Farewell then, to Robinsons’ sponsorship of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year show, following this week’s decision by the BBC Trust to end the Corporations’s short-lived foray into broadcast sponsorship.

BBC signed a two-year agreement with Britvic, reputedly worth £200,000, for Robinsons to brand Sports Personality from 2007. But the deal was doomed from the moment that ITV and the RadioCentre both mounted high-profile post-show attacks on it, highlighting its breaches of BBC policy and – somewhat less convincingly given the modest size of the deal – alleging that such agreements would distort the market for broadcast sponsorship.

As a result Sports Personality 2008 will not be Robinsons-branded unless the deal can be renegotiated to make the show editorially compliant, and the opportunity will be withdrawn from 2009 along with a number of similar, smaller projects.

An unhappy episode and an inevitable result, but overall a good thing. Bottom line, this was an ill-conceived and (as anyone who watched the 2007 show would agree) poorly executed deal which took the BBC into no-win territory both commercially and editorially.

Which is not to say that sponsorship doesn’t have a role to play going forward for the BBC – quite the reverse.

The Corporation’s search for alternative revenue sources beyond the licence fee will quite rightly continue. But the big wins are in digital services, international markets and the BBC archive – and as those models develop, so will sponsorship opportunities.

But on-air in the UK, sponsors should only be seen on the BBC where they’ve quite naturally and prominently been seen for years – as sponsors of events which the BBC covers.

By Tim Crow on July 23rd, 2008

Tags: BBC, Broadcast sponsorship, Television

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By Tim Crow on June 18th, 2008

Tags: Ashes, Barclays Premier League, Cricket, ECB, ICC World Twenty20, Indian Premier League, New Product Development, Stanford Twenty20 for 20, UEFA Champions League

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Euro 2008 kicks off this weekend without England or Scotland, but clichéd commentaries about lower fan interest and less brand activity miss the point that for brand marketers who use football, there are still valuable lessons to be learned from the tournament – many of which couldn’t be learned if the home teams had qualified.By the same token, ambush activity will also be thrown into higher relief, whether big, bold and obviously strategic such as the Mars ‘Get Britain Playing’ campaign or Burger King’s ‘Football Your Way’, to the tactical, such as Heineken’s new, and very funny, press work – although we suspect that UEFA and tournament sponsor Carlsberg will be less than amused given Heineken’s status as a UEFA Champions League sponsor.
 

Finally, let’s not forget that Euro 2008 will do quite nicely without the home teams. Every one of the 1.05 million match tickets has been sold – albeit only 33 per cent direct to the fans – and in football terms it will be as good as it gets: the 2006 World Cup Final was between France and Italy.

From fan consumption across a variety of channels for example, we’ll discover how many fans here love football no matter who’s playing, as distinct from those who, as Martin Samuel put it recently in The Times, are in love not with football but with:

‘a St George’s Cross [on] the car aerial, buying the new red England shirt and joining the gang for a month.’

Tournament sponsors, many of them brands with long term football agendas, will also gain a much clearer perspective on how powerfully their campaigns cut through to the hardcore fan audience, undiluted either by the casual St George’s Cross fan or the blizzard of ambush campaigns that would normally accompany a big tournament featuring the home teams.

 

 

By Tim Crow on June 6th, 2008

Tags: Ambush campaign, Brand marketing, Euro 2008, Football

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A landmark day begins, entirely appropriately, with the launch of our blog. Come in, it’s really rather exciting…

Although we feel incredibly privileged to advise brands on sponsorship for a living, and every day in our business is fascinating, there are some days that you know will be extra special. Today is absolutely one of those, as it’s the start of a new era for us in so many ways.

We’ve just moved into our superb new HQ in 60 Great Portland Street (or “60 GPS” as it’s rapidly becoming known) and there’s a palpable sense of energy and excitement as the eleven companies and 600 people in the Engine Group unite under one roof.

On top of which today also marks our first day as Synergy after twenty-four years as Karen Earl Sponsorship, so there’s an extra-special buzz as we finally unveil our new brand identity and offer after a year of planning.

Having, naturally, revealed Synergy to our two most important audiences first – our people and our clients – we already know that the response is overwhelmingly positive, and that it feels absolutely natural for the brand to evolve, because our business has evolved so much, particularly in recent years.

Two other things about the new brand identity tend to come up. The first is “I can’t believe Synergy was available”. Neither could we! But happily it was, because it brilliantly encapsulates both what we do and how we do it. The second is “How does Karen feel about it?”. Very simple answer: she’s 100% behind it and has been up for a change for years.

There’s also an incredible buzz about our new, enlarged offering, which augments our existing skills in Consultancy , Experiential and Communications with four new services: Branded Content , Digital, Employee Engagement and Sales Promotion.

The new services are partnerships with the Engine companies who specialise in the disciplines involved (respectively Huge, Altogether, Dave and Woo) and have in fact been operating informally since we joined the Engine Group in late 2006. So we’re simply formalising an operating reality – and creating something really groundbreaking that no-one else is close to offering. All good.

So a new chapter begins, and it’s all change – and yet no change. We’ll be staying true to the key principle on which Karen Earl founded the company – never selling sponsorships, meaning that we can guarantee clients impartial, as well as expert, specialist advice – still a very rare commodity in sponsorship. And above all, as I look around, I see what I’ve always seen: great people who love what they do and are very good at it.

Except that there’s a lot more of them!

By Tim Crow on May 27th, 2008

Tags: Branded content, Default, Digital marketing, Employee engagement, Experiential marketing, Public relations, Sales promotion, Sponsorship consultants, Synergy

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