What happened? The Orange BAFTAs took place took place on Sunday 13 February 2011. The sponsorship is well established and for 2011 the brand once again created an interesting and engaging sponsorship activation campaign. Below follows the brief highlights of the 2011 campaign.
1.The Flickometer
The Flickometer is a really visual adaptation of a Twitter Cloud to show real time content from the film nominees on the social media platform as they happen.
2. Orange Wednesdays
It’s now pretty well known and has been a major feature of the Orange Film strategy since 2009. It’s still a major asset and providing a major consistent connection for Orange customers throughout the year with the two-for-one offer every Wednesday – complemented by brand partnerships with likes of Pizza Express for an even more complete two-for-one experience. The concept is also integrated on the evening of the Orange BAFTAs including the Orange Wednesday’s red-carpet, hosted this year by the fabulous Rachel Stevens.
3. The night itself
How could you miss the night itself, with glamour and style by the bucket load, every film lover in the land was tuned in to watch a great evening of TV entertainment, which led to huge national media coverage.
Why we love it: The campaign was integrated with through the line activation across many different levels – from the top of the spectrum at the Orange BAFTAs themselves, right down to through consumer touch-points with two-for-one cinema tickets. The campaign is not new, but each year has been injected with an energy and vibrancy that is too often missing in long-lasting sponsorships (obviously this needn’t be the case). Orange has become a really credible brand in film.
Of course, a great brand platform needs to be backed up with fantastic activation and Orange did not let us down.
Nominations for the 2011 rounds of both the SIAs and Hollis were announced this week – both events see nods for superstars across the world of sport – for brands, sponsors, rights holders, community projects, governing bodies, and of course the agencies that help bring it all together (that’s us!).
So imagine our delight this week at the news that Synergy has been shortlisted for five Sport Industry Awards and six Hollis Awards. Congrats team – fingers crossed!
SPORT AGENCY OF THE YEAR (Sponsored by Colouration) - Synergy
And further congratulations must go to our friends at the NFL UK who were nominated for two SIAs: BEST SPORT WEBSITE OF THE YEAR (for NFL-360.com)and SPORT BRAND OF THE YEAR.
*For the full list of Sport Industry Awards nominations for 2011, click here.
Hollis Sponsorship Awards** – the Synergy Shortlist:
No longer is this solely a preserve of our American cousins.
Following OfCom’s relaxation of product placement laws in the UK, brands now stand much more chance of gaining screen-time. Not just sponsoring TV shows (Toyota Aygo‘s long-standing support of T4, Aviva‘s sponsorship of ITV Drama Premieres), but actually intergrating themselves within the programming. But as of yesterday, it has become clear that Ofcom are concerned we are under no illusions that the product appeares their naturally.
As reported by Brand Republic yesterday morning, Ofcom released the Product Placement ‘P’ (above) that will be the mandatory requirement of broadcasters and producers wishing to include branded presence within their creative output. P is for product, is for placement, is for paid-for. This simple logo will need to:
· Appear for three seconds at the start and end of programmes, and after any ad breaks;
· Be placed in one of the four corners of the screen;
· Not conflict with programme idents (e.g. Aviva’s ITV Drama sponsorship break bumpers);
· Meet minimum size requirements, which according to an Ofcom spokesman means it will be “roughly equivalent to the size of a channel logo“.
The impact of this is difficult to measure until we start seeing it on our screens because the actual execution and the measures taken to enforce it are equally difficult to predict and visualise.
In theory, at least it seems a fairly inocuous concept. A small logo in the corner of the screen is no different from the majority of TV channels currently on air. But the interesting question is on brand engagement – do we take the brand’s inclusion in the narrative as less legitimate because we are made aware of the big ‘P’? Or is our attention actually drawn more to its presence because we are warned?
Taking the One Tree Hill example, would a P placed at the start and end of every episode suffice? Or the start and end of every relevant scene? Which of the 58 (!) verbal mentions of Sunkist throught Season 3 would require tagging? Would Sunkist’s brand impact be greater or would we be more skeptical because we had been alerted to the fact that (shock) its inclusion was ‘placed’ (by the producers) and not the ‘genuine’ choice of the characters (which, being fictional, was also the choice of the, err, producers)?
