What’s in a name?

So, it’s change afoot in the UEFA Cup. Again. In a bid to increase its profile – and no doubt differentiate itself from its slicker, richer, better-fed sibling, the UEFA Champions League – the competition has undergone a radical overhaul. Say goodbye Group Stage, with eight leagues of five; say hello Group Stage with…er…twelve groups of four. Begone, lowly UEFA Cup; enter in its place the mighty UEFA Europa League – a name I’m sure you’ll agree adequately reflects just how reinvigorated, aspirational and totally-not-the-Champions-League this competition really is. Doesn’t it…?

Whilst there is a greater level of subtlety to UEFA’s latest jiggery-pokery than I’m possibly letting on, such changes are not all that much fun to write about (eg. the winning FA Cup team cannot ‘give’ their UEFA Cup place to the losing finalist, in the case that they are already in the Champions League – the place instead going to next-highest team in the Premier League). See: told you.

To be honest, for the clubs concerned, I have a feeling that the only key difference they care about is just a little more fundamental: cold, harsh cash. For example, last year Liverpool raked in a reported £18 million as a losing Champions League semi-finalist. By contrast Spurs’ 2007/08 UEFA Cup run, where the club reached the competition’s Knockout Stage, playing a total of 10 matches, purportedly brought in around £500,000 in prize money. Approximately the same amount of revenue Tottenham made last season for a single live match on Sky Sports.

Can we have our ball back?

Ever thought that putting on London 2012 looked like a bit of a challenge?

Well, if the Games had to be co-hosted with a neighbouring country sharing no common language; if the journey time between certain Olympic venues was in some cases upwards of 9 hours; if the IOC had visited LOCOG a year ago and voiced mild concerns over our preparations – then returned six months later only for things to look even worse; if our national supporters were fearsome regulars on Ross Kemp on Gangs; if Seb Coe and his team were suspended from their duties due to charges of corruption…I could probably understand your concerns. As it is, this is the situation facing Poland, co-hosts of UEFA EURO 2012™.

Although Poland and Ukraine had never been the realistic front-runners during the bidding phase back in 2006/07, corruption and hooliganism in Italy’s game – along with the public support of FIFA’s Sepp Blatter – saw the tournament handed to Eastern Europe.

At present we are told there is no immediate threat to Poland’s position – but with Ukraine unable to act as sole host, Spain now more interested in bidding for the 2018 World Cup, Germany still recovering from 2006, and England ‘otherwise engaged’ in 2012, there are few obvious takers should Poland’s position become untenable. Forget east: whatever way you look at it EURO 2012 may have now officially gone south.

(Almost) Everyone’s a winner

Good news for fans of the Home Nations: by 2016 we may qualify for the European Championships. No, the UK is not bidding to host the tournament. Nope, this won’t be thanks to a future midfield triumvirate of Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz Beckham. And no, all decent teams aren’t being disqualified from qualification. It’s in fact simpler than that: UEFA are letting more nations into the Finals. 

With the expansion from 16 to 24 teams, UEFA EURO 2016™ will be an interesting tournament from several angles. From a commercial perspective, the return on investment for brands sponsoring the event is likely to be greater, as there is an opportunity for more of a sponsor’s European markets to engage with their consumers via Football – the flipside of this likely to be that the contractual fee from UEFA rises accordingly. And as a fan, there’s a 50% greater chance that your team might actually make the tournament. Okay, maybe 10% if you’re Scottish…

By Jonathan Izzard on October 10th, 2008

Tags: Default, Football, Football Sponsorship, London 2012, UEFA Champions League

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With AIG, shirt sponsors of Manchester United, now having followed Northern Rock, shirt sponsors of Newcastle United, into nationalisation, it occurred to me that the sponsors’ lounge at the next Toon versus Reds match could bring a whole new meaning to the term Premier League. Because, of course, the effective heads of the teams’ two sponsors are now the Premiers of the US and UK.

But who’ll be in those respective hot seats come next March? Over there, will it be John McCain or Barack Obama. Over here, will Gordon Brown still be around? And whoever it is, will they use the occasion for a pow-wow at St James’ on Wednesday March 4? Lovely thought, but somehow I doubt it.

Maybe Gordon could send noted Toon Army member Tony Blair - remember him? - to deputise…

By Tim Crow on September 18th, 2008

Tags: Barclays Premier League, Brand marketing, Default, Football, Football Sponsorship, Manchester United, Newcastle United, Public relations, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultancy, Sponsorship consultants

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The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games are up and running, media coverage is everywhere and consumer interest is predictably high. Olympic sponsors – and as always, quite a few non-sponsors too – are competing to associate their brands with the Olympic Gamess in the minds of consumers. But given that this will be the most digitally-connected Games in history, are brands making effective digital connections?

