What happened?

At the end of the 2010/11 season Sheffield United were relegated to the third tier of English football, joining their local rivals Sheffield Wednesday in League One.  Both clubs found themselves without shirt sponsors, with local companies airing concerns over sponsoring just one team for fear of being accused of favouring one over the other.

With no deal on the table, Wednesday went ahead and printed its 2011/12 season shirts, sponsor free, holding on to the hope that a company would come on board late in the day. Fans were even told they could bring their shirts back to the club shop to have the sponsor logo added once a deal had been agreed.

However, with no deal on the table,  the two clubs joined forces and took the unusual approach of looking to recruit a joint sponsor. Two local companies stepped up to the mark, a local car dealership and a health insurance firm, who combined to offer a reported six figure sum for the 2011/12 season.

The agreement sees Volkswagon dealership Gilders appearing on the front of Wednesday’s shirt when they are at home and United’s when they are away. Westfield Health will appear on United’s home shirts and Wednesday’s away shirts.

Why we like it

Other than Rangers and Celtic who both carry Tennent’s sponsorship on their shirts in Scotland, this deal is the first of its kind between rival teams in an English league.

Of course, some fans will always be against the move.  Who wants to have anything in common with their local rival?  However, the overall response has been positive.  Before the deal was announced, both clubs had uncertain futures, with rumours of a merger and even closure abounding.  When those are the alternatives, a joint sponsorship deal becomes much easier to stomach, even for the most diehard of fans.

While both clubs deserve credit for coming up with a savvy financial solution (Sheffield is a city used to having to pick itself up and this deal demonstrates the determination not to lose any more of the city’s icons), the sponsors also come out of the deal rather well.

Local derbies always create hightened emotions for football fans, so bringing together two teams through the sponsorship could have resulted in backlash from the fans. However, Gilders and Westfield Heath are two local companies who know the city and its people and they were confident that the fans would back the partnership for the sake of their team. The announcement was made in a considered manner and the quotes focused on preserving two iconic Sheffield brands and football culture in the city.

This approach resulted in blanket coverage across the sports pages of the UK press, propelling two local brands into the national arena. Coverage was positive and gave both companies a voice with the MD of Gilders quick to note that the deal had “brought together four such quality and iconic Sheffield brands”.

As an ex-Sheffield resident, I’ll be following the future of both clubs closely. It will be interesting to see whether the deal will still remain in place even if the Blades win promotion.  In the current financial climate, it feels a fitting approach to a sport that is often (rightly) accused of being frivolous with money. And if it saves two teams steeped in football history and with a huge following, surely it’s a no-brainer.

By Jennifer Mitton on September 1st, 2011

Tags: Advertising, Brand marketing, Communications, community, Default, FA Cup, Football Sponsorship, Sponsorship, Sport, Synergy, Synergy Loves, Synopsis

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Like the vast majority of sports fans watching the events unfold at Royal St George’s, I found myself willing a Darren Clarke victory – this despite a fairly uneducated £5 pre-tournament punt on Phil Mickelson. The emotional pull of seeing a people’s champion claim the Claret Jug was stronger than the rational tug of reversing my losing streak on Betfair. Sport has a particular ability to evoke strong emotions through its personal stories of courage, inspiration and determination, through its inherent unpredictability, excitement and drama.

Those emotions are an essential component of successful sponsorship – and are as relevant across other sponsorship platforms (music, film, fashion, art) as they are in sport. How often do we hear rights holders, brands and sponsorship agencies (guilty as charged) talk of ‘engaging consumers through their passion points’ to justify sponsorship investments? It has become the de facto rationale. But what substantiates that principle, and are sponsors embracing it to make a genuine connection with consumers?

Shared Passions

The stated ambition of many sponsors is to create that emotional connection with their target audience through a shared passion. The theory goes that an emotionally engaged audience – whether they are football fanatics, art lovers, bog snorkelling aficionados, or Gaga’s ‘little monsters’ – is an audience that will be more receptive to brand messages, and more likely to think positively about a brand associated with their passion.

