memorial service at Anfield for the 96 fans who died at Hillsborough. His experience highlights perfectly the key questions brands should ask themselves when contemplating sponsorship.

Questions like “How can I avoid being seen as a gatecrasher?”, “What really matters to the fans?” and “How can I make a difference?”

These questions all faced Mr Burnham yesterday, and defeated him.

His appearance was announced only at the last minute. Not ideal.

Why was he there? Not because he’s a football fan, and not because he’s a Liverpudlian. These were merely qualifying credentials. He was there representing the Government.

And the only thing Liverpool fans wanted to hear from the Government, and from Mr Burnham, was something that would mean the prospect of justice for the 96 they came to remember.

But when it became clear Mr Burnham wasn’t going to deliver, his fate was sealed.

Consider the parallels with sponsorship and, as my dad used to say, “think on”.

By Tim Crow on April 16th, 2009

Tags: Default, Football, Sponsorship

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Marketing Week today issued a story revealing the latest brands to top Brand Finance’s Global 500 list of the world’s most valuable brands.

Wal-Mart topped the bill, bumping incumbent Coca-Cola from the top spot, which the soft drinks giant had held since their research began in 2007.

But it was the Coke vs. Pepsi battle that caught my eye:

It’s not all bad news for Coke, however. It is still the dominant beverage brand on the list. While Coca-Cola’s total enterprise value of $104.5bn (£71.2bn) is just 22% greater than that of Pepsi (which is 21st in the table), the Coke brand is 118% more valuable than its arch-rival.

This reminded me of a fun little experiment that I have been meaning to post for a while, taken from Rob Walker’s excellent work on the relationship between who people are and what they buy, Buying In.

Walker was writing just last year, but for some time prior, traditional advertising methods were well on the way to being usurped by their younger digitally native upstart cousins in the social media space - invoking mass fear across the industry that brands and branding in the traditional sense no longer held the sway they once did.

So, taking the world’s biggest Superbrand (as it was then) and its arch rival, Pepsi, scientists at the Baylor College of Medicine put brand loyalty to the test amongst the disenchanted, anti-establishment student population. The results were, I thought quite remarkable.

First, they conducted the classic blind taste test - white-labelled, un-branded Pepsi vs. white-labelled, un-branded Coke. Unsurprisingly, given the very similar ingredients, the split was more or less half and half (with a slight favour for Pepsi).

In the second round however, the subject had to choose between a labelled can (Pepsi for some, Coke for others) and an unlabelled one. Properly labelled, Pepsi again finished in a tie with its unknown competitor. But Coke on the other hand was by far the decisive favourite above its mystery rival.

And here’s the twist. In this second round, subjects were told that the unlabelled drink might be Pepsi or it might be Coke. In reality, the labelled drink was always competing against itself. Thus, branded Coke totally trounced its unbranded self . Bizarre.

Or not so bizarre when we look at the neurology behind it (courtesy of BrandChannel.com), where we actually get scientific proof of brand impact. Ready? Here comes the science bit:

When Montague gave a taste of an unnamed soda to his volunteers he found that, technically, more people preferred Pepsi. On the scan images the ventral putamen, one of the brain’s reward centers, had a response that was five times stronger than for people who preferred Coke.

The shock came when Read repeated the experiment, this time telling volunteers which brand they were tasting. Nearly all the subjects then said they preferred the Coke. Moreover, different parts of the brain fired as well, especially the medial prefrontal cortex, an area associated with thinking and judging. Without a doubt the subjects were letting their experience of the Coke brand influence their preferences.

The work of Montague and other studies prove that branding goes far beyond images and memory recall. The medial prefrontal cortex is a part of the brain known to be involved in our sense of self. It fires in response to something — an image, name or concept — that resonates with who we are. Something clicks, and we are more likely to buy.

Brand immunity? We’re certainly not there yet.

And while we’re on the subject of the big red machine, take a look at their 2006 - most successful ever - advertising campaign, The Happiness Factory (below). It’s fab. So fab in fact, that they they are now rolling out a multi-player game version of the concept as an iPhone application - on top of the interactive site already online. Brilliant.

By Lucie Bartlett on April 16th, 2009

Tags: Advertising, Brand marketing, Digital marketing, Mobile

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This morning Twitter alerted me to a quite brilliant piece of advertising in the USA.  Audi is running a national ad campaign featuring their new A4.  The ad, on the left hand side of the steet in the image below, features the tag line “Your move, BMW.”  In a fantastic riposte, a local BMW dealer has bought the billboard opposite featuring an M3 ad with the comeback strap line of “Checkmate“. Fabulous.