With all of this coverage and all of the money riding on the Olympics it seems pretty safe to assume that a lot of people will be looking for information on the games. And certainly, looking at Google Trends which tracks the number of searches for particular key words, there has been a sudden spike in interest in the Olympic Games and associated terms.

With this in mind, and considering that search engines (and particularly Google) are now often the first port of call for consumers looking to find information, one would assume that marketers are utilising the opportunities that search offers. But for some reason that doesn’t seem to be the case.

A search for Olympic Games reveals that only one company appears to be bidding on the phrase to appear in Google’s sponsored listings (AdWords). That company is The Guardian, a brand that have been quick to adopt the web and attempt to make the most of it.

With the recent relaxation of Google’s rules on brand bidding (buying adverts on trade marked search terms) it seems strange that more companies are not making the most of this opportunity. After all, if you’ve spent millions of dollars sponsoring the event, wouldn’t it make sense to promote that association to all those who are actively seeking information on the games?

If companies aren’t willing to add to their existing marketing spend then common sense would suggest that they might simply want to work to make information about their sponsorship as visible as possible. One way to do this would be to invest in search engine optimisation, whereby web pages are designed, written & coded so that the search engines ‘think’ that they are particularly relevant to a search term. Taking Visa as an entirely arbitrary example (I’m sure that this exists on many of the sponsors’ sites), this again seems to be a trick that has been missed by those looking to maximise the sponsorship potential of the Olympic Games.

Looking at Visa’s section dedicated to its sponsorship, it soon becomes apparent why Google doesn’t think this page is particularly relevant to searches related to the Olympics. For a start neither of the words Olympics or games appear in the title tag (the blue bar which appears at the top of a browse window) or the URL, both of which a search engine considers when determining the relevance of a page to a search term. It also sits on a different domain to the main Visaeurope.com site, meaning that it won’t be benefiting from the thousands of links pointed at that site, as Google uses links to judge the importance of a site.

Whilst it is likely to be hard to rank for such a competitive term as Olympics or Olympic games, that doesn’t mean that brands shouldn’t even try. After all, if there’s one lesson that we can all take from the Olympics, it’s that it’s not always the winning that’s important, but that they should at least try to compete.

Ciarán is the SEO & Social Media Director at our partner agency Altogether Digital.

By Ciaran on August 12th, 2008

Tags: Digital marketing, Football, London 2012, Olympic sponsorship, Olympics, Public relations

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Whilst the Olympic Games kicked off in style in the Far East, this weekend also saw the start of the 2008-09 football season.

Don’t get me wrong, I genuinely have a strong interest in sport. I work in the industry, I read the back pages on a daily basis and will more often than not choose to watch live sports coverage over the nightly ritual that is EastEnders or Coronation Street.  But even I was taken to another level this weekend.  In danger of being a football widow, I not only found myself joining my other half at one live match of the opening weekend – but two!

First up was a trip to Charlton, my adopted ‘local’ team in SE London, where The Valley welcomed the newly-promoted ‘boys from the valleys’ – Swansea City.  Nicknamed ‘The Real League’, it really is true-grit football.  Sitting in the stands with 21,000 others, in the pouring rain that defines August in this country, I was again hit by the dedication and passion of all the fans that follow their team, week-in, week-out.  It is something that astounds me everytime I go to a match. However many times I experience it, it never fails to amaze me.

This was the first match of the season and it was a true portrayal of the optimism that every club has at the start of a new year.  Charlton, vying for a place in the Play-Offs at the end of last season, were back to an even playing ground.  Forgotten was the disappointment of the spring months, when they realised that getting back up into the Premiership was not going to happen this year. Fans and players alike are back with high hopes for the next ten months.  This optimism is even reflected in the early-bird discount for season tickets ‘Buy your season ticket before the first weekend, and if we get into the Premiership next year you’ll pay the same price for your ticket’.

Next up was a trip to Wembley Stadium for what is traditionally known as the curtain-raiser of the football season – the Community Shield. A showpiece match, this was altogether a different picture – well apart from the rain, which followed me all weekend but what else would you expect! 