Sound thinking or codswallop? Well, there is plenty of research supporting the notion that the higher a consumer’s emotional engagement with an event, the more effective their recall of sponsors. If you want proof, just read Bal, Pascale and Plewa’s research study in the Sept 2009 Journal of Sponsorship (Volume 2, Number 4). Or take my word for it. Their analysis of the emotional response elicited by a sponsorship event confirmed what we would probably all take as read – that ‘positive sport-related emotions contribute to sponsorship efficiency, favouring the recognition of sponsors’. Which makes sense – an emotional experience is more likely to crystallise into memory than an experience without emotion. I remember where I was when Wilkinson dropped THAT goal in 2003 with patriotic emotions riding high, but have no recollection where I watched the 2010 World Cup Final as an impartial observer.

Sponsor Engagement

But how do sponsors get in on the act, and stake a claim to those memories? Being visible within a passion point might increase the chances of being in a consumer’s mind, but it doesn’t win a place in their hearts. There has to be active emotional involvement, not just proximity or visibility. Engagement not impressions. Too many sponsors assume that an increased awareness of their sponsorship, and that magical associative power alone, will alter consumer perceptions. Perimeter boards, media backdrops, shirt sponsorships and the like certainly have a reinforcing role to play, but I’m yet to hear a sponsor say “that perimeter board really helped me emotionally connect with my target audience”.  The abundance of advertising we are seeing in the run up to 2012 that says ‘I’m an Olympic sponsor’ is failing to tap into the rich emotional tapestry of the Olympics.

So what should sponsors do to capitalise on their consumers’ emotions beyond just ‘being at the party’? To start with there needs to be some sense of brand relevance to the passion point. How else can a brand claim to ‘share’ that passion? Authenticity could be driven by brand characteristics, product relevance, company heritage, or geography. Lack relevance, and brands risk looking as incongruous as Budweiser’s relationship with that king of soccer competitions, the FA Cup. The central thought in Neill Duffy’s book Passion Branding is another worthwhile principle: leverage the relationship between a brand and its consumers around a consumer passion to create value for all involved in the relationship. Sponsors need to think beyond their brand to deliver a benefit for consumers – be that entertaining content, a unique experience or simply a memorable emotional pay-off.

Many brands are successfully engaging consumers on an emotional level, in a relevant passion point, and contributing to their enjoyment of that passion. Some capitalise on a moment of high emotion, some tap into the core emotional sensibility of the passion point. Whether anchored in anticipation, pride, patriotism or celebration, they all exhibit genuine empathy and understanding. A few examples below…

In the build up to the 2006 FIFA World Cup, Carlsberg’s Old Lions campaign tapped into England fans’ anticipation of the tournament through a nostalgic lens and a pitch perfect creation of pub football camaraderie.

Fast forward four years to the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and Coca-Cola’s activation single-mindedly focused on football’s moment of greatest emotion – celebrating a goal. From reliving the greatest celebrations in World Cup history, recording a World Cup celebration song, to touring the FIFA World Cup around the globe, they fuelled fan emotion with the ‘What’s your Celebration’ campaign.

Talking of celebration, O2’s Rugby World Cup victory parade in 2003 gave rugby fans the opportunity to express their support, their joy and their pride to the returning heroes.  Not only that, O2 armed all England players with mobile cameras to record the experience and share it with consumers, and gave some lucky fans the chance to win a place on the parade bus.

But not all emotional engagement is grounded in joy and positivity. Bupa’s activation of their Great North Run focuses on the participants’ moments of greatest physical and emotional need. The Bupa Boost Zone at the typical ‘low’ point for runners 80% through the race, and at the finish, provides massages, sustenance and music to inspire and re-energise runners.

What next?

Social media is making the emotional engagement opportunities around sponsorship that much more immediate, and much more of a dialogue opportunity. The response to celebratory moments in particular is now fairly instantaneous, and can propel brands to the heart of the emotional moment. Harness the emotions correctly, and your consumers will add the catalyst of conversation. After all, people are more likely to talk about things that illicit an emotional response. As a final plea to sponsors, I defer to Mark Harrison, Chair of the Canadian Sponsorship Forum:

‘You can’t manufacture emotion. It’s already there. When you find it – just find a way to trigger it; tap into it; fuel it; and watch it grow into something remarkable.’

