Stephanie Branston analyses the FA’s media and PR strategy during the World Cup and what it needs to do now.
Click here to view the video from the PR Week Forum.
By David on July 30th, 2010
Tags: Press Clipping
Archive for July, 2010
Marketing to Mom: P&G opens up new Olympic white space
I wasn’t surprised by Wednesday’s announcement of Procter & Gamble’s TOP sponsorship agreement with the IOC. If you read my August 2009 blog on P&G’s sponsorship deal with the NFL, and subsequently followed P&G’s wonderful ‘Proud Sponsor of Moms’ activation of its USOC partnership across Vancouver 2010, you probably weren’t surprised either. It was an inevitable next step in the colonisation of a new(ish) piece of Olympic white space by P&G – using sport to market to women.
P&G’s strategy is as simple as it is brilliant.
1. Large numbers of women watch sports, but because sports marketing is so male-oriented, no one is talking to them: P&G decided to own that white space.
2. There are certain sports, and certain events, which very large numbers of women watch and enjoy. In the US, the NFL is the most popular; globally, it’s the Olympics. P&G decided to own those events for its brands.
If you’re not familiar with how P&G activated its USOC deal around the Vancouver Olympics, celebrating the unsung role played by Mom, it’s worth your time. Here are a couple of sports from the campaign, created by W+K in Portland.
Evidently, the campaign paid off big time for P&G, apparently generating $100m in incremental sales. As the company’s North American VP Kirk Perry said on Wednesday at the launch of the IOC partnership.
“We had a terrific run in Vancouver, and realized the potential on a global basis. It became obvious the next step wasd to expand to other markets around the world.’
It will be fascinating to see how P&G’s move into this white space impacts on the Olympics, and maybe on sports marketing as a whole.
How will other Olympic sponsors react now that they know what P&G’s thematic territory will be around London 2012?
How will P&G’s competitors react – will we, for example, see them move into ambush sponsorships with Olympic sports?
Will other traditionally male-oriented rights owners attempt to get in on the action and create new female-oriented sponsorship platforms?
Will male-oriented sports sponsors re-engineer their marketing to appeal more to women? On which subject, take a look at this fascinating piece by Janie Curtis from Forbes.
And finally, I wonder how former IOC TOP partner Johnson & Johnson is feeling about P&G colonising the Olympic white space they pioneered with their ‘Thanks Mom’ campaign around Beijing 2008?
By Tim Crow on July 30th, 2010
Tags: Default, London 2012, London 2012 sponsorship, Olympic sponsorship, Olympics, Vancouver 2010
Anyone for ping pong?
Anyone who knows me will be aware that I like things that pop up in city locations seemingly out of nowhere. The more random and unexpected, the better – elephants, pianos, lions, designer deckchairs… So the recent landing of 100 ping pong tables scattered across the capital is especially pleasing to the old Branston eye.
In an attempt to trend-ify (is that a real word? Am not sure) table tennis, ping pong is set to become the urban craze of London for the next month with the kick-off last Thursday of the Ping! London festival. Pop up sport for impromptu games all over the city has a neat appeal. And interestingly, Yahoo branding aside, this particular initiative doesn’t feel to be over-endorsed by brands. Almost refreshing; ironic I know given the industry in which we operate.
Great timing too; getting in there ahead of this week’s somewhat brand-cluttered London 2012 two years to go landmark. The Ping! London initiative, supported by the English Table Tennis Association (ETTA) hopes to raise the profile of the sport and get more British people to play ahead of the 2012 Olympic Games. An Olympic sport since 1988, apparently table tennis is the world’s second most popular sport after football, with over 300 million registered players.
Are you serious?
Last week’s Ping! launch party witnessed the GB Team showing off their moves and despite having lived and breathed sport all my life, I wouldn’t be able to name any of our national team. Sad but true. Not one. A different matter in Asia and for the Chinese in particular where it is considered the country’s national sport. Hence why they excel at spending lots of time on the old ping pong Olympic podium. And we don’t. Two years to go mind, all that could change.
Having given the re-positioning of ping pong some thought, it strikes me that table tennis has rather a lot going for it. The sport has universal appeal, is accessible, cheap, not too time consuming, easy to learn, can be played by all ages/genders (all 2 of them) and appeals to the child in us all. And if we needed any further convincing, and here’s the PR talk, it is played by celebrities too – Blur’s Damon Albarn & Hollywood legend Susan Sarandon (co-owner of New York’s successful ping pong club SpiN) – the names freely touted around as ping pong lovers.
It seems especially apt that the table tennis tables are currently residing in London given the sport was invented in Victorian-era England. Ping! follows closely behind Luke Jarram’s highly successful ‘Play Me, I’m Yours’ artwork, a project that has been touring globally since 2008. Last month in London, over 20 pianos were placed throughout the city for anyone to play. A creative blank canvas and one that left behind a rather touching legacy with the pianos being donated to local schools and community groups. Loved it. Hopefully the tables will follow in the pianos footsteps and be given to local youth clubs and charities to enjoy once Ping! waves farewell to the city on 22nd August.
If you’ve not already bumped into a table (bats & balls all provided too. Over 4,000 bats, fear not), keep your eyes peeled in Soho Square, Tate Britain, the British Library, Heathrow Airport…all over the shop. A geek-chic Olympic sport that we will not only see played in our own backyard come July 2012 but one that is enjoying an uplifting revival as ideal for hip city dwellers – count me in.