Wembley, the national stadium, was hosting the reigning European club team, Manchester United, and the proud victors of the legendary FA Cup, Portsmouth.  However, whilst there may have been four times as many people, numerous footballing legends in situe (Geoff Hurst represented McDonald’s, the FA’s Presenting Partner), and inflated prices at the concession stands, the underlying themes amongst the fans were still the same as the day before. Passion, pride, commitment, belief.  This was demonstrated to me as we were leaving.  Following a penalty shoot out, Manchester United were victorious once again.  As we were heading down the stairwells, I overheard a voice of a young boy telling his dad, “It doesn’t matter that we lost.  We were the better team”.  This just about summed up my experience over the weekend. 

The Greatest Show on Earth may be taking place in Beijing. But for the hundreds and thousands of football fans who turn out of their homes on a weekly basis to follow the highs and lows of their team, one thing is absolutely certain.  Football in this country really is ‘the beautiful game’, and it is refusing to be overshadowed by the Olympics.

By Sara Wilson on August 12th, 2008

Tags: Barclays Premier League, Beijing 2008, Football, Olympics

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One of the worlds great football clubs, Inter Milan, was formed on 9th March 1908. Almost exactly one hundred years later another team was born, sadly that’s where the similarity ends, but I guess you never know, as they say in football “it’s a funny old game”…

Wednesday 16th July marked the date of the Synergy XI’s first outing, following an invite from our good friends at Action Images, who kindly invited us to the contest. Following a good deal of debate, and many hours in the fifth floor bar (after work of course), the team took to the pitch at the glamorous location of Spurs Lodge, the training home of the mighty Tottenham Hotspur.

Backed to the hilt by our support team (with massive thanks to Powerade - without you I am nothing, frankly, with you I’m little more, but at least I started with professional hydration!) the match kicked off. Things did not start quite as planned, clearly our ‘zonal’ marking was not what we had envisaged in our strategic team tactics sessions. We were a goal down inside 20 seconds and we’d not even touched the ball! A little room for improvement one might say.

“Things can only get better” was the battle cry, or wishful hope to be more precise. So, we soldiered on and to our delight, with a great piece of content and without a bit of clutter, we were back on level terms. That move really set the tone for the Synergy men and throughout 90 minutes of pulsating (should that be pulse racing?) action the debutants put on a fine display of ’sexy’ football eventually coming out on top 9-3. Success at the first attempt, and our very own ’special one’ believes he’s now a candidate for the Chelsea helm when it next becomes available.

What next? Well, I’m not sure we’ll be seeking global sponsorship just yet, but we will be looking to keep up a fine track record. After all, we’ve got a reputation to uphold, who knows in 2108 we may just be the new Inter Milan.

Please get in touch if you fancy a game (but please just give us all a few weeks to recover!).

By Ben Wilkinson on July 22nd, 2008

Tags: Football, Sponsorship

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Nowadays there doesn’t seem to be a sponsorship in existence without a digital presence. From the early days of a fleeting mention, or if you were lucky a whole subsection (though often buried), on the main corporate website, we’re now into the era of the dedicated ‘sponsorship microsite’. But has that much really changed?

While investment in sponsorship microsites shows positive progress and a commitment by brands to invest in the important digital marketing space, it’s also created a beast. What we’re now seeing are a raft of generic websites with the same tired format and content.

What do I mean by this? Well let’s take the Heineken’s Rugby website as an example – just one of many I could have picked. As aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate as it is, with the brand ambassador’s blog, gallery, competition, downloads, newsletter, polls, stats section etc you could strip out the Heineken name and replace it with Castrol to make their Euro 2008 site.

Users want ownable and original content with a talkability factor. They’re more than happy getting news, images, polls etc from sites that do it very well and that they have a strong relationship with, like BBC Sport. The online audience are creatures of habit and for them to start consuming generic and available anywhere content on sponsor’s sites will take a long time, no matter how much is spent on SEO. As Ciaran Norris at Altogether Digital tells me “The old adage ‘you can lead a horse to water, but can’t make it drink’ rings true here. Chances are the horse is happy drinking where it is thanks.”

Creating a sponsorship microsite should not be seen as a solution in itself to the question of ‘what do we do online?’ To be honest this should never be a question in the first place, any activities should be done to solve brand problems and not fill media space. Anyhow, if we look at this offline for a moment, a brand wouldn’t start a new TV channel to reach a specific audience at a particular time. They would advertise or devise a branded content solution on an existing channel.