By Tom Gladstone on July 26th, 2011

Tags: Betfair, Brand marketing, Branded content, Communications, Content, Default, FA Cup, Football, Media, Olympic sponsorship, Rugby, Social Media, Sponsorship, Sport, Synergy, Synopsis, World Cup, YouTube

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Flicking through the channels yesterday afternoon I landed on the live FA Cup third-round draw taking place at Wembley. Having been talking about FC United of Manchester only the day before, I thought I’d watch and see if they were going to get drawn against one of the big guns.

Then something else caught my eye. Was that Noel Gallagher pulling the teams out of the hat? So it was – conducting the draw alongside Serge Pizzorno of Kasabian. It was like watching Christmas come early for two excited children! Both enormous football fans, the two internationally-known artists were obviously having the time of their lives.

A highlight was when just after Pizzorno had pulled his own team, Leicester City, out of the hat, Noel followed suit and set up a January tie against his beloved Manchester City. The fun didn’t stop there, and what had turned into highly-entertaining viewing continued when Noel, a life-long City fan, stepped forwards to draw a team to face Manchester United – and out came Liverpool to take on their bitterest rivals what is the only all Premier League tie in the third round.

They always say there is a certain magic around the FA Cup and there certainly seemed to be some flying around the studio yesterday, with the ‘you-couldn’t-have-scripted-it-any-better’ draws.  However, the other thing that really stood out for me is that via successfully engaging with people’s passion points, you really can create ‘money-can’t buy’ experiences, whoever the recipient may be.

Noel Gallagher is arguably one of the most successful singer-songwriters of all time, but he admitted he was more nervous doing the draw than when playing live with Oasis at Wembley, and will no doubt be telling the story of the draw for a long time to come.

Click here to view the draw.

By Sara Wilson on November 29th, 2010

Tags: Barclays Premier League, FA Cup, Football, Football Sponsorship, Manchester United

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A new football season has kicked off and, for a moment at least, optimism is all around as every club and every fan starts the new campaign with dreams of glory. At the same time, a host of sponsors – some familiar, but many of them new to football this season – begin their journeys too. So, in the time-honoured manner of early season previews, let’s take a look at some of the sponsorships, sponsors and trends to look out for.

England – this space for sale.

The England team has of course started the season without a team sponsor, the FA having so far failed to find a replacement for Nationwide in the wake of England’s disastrous World Cup. It will be interesting to see how long it takes the FA to fill the gap and which company comes on board to partner a team, manager and organisation with, for the time being at least, a lot of on- and off- field baggage.

England 2018?

Everybody remembers where they were when London won the IOC vote to stage the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Will we all look back on 2 December 2010 in the same way? That is of course the day when we’ll find out whether the dream scenario of a 2018 World Cup in England will follow London 2012 and RWC 2015. Whichever way the FIFA vote goes, it will have a defining effect on the zeitgeist of this season – and many seasons to come if it goes the right way. Let’s hope it does.

Rise of the New Red Corporates

Manchester United and Liverpool start this season with new shirt sponsors, Aon and Standard Chartered respectively. Both are primarily corporate sponsorships focused on driving awareness, in particular among the clubs’ Far East fan bases. But both will need to do more than use the sponsorships as ‘walking billboards’ (as the CEO of one was quoted the other day) to drive credibility and relevance in the UK, particularly – being financial brands – against the background of the two clubs’ debt issues. To compare in parallel how Aon and Standard Chartered approach the challenge, particularly in the first, critical year, will be well worth watching.

Energy Wars

Another one to watch is the energy category. One year ago e.on announced that it was not renewing its FA Cup sponsorship. Then npower took over the Football League title sponsorship as well as signing up as a partner of England’s 2018 Bid. Following which, in an unusual and surprising move, e.on did an about-turn and announced a 1-year extension to the FA Cup deal. And so, for one more year at least, battle is re-joined in football between the two brands, npower having previously used its Wembley partnership to regularly ambush e.on, particularly around the FA Cup Final.

Will Barclays find a football point of view?