Game, set and match.
By Stephanie Branston on July 29th, 2010
Tags: London 2012, London 2012 sponsorship, PR, Public relations, Sponsorship, Sport, grass roots sport
“The US is very much in the Premier League’s sights”
Following the US software group, Electronic Arts, winning the deal to be the Premier League’s official sports technology partner and a series of other sponsorship deals with US groups, Tim Crow tells the Financial Times that “The US is very much in the Premier League’s sights and has been for many of the clubs for a long time.”
Click here to read the article in full.
By David on July 23rd, 2010
Tags: Press Clipping
Women’s sport offers “a unique opportunity” for sponsors
Karen Earl comments on a report issued by the Commission on the Future of Women’s Sport, which tells the commercial sector, rights holders, broadcasters and the government to work together to “capitalise on a market that has great potential but remains under leveraged.” Karen Earl tells Marketing Week that “from a sponsor, perspective women’s sport offers a unique opportunity. It is a particularly uncluttered area – something that is quite an issue for sponsor’s in men’s sport.” Click here to read the article in full.
By David on July 16th, 2010
Tags: Press Clipping
Spurs sponsorship “smacks of a short-term view”
In light of Tottenham Hotspur’s decision to have two shirt sponsors, Karen Earl tells Marketing Week that the decision could dilute the property’s equity and “smack’s of a short-term view of trying to raise as much as possible rather than a true marketing partnership.” Click here to read the article in full.
By David on July 16th, 2010
Tags: Press Clipping
The true (English) star of this year’s World Cup
Never realised I was such a fan of the common cephalopod mollusc before this week. Turns out I, like half the population and every red-top news editor in the land, love a good octopus – especially one with psychic powers. If there’s one nimble-legged genius seizing all the headlines this week, it ain’t the expected superstars (sic) we might all have predicted in the run-up to this year’s tournament. Not Wayne Rooney (currently sunning it up with Coleen in Barbados), Frank Ribery (dissolved mid-mutiny with the rest of the French team) or Gilardino (you’re only as good as your last World Cup win Alberto).
Nope, clearly our powers of prediction are not world-beating.
Unlike Paul. Paul the Psychic Octopus. The German star who has correctly predicted the outcome of all six of Germany’s World Cup matches. This morning, during a live television broadcast, Paul predicted Germany would beat Uruguay in tomorrow’s third place play-off match - his seventh prediction of the tournament. And more importantly for those who live in Spain and the Netherlands, Paul has plumped for Spain, the pre-tournament favourites, to lift the World Cup on Sunday evening. Viva España.
Eight arms. Eight predictions. Coincidence? I think not. Paul is good, damn good for a suckered seer, and given the level of attention on him right now, I imagine he’s praying to the bottom of his mussel filled tank that his powers haven’t deserted him at this crucial stage of the tournament.
Paul is definitely ‘da man’, albeit a hard beaked, blue blooded, eight-armed one (technically six arms and two legs but who really cares?), and even better news for us English folk – embarrassed by our team’s recent knock-out 4-1 defeat to Germany – is learning that Paul is not actually German at all. He was born in Weymouth, back in 2006, where he was apparently much more shy on the predicting front. Paul joins other fellow famous Weymoutharians such as painter Sir James Thornhill (big in the 1600s), Strictly Come Dancing’s Karen Hardy and…urmmmm…not all that many other people it turns out.
So that’s two genuine English stars who have emerged late in the day in South Africa’s World Cup:
1. Paul
2. And Yorkshire’s very own Howard Webb who will referee Sunday’s Final; the first Englishman to referee a World Cup Final since Jack Taylor in 1974. Interestingly Holland lost that game 2-1 to West Germany (the signs are not looking all that good for the Dutchies).
Our much-hyped Premiership players may have failed lamentably to emulate the heroes of 1966 but all is clearly not lost.
Paul now resides in Germany’s Oberhausen’s Sea Life Aquarium whom I applaud for their quite brilliant PR campaign. Paul has put the city of Oberhausen (twinned with Middlesbrough) on the map which, as well as the aquarium, also boasts Germany’s biggest shopping centre and Europe’s largest disc-type gasometer. Yep.
Back to Paul. The Times of India reports, “He has eight legs but has never kicked a ball. That, however, hasn’t stopped Paul the octopus from becoming the world’s finest football forecaster.” Spain’s celebrity chef José Andrés has taken octopus off the menu at all of his restaurants until further notice. Brilliant, it’s not just me who loves the little fella. He has well over 70,000 fans on his official Facebook page. He has become an online phenomenon and one of the most talked about topics on the web. The phrases “Paul the Octopus” and “Pulpo”, the Spanish word for octopus, are both currently in the top 10 global trends on Twitter.
However, celebrity fame has come at a price. Paul has made enemies along the way as a result of his predictions and is now enduring death threats on an hourly basis. Most recently he has become the target of bitter Argentinian fans, angry that he predicted their footballing demise, who have been sending seafood recipes to his aquarium. The Spanish government is reportedly ready to step in with Spain’s Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez stating “I am thinking of sending him a protection team“. Too right. Spain’s World Cup success may depend on it.
Will Paul be right for the eighth time? Are his days really numbered? Roll on Sunday night’s big showdown to find out…
By Stephanie Branston on July 9th, 2010
Tags: Football, Public relations, Television, World Cup
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