BSkyB and npower, respectively broadcaster and sponsor of this summer’s much-anticipated Ashes Test cricket series, revealed their Ashes marketing strategies this week, which take radically different approaches.
Sky’s ‘It Can Only Be An Ashes Summer’ campaign, promoting Sky HD, wonderfully evokes the event’s rivalry and heritage, and features England icon Sir Ian Botham. All good, and here’s the TV ad – created, incidentally, by our sister agency WCRS.
Conversely, npower will be using Aardman Animation characters playing village cricket, in a retention-focused campaign promoting a £100 discount offer, supported by experiential cricket events. So far so good, but I’m puzzled by npower marketing director Kevin Peake’s reported comments in this week’s Marketing Week, that the campaign will be ”targeted” and “niche” to “reflect the mood” of the country.
Eh? Much as I admire Kevin’s habitual left-field approach, the biggest, most eagerly-awaited sporting event of the summer, and the only time that cricket in this part of the world achieves genuine mass appeal, doesn’t strike me as the ideal time to go niche.
And as for ”reflecting the mood” of the country, surely it would be more effective – like Sky – to use The Ashes to tap into the public’s hunger for escapism? As Mike Atherton pointed out in The Times back in February, sport has always fulfilled this hunger, but especially in times of recession.
‘…interest in hockey, baseball and other [US] sports did not diminish during [the Great Depression]. If anything, it increased. The public’s appetite for fun, frolics and irrelevancy was proportional to their hardship. Seabiscuit, the great racehorse, became popular partly because the story was an unlikely one: a small horse with a poor gait and an alcoholic jockey struck a chord with those fighting against seemingly insurmountable odds. When Seabiscuit faced War Admiral in a race billed as the “match of the century”, an estimated 40million tuned in to listen.’
By Tim Crow on May 28th, 2009
Tags: Advertising, Ashes, Brand marketing, Cricket, Default, Sponsorship
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Great post Tim. It also strikes me that cricket (despite the broadcasters efforts) still represents a simpler, more parochial way of British life which people across the country are craving in contrast to the complex, layered, global financial system has got us into the current mess. Another way of mentally “hunkering down” perhaps?
Agree with you Laurence. Baseball, cricket’s American equivalent, has always been brilliant at evoking that reminder of simpler, happier times. But I suspect cricket is currently too preoccupied by its Twenty20-driven re-invention to look ‘back to the future’.