This season will be Barclays’ seventh as Premiership title sponsors, and I’ll be interested to see how their positioning evolves. Against the background of the banking category’s image problems and the less desirable financial elements of the Premiership – debt and runaway wages – this is a tough job. But to me Barclays’ ‘bringing fans closer to football’ positioning looks increasingly generic and much in need of a more differentiating and resonant point of view.

Spurs – one becomes two

Spurs’ new strategy of having two shirt sponsors – one for Premiership matches, and one for Cup games – has been the big early season sponsorship story, with many observers hailing it as a positive move. I’m not so sure. Whilst there’s no doubt it’s worked for Spurs’ balance sheet – getting them to the financial number they needed, but couldn’t find, from one sponsor – for sponsors and sponsorship I believe it’s a backward step, because it takes sponsorship back to being all about media-led visibility rather than experience-led engagement. And the jury is still very much out as to how Spurs fans will react to another shirt with another sponsor. Watch this space.

Social Football

The 2009/10 domestic football season was the first in which social media really started to make an impact on the football brand landscape, and this trend continued around the World Cup, with even FIFA President Sepp Blatter getting into the act in person on Twitter. Although, sadly, I doubt that we’ll see other top figures from English football officialdom following suit anytime soon, the continuing and inexorable rise of social media to the top table of football marketing strategy is the trend to watch this season, and if you’re a brand in football without a social media strategy and presence, you need one – fast.

This article was first published in the July/August 2010 edition of Platform

By Tim Crow on August 31st, 2010

Tags: Barclays Premier League, FA Cup, Football, Football Sponsorship, Manchester United, Social Media, Sponsorship

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When people find out I work in sponsorship, I always get asked two things:

1. Do you have any decent tickets?
2. Do you have any decent gossip?

There was a time when I had plenty of the latter and little of the former. Unfortunately these days my gossip is about as revealing as a Tiger Woods press conference. The reasons for this are twofold due to changes that have happened over the last few years.

Firstly, the lines between sportsman and celebrity have blurred. Any star worth their salt should now be able to change their first name to ‘Brand’ and sound believable – think Brand Beckham, Brand Murray, Brand Schumacher. Could you ever imagine Brand Botham or Best?

The worlds of sport and entertainment celebrity, or ‘Sportainment’ as it’s naturally called in America, are now firmly linked and in more then a few cases by marriage (or separation). This means you become a front page story rather then a back page one, especially if it’s for the wrong reasons.

Secondly, and this is the significant recent change, with the rapid rise of digital and social media our appetite for instant news and our ability to create it has never been so strong.

Sports stars and clubs themselves are in on the act – basketball player, Shaquille O’Neal has a whopping 2.8 million twitter followers, while Barcelona FC has 1.3 million Facebook friends – but the real control lies with the person on the street.

After Tiger’s conference (streamed live on YouTube), we didn’t need to wait for the papers’ reaction the next day to gauge public opinion – in just the hour after there were over 93,000 tweets about it.

The headlines of Messrs Cole, Terry and Woods show us that the sports stars haven’t really changed – in fact the only surprise is that Tiger kept it quiet so long. The change is that now they are considered fair game by both a salivating media and an unforgiving public able to influence and drive the agenda. This means there few secrets that don’t come out eventually – or in other words not a good time to be straying from home.

Oh and before you ask – no I don’t have any tickets to the World Cup, Wimbledon or The FA Cup Final. No change there then.

By Dominic Curran on March 2nd, 2010

Tags: Andy Murray, David Beckham, FA Cup, Facebook, Public relations, Sponsorship, Tiger Woods, YouTube

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In a now infamous incident, during last week’s live coverage of the Everton v Liverpool FA Cup 4th round replay, ITV cut away to an ad break just before the end of extra time - with the result that while Everton were scoring the winning goal, the fans were watching…a Tic Tac ad. Oops. Cue irate viewers, ITV apology and acres of coverage. But rather more entertainingly, cue also a new Tic Tac film, with help from our friends at WCRS, which re-creates the Everton goal for the fans. TicTastic.

By Tim Crow on February 12th, 2009

Tags: Branded content, Digital marketing, FA Cup, Football, Football Sponsorship, ITV, Media, Television, Tic Tac, Viral Marketing, YouTube

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