And how far will this start intruding into the realms of editorial integrity? The traditionalists amongst us might like to see advertising restricted to, well, advertising. Aviva’s (admittedly, very entertaining) break bumpers around ITV Drama actually work very well – but at what point will we see the owners of the Marchlandshouse claiming on their Aviva home insurance after a bathroom flood? P or no P, clunky brand inclusions run a very real risk of alienating audiences and compromising enjoyment of the programme.
I would propose that this promise of transparency and visual warning of product placement won’t make much difference to the impact of the brand’s presence. If anything, it might draw attention to the fact that we are about to be advertised at – but then who really watches TV these days expecting anything else? Will we think less of Eastenders because the drink on the Cafe table is Coca-Cola, or the pint being pulled is GUINNESS? We live in a branded world where we expect to see brand messages in our daily lives, so surely we would expect our alter-egos on screen to do so also – where both credible and relevant.
If Ofcom feels the need to make doubly sure we know that the brand has paid for that presence, then so be it, but the modern TV viewer is a savvy animal. Chances are, we already knew anyway.
The NFL’s Super Bowl is prime material for us marketing folks. Granted, a number of us love the actual football being played on the field, but a huge majority are even more excited by the entertainment during the time outs. And I’m not talking pom poms and dancing girls (fans of the cheerleaders though we are at Synergy…).
In advertising terms, Super Bowl is prime real estate. The most expensive ad spots in the world offer brands the chance to reach 111 million U.S. viewers – this year all watching on FOX – with the price tag reaching up to $100,000 per second. Yes, that’s right, per second. Between $2.5 and $3 million for a 30 second ad spot. Phew.
This is a sporting event that so embraces its sponsors and advertisers that a whole section of the NFL website is dedicated to showcasing that ads that run throughout the programming. So ingrained is the element of entertainment to the action on the field.
Expectedly brands go all out in preparation for this miniature slice of branded entertainment. So much so, that this year, we saw adverts advertising adverts. For real. Non US-based fans were obviously bereft of this fervent marketing build-up, but trusty BrandChannel was on hand to give us regular updates of the preview ‘teaser’ ads (and then later the actual adverts) as they became available on screen and online.
These teasers ran across Network TV (presumably not just FOX) in the build up to last weekend’s clash at the Cowboys Stadium, building anticipation for the actual 30 second spot that would run in one of the many time outs during the game.
The most effective of these thas to be the Bridgestone ‘Reply All’ and ‘Carma’ spots, both of which I just loved:
Bridgestone, official tire sponsor of the NFL, carried its Super Bowl website URL at the end of each spot where viewers can catch the full versions of the final ads – should they not have tuned in to the big game.
2011 was certainly the year of the car, with Chevy, Audi, VW and BMW all taking a spot. Quite a cluttered marketplace. On entertainment value alone, VW’s mini Darth Vader seem to deliver the most buzz online with Contagious Magazine reporting how, three days before the big game, the video went from 100,000 views to over 1,000,000 in the first couple hours – hitting 5.3 million after the first day. But did the cute factor do more to shift children’s Darth Vader costumes than actual cars?
The spot that seemed to attract the biggest UK media commentary, was the U.S. XFactor trails. Given the UK love affair with Cowell and Cole, it is possibly not surprising. Cowell took centre stage in the dramatic 30 second spot – which again was touted as having close to a $3m price tag.
No Super Bowl would be complete without a beer or two, and Bud Light probably took the crown for the most entertaining execution – seeing a bunch of bored office workers go to extreme lengths to get their hands on a six pack (the office setting seems a popular choice for football marketing, given Reebok’s brilliant Terry Tate/Office Linebacker campaign from several years back).
And then there was Glee. The hit US TV show bagged the much-coveted post-Super Bowl TV slot on FOX, evidence (if it were needed) of its immense popularity and cult following. Interwoven into this year’s Glee Super Bowl extravaganza was Chevrolet. The uber-American car brand – one of GM‘s stable, themselves an official NFL sponsor – have actually bagged themselves a deal with Glee, in addition to their NFL partnership.