Sponsors and their agencies should be using this knowledge to their advantage. Heineken, for example, may be better served by using their sponsorship assets creatively to engage with the plethora of established rugby websites (e.g. Planet Rugby and Rugby World to name a few of the 115,000,000 websites returned when you type ‘rugby’ into Google) producing something akin to the highly engaging and successful Landrover rugby advert with Josh Lewsey.

This original content has great talkability and as a result is all over the web on video sharing sites, rugby blogs etc and I would hazard a guess has been seen by more people than the average sponsor’s website – as well as elicited more positive feelings towards the brand (though maybe not by football fans).

Even the most popular websites crave creative and original content that will help differentiate them from competition and the syndication of content I’m talking about is nothing new. The BBC has being doing it for years, and very successfully. As Ciaran says in his blog ‘The magic penny of giving content away’, the “…assumption of “build it & they will come” simply doesn’t hold water any more.”

So am I saying that all sponsorship microsites are a waste of time and money? No I’m not. There are many opportunities for brands online, especially those sponsoring less mainstream sports like snooker, where the online community infrastructure is in its infancy and crying out for investment. What I am saying though, is that more time needs to be spent understanding what online consumers want and how they behave as well as considering what’s already out there. It’s important to appreciate that building a relationship with your target market will take time and won’t happen as soon as the first ball of a tournament is kicked. The audience are fans of the sport first and foremost and need persuading that they should be brand fans too. Telling them the score is not going to achieve this.

By Malph Minns on July 1st, 2008

Tags: Branded content, Digital marketing, Euro 2008, Football, Rugby, Sponsorship

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The hardcore fans are still out there and their allegiance is strong to both club and country.  Much has been said about the sales of Spain and Portugal shirts rising this summer.  In Liverpool and the surrounding area Spain shirts have sold well thanks to Spanish striker Torres establishing himself as a Kop favourite.  Whilst Man Utd fans (wherever they live, Surrey as I understand it…) are snapping up Portugal shirts in homage to Cristiano Ronaldo.

Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo and Spain’s Fernando Torres in the English Premiership.

The multicultural Barclays Premier League will be well represented in Euro 2008 even if the English team isn’t there itself.  Austria and Switzerland will play host to many faces familiar to the English audience including players from Man Utd, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, Newcastle, Wigan, Man City, Aston Villa, Blackburn Rovers, Middlesbrough, Tottenham and Portsmouth.  The Coca-Cola Football League and Clydesdale Bank Scottish Premier League will be represented too plus the transfer gossip will link many players with a move to the Premiership after their performance this summer.

So there is still plenty of home interest but what qualifies as ‘home’ interest?

European communities are well established within Britain and they will be watching their ‘home’ teams with all the passion and support you would expect.  Tesco has not missed this opportunity and would appear to have adopted Poland bringing in extra supplies of polish snacks and beers in 150 stores in areas with large Polish communities as reported in The Times.  There are also strong areas of support for Portugal, France, Spain, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands to name a few.

As a football fan I’m still excited about Euro 2008 and without the inevitability of England getting knocked out it’s almost more enjoyable.   If the fans’ interest is strong then the brands will follow suit.  As Tim said in his previous blog, Euro 2008 is a time that brands can see how their long term football agendas measure up and will give them the chance to make sure things are on track in time for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

So whether you can lay claim to a great-great-grandmother from Portugal, or will be following a player from your club or you just like the shirt… which team will you be adopting?

By Alex Coulson on June 11th, 2008

Tags: Brand marketing, Euro 2008, Football

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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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Football these days: it’s all about the bottom line, isn’t it? Transfers, takeovers, salaries and shareholders – more front than back pages risk an overwhelming slide towards fan fatigue. Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of The Football League has always been founded on the brand’s understanding of real fan motivations in 72 communities.

Having just returned from working on the showcase finale to The Football League season, the Coca-Cola Play Offs, I can confirm that it’s an event about clubs, not multinationals; fans, not investors. This year Coke activated it through club-specific advertising and activity at Wembley Stadium, though unlike many brands, it remained mindful of the fact that what matters to supporters is the match itself.

Hull City made it to the Premier League thanks to two local heroes; Donny Rovers overcame the 40,000-strong support from Leeds Utd and Stockport County won at Wembley, at the fifth time of asking.

With all the stats and figures coming out of last weekend’s event: 200,000 attending fans…110,000 matchday programmes sold…£60million at stake…at the Play Offs, the bottom line appears to be simple: heart.

By Jonathan Izzard on May 29th, 2008

Tags: Event management consultants, Event management service, Football, Sponsorship consultancy, Synergy

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