Checkmate

By Ben Wilkinson on April 16th, 2009

Tags: Advertising, Ambush campaign, Sales promotion

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Since Ciaran spotted that Olympic sponsors weren’t using search effectively around Beijing 2008, we’ve been keeping an eye on the digital space around major events to see if sponsors were beginning to exploit the opportunity. They aren’t.      

The latest example is The Masters. A unique tournament for many sporting reasons, but in marketing terms two features are key: the unbranded aesthetic of the tournament (other than the famous Masters mark and three very discreet sponsor logos on The Masters website, the only branding you’ll see is on the players) and the fact that, being the first Major of the season, it’s of massive interest for golf fans worldwide - huge numbers of whom will, naturally, be looking for information on The Masters online, as Google Trends reveals.

All of which would lead you to expect that brands with golf marketing motives, chiefly the equipment manufacturers and leading sponsors of the game, would be using search to ensure that they were entwined with The Masters online.

But they aren’t.

A search for The Masters right now shows that only three companies appear to be bidding for it online, none of which are the brands you’d expect to be activating around The Masters.

And when it comes to SEO, as the search returns show, it’s the same story: the big golf brands are nowhere to be seen. After looking through 10 pages of returns - none of which featured a golf sponsor - I quit. And a consumer of course wouldn’t dream of looking that far… 

By Tim Crow on April 10th, 2009

Tags: Beijing 2008, Default, Digital marketing, Golf, Olympic sponsorship, Sponsorship

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I’ve been in plenty of creative meetings recently. Creative sessions to me are brilliant: lots of enthusiasm, energy, ideas and the best thing is you can’t be wrong (often!)  One of my favourite things is how fresh and innovative they can be. However, in the last year or so, one thing always seems to come up; flash mobbing. Now I’m not opposed to it - quite the opposite if you see below - but I don’t think it works for every brand.

Hats off to T-Mobile who reignited the trend once again at Christmas.  I’m sure you’ll have read about it and seen the ad but if not take a look below:

A quite brilliant intro to the use of flash mobbing, I’m sure you’ll agree.  Now for my new favourite, one I’ve just been sent today.  This is from NY400, an initiative set up to celebrate 400 years of friendship between the Netherlands and the USA.  If you’re in a hurry skip the first 30 seconds, but well worth a watch.

Not right for everyone maybe, but definitely right for some brands and this one certainly got me thinking about going Dutch.  So next time we have a creative meeting and the ‘flash mob’ gem pops up we’ll be giving it some thought. This piece demonstrates beautifully that you can still be innovative with a concept that’s been used time and time again.

By Ben Wilkinson on April 7th, 2009

Tags: Advertising, Brand marketing, Branded content, Digital marketing, Experiential marketing, Flash mobbing, Media, Music, Television, Viral Marketing, YouTube

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At Synergy, while we work exclusively on the brand and sponsor-side of the industry, we still frequently receive unsolicited requests for sponsorship from hopeful individuals looking for funding to achieve their goals. One such enthusiastic sponsor-seeking individual caught my eye last week, fielding a rather unusual campaign.

Last October world pole-vault silver medallist Romain Mesnil suffered a disappointing withdrawal of sponsorship from his backer, Nike. In an attempt to gain awareness for his sponsorship proposal, the Frenchman stripped off, and jogged through Paris with, er, pole in hand, and posted the final video on his personal website. In one afternoon, Mesnil had whipped up nearly 300,000 views.

Viral heaven. Within hours the video clip, hosted on YouTube, had gone global. Media outlets and news wires all over Europe could not get enough of the naked French athlete who was prepared to do whatever it took to make potential sponsors sit up and take note. Well, they certainly couldn’t doubt his genuine enthusiasm and dedication, nor his athletic prowess.

Mesnil followed up the stunt a couple of days later with a slightly less controversial approach by launching a ten-day attempt to get sponsors via the French version of the eBay online auction website. After the buzz that his naked jog created throughout the industry and the media, he told a French news conference that he planned to offer sponsorship deals of himself through the online auction site to the highest bidder. Those who click onto his website can place a bid to sponsor the athlete with any profits going to a brain tumour research group.

A rather novel approach to rights fee negotiation, but hats off to him for fully embracing Sponsorship 2.0 in order to achieve, well, ultimate exposure.

In recent weeks, Mesnil has also sported a black kit with a big white question mark where the sponsor’s logo would normally be. When asked about his whole campaign by the press, Mesnil’s response was remarkably astute:

‘In times of crisis, you have to come up with a novel approach.’