This all beautifully dove-tailed on Super Bowl night, with a Glee/Chevy ad spot – at once a trailer for the show and the car – and positioning both as integral to the entertainment of Super Bowl night. Branded content meets sponsorship meets advertising. All in one glorious explosive, all-singing, all-dancing package:
These provide just a snapshot of the 50 adverts that aired last Sunday. So perhaps it is no wonder that you hear of some U.S. viewers nipping out of the room to the bathroom, or to the bar for beers during plays in order not to miss the adverts. The NFL Super Bowl is a world where the advertising becomes central to the evening’s entertainment and fuels the pre-game build up – especially amongst a wider fan base – more than any sporting preview analysis can.
There may be talk of the death of advertising, but on this particular playing field, an audience of 111 million is pretty difficult to argue with.
There was surprise when the Beeb didn’t win the rights to the Paralympics but I was personally delighted by LOCOG’s foresight. I think it’s often overlooked that Channel 4 is a public-service broadcaster, and I was confident they would bring a more piercing lens on the Paralympics and Paralympians, in light of their heritage of innovative programming. I still look back with fond memories of their coverage of NFL, Football Italia, Sumo and Kabbadi (OK, not so much Kabbadi), and TransWorldSport was a regular staple for me on Saturday mornings.
The programmes themselves were a great mix of scientific insight, personality and humour. ‘Inside Incredible Athletes’ got under their skin of Paralympians using scientific tests and state-of-the-art scanning technology to create ‘biomechanical portraits’, in other words, the Science behind their disability. ‘That Paralympic Show’, with its magazine format, focused much more on the personalities of the athletes, their stories, their sports, and included humorous features such as ‘Pimp my Chair’ – An idea that wouldn’t have made the Beeb’s cutting room floor.
Employing T4 stalwart Rick Edwards to front programming alongside renowned Paralympian Ade Adepitan was a good choice, and a great way to widen the appeal of the Paralympics to a younger audience, an important job in light of viewing figures for the Games themselves which historically tend to be watched, in the majority, by the over 50’s. It doesn’t end there though, and Channel 4 has commendably launched a £500,000 initiative to identify and train new on-screen talent with disabilities to play a leading role in the coverage of the London 2012 Olympics. The broadcaster is aiming for 50% of its presenting team covering the Games to be disabled.
As for the sponsors of Channel 4’s Paralympics coverage, BT & Sainsbury’s both have an unrivalled opportunity to change the way consumers perceive their organisations. While there is the obvious benefit of a two year broadcast sponsorship to drive awareness of their association (something the BBC could never offer), both brands have the chance to truly integrate the Paralympics into their brand marketing over the next two years and beyond, and steal considerable thunder from the Olympic sponsor family. Taking inspiration from Channel 4’s initiatives would be a good start.
It’s also good to see two brands with strong British heritage sponsoring an event born on these shores as the Stoke Mandeville Games in 1948. BT & Sainsbury’s can speak to the majority of the UK population and if they fulfil commitments to ‘make a lasting difference to attitudes towards disability in the UK and create opportunities for change in disabled people’s lives’, then they will have contributed to a ‘real’ legacy. In my opinion, that’s much more powerful than the legacy claims of LOCOG’s swollen band of Sustainability partners – a prize to anyone who can name them all without Googling.
How they deliver on these promises remains to be seen, but I hope they aren’t afraid to use Paralympians to front their wider brand and product marketing campaigns. Both brands need to be bold and I’d urge them to consider an OFCOM stat I’m firmly attached to: ‘69% of able bodied people said they would not be put off buying a product advertised by a ‘severely’ (visibly) disabled person’. I hope through their combined efforts by 2012 this will increase to at least 80% of the UK population.
If both brands work in tandem with Channel 4, there’s a real chance that by 2012 the UK public will recognise just as many Paralympic athletes as Olympic ones. When considering Paralympics GB is by far the most successful Team we have in UK sport (102 medals in Beijing), and that this will be the first time they’ve performed on home soil since 1948, I only hope that thousands of us are cheering them on by name and showing our appreciation of their achievements as world-class athletes, as we will with Team GB.
So if you, like me, are tired of getting lost in the barrage of sleaze, politics, and ego that shows no sign of abating in the wider sporting world, definitely make the effort to follow Channel 4’s Paralympic coverage from now until 2012.
Football and cricket fans in the UK would have noticed a certain synchronicity in action over the last couple of days on the subject of technology in sport.
In the final instalment of The Times’ 2010 Football Survey by Football Fan Census published this morning, 74% of the 5,000 plus fans polled supported the immediate introduction of goal-line technology, to put an end to the series of high-profile wrong calls by referees in recent seasons. Despite the fans’ views though, goal-line technology is highly unlikely to be featuring in top football anytime soon as it is strongly opposed by the game’s lawmakers.
What a contrast with cricket, where Hawk-Eye technology has now been an authorised, integral part of the game at top level for many years, enabling the umpires to make the right decisions and entertaining spectators and viewers into the bargain. Except in the current Test Series between England and Bangladesh that is.
Unlike cricket broadcasters elsewhere in the world, Sky is barred from selling on-air sponsorship of Hawk-Eye, and thus cannot recoup the £300,000 it costs to equip the umpires, because Ofcom considers Hawk-Eye to be ‘editorial content’. The ICC – cricket’s world governing body – is refusing to pay for the technology on the grounds that it is inequitable to pay for the costs of Sky but not broadcasters in other countries. This has already led to at least one wrong dismissal in the match. More inevitably will follow.
This isn’t about Sky, and it isn’t about ICC. It’s about Ofcom. Instead of enabling a virtuous circle of added-value technology loved by fans and funded by sponsors, they create a no-win situation where no one – players, umpires, fans, media – is happy. All in the name of ‘editorial content’.
I am conscious that many of you - for I suspect you know where I’m going - may already perhaps be thinking ‘thin end of the wedge’. Let me assure you, then, that the last thing I want to see is British television becoming the ad-saturated nightmare that we see in so many other countries. But this is surely an exception and it would be good to see sanity prevail. Come on Ofcom, stop being the problem and start being the solution. Have the courage to create a virtuous circle and let brands sponsor Hawk-Eye on-air in cricket.
And whilst I’m on the subject, can someone – yes DCMS, I’m looking at you – explain to me why Hawk-Eye in cricket on Sky cannot be branded whereas it’s acceptable for Hawk-Eye in the BBC’s coverage of Wimbledon to be branded by Rolex?
The King of the World is dead, long live the King of the World.
You have to hand it to James Cameron: at $1.88billion in takings to date, his 3D epic Avatar is officially the biggest box office ticket of all time. And having taken only six weeks to eclipse the record set by Titanic, JC’s last feature film, this is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg.
Yes, the world and his wife (and their three children, plus extended circle of friends) have queued up at cinemas to see Avatar: whilst it’s not perhaps a film for everybody, it has nonetheless garnered some strong reviews, and, 3D effects aside, features some of the best CGI ever used in medium. The spectacle in 3D, however, elevates Avatar beyond movie to experience, drawing the audience into Cameron’s alien world of Pandora without simply resorting to the customary “oh, that was the 3D bit” camera pans. Not all 3D films can claim to do the same.
Avatar is a 3D success because the extra something this technology brings makes us believe it more, enriching the immersion and further suspending disbelief. The question is, how to monetise this on a more regular basis, as opposed to only once every 15 years, when Mr Cameron decides to take us one step beyond?
Naturally, the answer came in the form of the ever-inventive Sky, with Sky Sports’ first foray into 3D programming the live coverage of Arsenal vs Manchester United last weekend. For those lucky enough to be in one of the nine bars across the UK to feature 3D screens – well, if you’d call ‘lucky’ being reciprocally filmed by Sky Sports looking like the rejects from a Buddy Holly casting session – the experience was mixed. The customary Sky Sports graphics, player line-ups (where a sense of depth and perspective is inherent to the camera view) and wide angle shots from behind goal were suitably impressive; however, the third dimension was not the totally eye-popping revolution many were imagining.