How particularly relevant to the current times, and how very, very true.

By Lucie Bartlett on April 6th, 2009

Tags: Athletics, Public relations, Social Media, Sponsorship, Viral Marketing, YouTube

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It’s been an interesting few months for Lewis Hamilton. Not only has he struggled to get the pace he has been hoping for in the new design McLaren, but he suddenly has serious competition from another Brit in the Paddock.

This time last year Hamilton fever was in full swing and the rising star could hardly put a foot wrong as far as the media and general public were concerned. At the same time non-F1 fans would have been forgiven for asking ‘Jenson who?’  Twelve months later and how the tables have turned. Jenson Button’s feel good story – from a driver who at one point looked unlikely to have an F1 drive this season to winner in Melbourne - has captured the hearts and minds of the public, and you can’t open a newspaper at the moment without seeing an article about Jenson.

Such interest and support for Button must surely be hard to swallow for Lewis who had previously held the position of the media’s F1 darling.  And to make matters worse, while Jenson’s column inches focus on his rise to success, his loyalty to the team through the recent difficult times and his aspirations for the future, Lewis’s recent mistake of misleading the race stewards in Melbourne is splashed all over the papers, and the reigning World Champion is having to call a press conference to publicly apologise for his actions following the Australian GP.

Watch the Lewis Hamilton press conference here.

Gripping stuff.  It seems the off-track dramas are just as interesting as the racing itself. I for one will be tuning in to the Malaysian GP this weekend to see how the next episode of the battle of the Brits unfolds….

By Amy Mansell on April 6th, 2009

Tags: Default, Formula 1, Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton

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Regular readers will know my views on the state of Formula One, commercially speaking, and that it currently represents a potentially very sound investment.

I am not quite as bullish as Kevin Eason of The Times who sees “Sponsors rushing to join Branson on board the Brawn express” but I am certainly more optimistic than Mark Kleinman, City Editor of The Sunday Telegraph, who claims “The F1 formula is failing”.

Kevin Eason’s arguments are easy to follow:  a new British team wins (and takes second place too) in its first ever race, becoming a magnet for sponsors in the process. The story is given added spice by the fact that the car is essentially devoid of sponsor logos with the exception of one, that of the ever-prescient Richard Branson and his Virgin Group, who made what now appears to be a visionary investment in sponsoring the team before its first race when, presumably, the price of doing so was cheaper than it is today.

Irrespective of the detailed facts of the story (other sponsors are present, though less visibly; the actual amount of money paid, if any, by Branson) it’s a feel-good piece, a story of British success in a highly competitive field. I like it.

Mark Kleinman’s comments are harder to understand, though I presage criticism with the caveat that his piece was written before the Australian Grand Prix won by Brawn GP. He sees a mass exodus of sponsors in the sport, led by ING and RBS whose forthcoming departures were recently announced. There is a clear implication that other sponsors will follow. I do not agree.

F1 commercial managers understand that it can appear irresponsible for publicly-owned financial institutions to engage in high profile sponsorships just now, maybe for ever.  This is exactly the same situation that the industry faced when it realised it would be irresponsible to continue to court tobacco sponsorship. Formula One will reinvent itself in the seasons to come, as it reinvented itself seasons ago, in order to remain relevant to the environmental conditions that prevail at the time.

Mark Kleinman would be quick to point out of course, that the environmental and financial conditions that prevail today are more challenging than those of yesteryear, and he would be right. But he underestimates the resilience of the industry and the moves afoot to change it from within.

Regulations are radically different this year and if Australia is indicative, it will be an exciting season on the track (how can you say, Mr Kleinman, that “…the 20 cars gathering on the starting grid in Melbourne for the first race of the 2009 season will look much like those that finished the last campaign…”? The cars are clearly different and the racing will be more exciting.

Away from the track, we are starting to see F1 teams talk with one voice via FOTA, begin to take environmental concerns seriously with KERS, and recast their operating cost models to comply with the FIA’s proposed £30m limit.

This may not be enough to keep motor manufacturers in the game, but no matter. Under the new cost models, the price of entry into the sport will be radically reduced, opening the field to private individuals or automotive companies beyond the household name brands.

In this way, the recession will be good for Formula One, driving the sport to be different, vibrant, more accessible, more relevant to a cost-conscious, environmentally sensitive society. 

By Scott Garrett on April 2nd, 2009

Tags: Formula 1, Jenson Button, Media, Sponsorship

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Dominic Curran comments on Hamilton’s appeal to brands in the London Evening Standard. Click here to read the article.

By Synergy on April 1st, 2009

Tags: Press Clipping

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