To be fair, Sky does spoil the viewer: with up to 20 cameras tracking the game in regular Ds and lovely High Definition crispness for those willing to pay an extra tenner a month – it’s hard to say whether the final spectacle of 3D could ever match up to our expectations. It’s no massive surprise that this was basically a glorified experiment by the broadcaster – football may not be the ultimate sport to benefit from an extra dimension, versus, say boxing, rugby, or even golf – but the fanfare of such a world’s first certainly captured the public’s imagination, leaving viewers hungry, or at least peckish, for more.
Whatever the future holds for in-home 3D, it’s clear that from a sporting perspective, as James Cameron understands, the extra dimension needs to add something to our experience, to give something back, with Sunday’s experiment representing a small step in furthering Sky’s opinion on exactly how it plans to achieve this.
OMG! This coming Wednesday, the wildly successful CW export, Gossip Girl, returns to the UK on ITV2 for its second season. Aside from my ridiculous excitement surrounding GG‘s return to our screens, the show is also an excellent example of youth marketing at its best.
For those unfamiliar with the show, Gossip Girl is a kind of Cruel-Intentions-meets-SATC for 16-24 year olds. And, for that specific and increasingly hard to reach demographic, it delivers hourly portions of marketing heaven every week for all the brands involved.
Firstly, wrapped around each 15 minute slice of the action sits the show’s sponsorship deal. The pairing of Guerlain’s Insolence fragrance with GG was well-conceived, by both the show’s producers and the brand’s marketeers. Insolence is a brand that defines its identity as ‘free, daring, unpredicatable, radiant’ and whose target female consumer embodies the ‘Insolent woman: audacious, makes her own choices and dances to a different tune…truly herself and utterly irresistable’. Values which, in turn, embed the fragrance with the sultry, aspirational qualities that fans see in the show’s female stars, and which they will no doubt seek to emulate.
As an enthused loyal fan of the first season I was a strong case study for the Guerlain sponsorship, with pretty successful results. I went from relative stranger to the brand, to sampling the product when it next caught my eye, right through to purchase. And all irrefutably due to Gossip Girl‘s powers of pursuasion.
Secondly, within the show itself, each scene becomes a catwalk opportunity for every major fashion label wanting to capture the GG market. The show’s producers, savvy from the beginning to their fans’ copy-cat desires, flood the blogosphere and website forums with insider information on the designers and outlets for each of the characters’ ensembles in key scenes. Thus, GG has done for designers like Abigail Lorick (the real life fashionista behind Eleanor Waldorf’s designs in the show) what The O.C. did for a raft of indie bands from 2003 onwards: through realistic contextual integration into the narrative fabric of the show, these guys get unparalleled exposure to a whole new audience.
Thirdly, evidence of the wider cultural influence of the show seems fairly wide reaching. Knowing that probably 95% of GG‘s weekly audience could only dream of browsing Henri Bendel for the back-to-school gear and party dresses sported by their counterparts on the show, UK high street brands have started to capitalize on the show’s stars’ distinctive styles. Miss Selfridge’s marked upturn in stocking preppy, WASP-ish styles (think ruffles, pearls, blazers) – that could have all been taken straight out of Blair Waldorf’s walk-in closet – is a case in point. And if their visual merchandisers are on the ball, you can bet that their Oxford Street window display will be reflecting this for the next couple of weeks.
(And if you’re still not sold, check out the NY Times story from last summer outlining the demonstrative impact of the show on retail sales in the US).
Leighton Meester as Blair Waldorf in a design by Abigail Lorick / Navy blazer with white trim from Miss Selfridge’s current collection
And finally, there is the cast – a select group of impossibly beautiful, precociously talented, walking, talking brand ambassadors for the show . The line between their real lives and the characters that they play is so imperceptible to the show’s legion of followers (even the show’s main romantic union has made the transition off screen), that all awards show appearances, publicity interviews and paparazzi shots become potential outings for the brands in the show. And you can bet your bottom dollar that the designers and brands who stock the wardrobes and dress the set allow, encourage, even pay their starlet darlings to take home their wares and showcase them off camera too.
So, if youngsters of the Z generation are all programmed to be (in the recent words of Lily Allen) ‘weapons of massive consumption’, Gossip Girl and shows like it provide all the ammunition required for brands to hit their targets dead on.
Barack Obama may have decided against signing corporate sponsors to help fund the estimated $40m costs of official events around his inauguration, but brands are deploying an array of marketing techniques to attempt to gatecrash the moment. Here’s a selection.
IKEA has led on experiential, via a mock motorcade touring Washington DC and an IKEA-furnished virtual Oval Office in Washington’s Grand Union station. The latter is replicated online at embracechange09.com, where consumers can add virtual IKEA furniture to the Oval Office and send their suggestions to both their friends and the White House.
Honest Tea, who struck marketing gold when Obama was seen drinking its Black Forest Berry tea on the campaign trail, has launched a limited-edition range renamed “Barack Forest Berry”, and will be sampling around DC all week.
And Audi of America is going seriously big with a raft of broadcast, online and print sponsorship initiatives, including an unprecedented broadcast sponsorship of the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news bulletins on inauguration evening, all to launch a year-long ‘Celebration of Progress’.
As the British Comedy Awards once again (dis)graced the small screen with its infamous ceremony last Saturday evening, there was an embarrassing degree of mirth at the sponsor’s expense.
Ironically, despite being both title sponsor and broadcast sponsor of the event and after show party, the increasingly raucous antics of the guests and nominees displayed little evidence that much, if any, water was being taken at the tables on Saturday night.
Bottles, undoubtedly, of the Highland Spring water that proudly adorned every table and remained largely unopened for most of the evening.
Admittedly, the creative was strong. The idents that wrapped each section of the broadcast were cute and wonderfully conceived. Simple but effective, positioning a bottle of Highland Spring as an award-winning celebrity itself, under the tag line, ‘If you’re this good, you must be rewarded’.
And that is where the brand presence should have ended. Instead, Sally Stanley (the brand’s courageous but arguably ill-advised Marketing Director) braved the toughest crowd in the business and took to the stage alongside Frank Skinner to present the highly coveted Best Comedy award as the pinnacle of the evening.
Error.
Angus Deayton [introducing Stanley]: ‘And of course a big thanks to Highland Spring - without whom tonight would certainly not have been as…cheap.’
And it only got worse. Granted, with the amount of subsequent mentions that Deayton and Skinner managed to notch up between them, the brand probably regained its rights fee in media value alone. But they also succeeded in presenting the brand as an intrusive, resented necessity, over-playing the contractual exposure that was guaranteed for them, and generally making Ms. Stanley look like a bit of a joke.
With marketeers across the country already cringing with embarrassment on her behalf, she then attempted to squeeze in a suitably ‘on-message’ introduction which was predictably ignored and cut short by her co-presenters and the less than captivated crowd:
Stanley: ‘[the sponsorship] is a perfect partnership as we strive all year round to make people feel better…’
(Err…what?)
Skinner [doubtless echoing the thoughts of the entire room]: ‘Well, it certainly makes me feel better – as a recovering alcoholic. Not quite as good as an actual drink, but you can’t have everything.’
Words alone cannot do the whole episode justice – watch for yourself:
A prime example of when a sponsor should be seen and not heard - always engage, but never intrude.
However, whether or not you believe that a television awards sponsor has a rightful active role in their presentation, one must ask how the brand association with this particular ceremonial joke can be seen as beneficial in the long run? The announcement of the 2006 deal suggested that Highland Spring did know what it was getting into, but as the calibre of this most ‘notoriously unpredictable’ awards night continues to decline, how much longer can the brand deem the association a desirable one? Can the value of numerous shameful on-air plugs really outweigh an association with an awards show that is increasingly becoming the laughing stock of the industry? And how does a high-profile water brand sit alongside an event renowned for the drunken, outlandish behaviour of its celebrity guests?
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