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.

By Jonathan Izzard on February 2nd, 2010

Tags: Barclays Premier League, Branded content, Broadcast sponsorship, Experiential marketing, Football, Football Sponsorship, Manchester United, Media, Sport, Television, Television audiences

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This summer, we at Synergy are working with Betfair, the online betting exchange, to bring their ECB partnership to life through a fun and entertaining online campaign. Ashes fever is sweeping the nation as ultimate rivals England and Australia battle for the Ashes urn. We’ve signed up Ashes legends Phil ‘The Cat’ Tufnell and Jason ‘Dizzy’ Gillespie to go head-to-head in a series of (Synergy-inspired) challenges that can be watched on the dedicated website FANvFAN.com.  

The website, designed by Engine group company Altogether, offers more than just the videos with the chance to win tickets to each Test match, a chance to play alongside Tuffers and Dizzy and the opportinity to win £4,000.

The virals started in Cardiff with the pedalo race before moving on to Lord’s and the extreme lawn mower race. Our most recent visit was to Warwick race course as Dizzy and Tuffers galloped a furlong down the finishing straight.

The campaign is proving to be very popular and even made the top spot of Media Week’s Great Viral feature.   

Betfair Challenges - www.fanvfan.com

 Keep your eyes peeled as the adventures for our two cricketing legends continue!

By Caroline Ayling on August 3rd, 2009

Tags: Ashes, Cricket, Digital marketing, Sponsorship, Television audiences

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Bravo Lewis Hamilton, cue media frenzy - with, as ever on these occasions, a predictable focus on Hamilton’s future earning power. Thus we find Max Clifford in the Telegraph (not an everyday occurrence in itself) predicting that Hamilton will be ‘bigger than Beckham’ and this, my personal favourite to date, from the Mirror:

He is already on a £75million five year contract with McLaren and has a £10million three year sponsorship deal with Reebok. But extra sponsorship deals could see him on £1billion next year.

Now that would be bucking the credit crunch.

There is, of course, much more interesting territory to be explored here. For example, how will the nascent ‘Brand Hamilton’ be evolved?  To what extent does Hamilton’s appeal extend beyond F1? And what effect is Hamilton having on the F1 brand and audience?

In the UK at least, we already know some of the answers. Yesterday’s Grand Prix drew an average audience on ITV of 8.8m, way ahead of the channel’s slot average for the year so far of 2.6m, with a massive peak audience of 12.5m watching at 18:45 as the race went down to the wire.

Ironically, it was thus easily the most watched race since ITV started broadcasting F1 in 1997 – the irony being that coverage reverts to BBC in 2009, ITV having opted out of F1 earlier this year in order to retain its UEFA Champions League rights.

By Tim Crow on November 3rd, 2008

Tags: BBC, Formula 1, Media, Sponsorship, Television audiences

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I’ve posted before about the fact that NPD has been one of the key drivers in modern sponsorship, with virtually every week seeing new platform and property models being unveiled. NPD being what it is however, they don’t always work out, and the most recent example of this is golf’s FedEx Cup.

Launched by the US PGA Tour two years ago as an attempt to reinvigorate the final weeks of the Tour and counter audience migration to the start of the American football season, the FedEx Cup has had a difficult start to life.

For two years in a row, the Cup has been won anticlimactically early, last year by Tiger Woods (remember him?), this year by Vijay Singh, who has only to finish the final tournament of the season this weekend to claim the title. As one columnist from the National Post put it:

‘Under the current FedEx points system, Singh would have to step in a gopher hole or assault a rules official in order to lose the event. He could play all 72 holes with a belly putter and a persimmon three wood and still take the title, even if his card went into three-figures four days in a row.’

And despite changes introduced this year by the PGA, the format and credibility of the FedEx are still being roundly criticised by the media, in pieces with headlines such as ‘Once again, playoffs are a snoozefest’ and ‘FedEx Cup ending with a whimper’.

Tim Finchem, Commissioner of the PGA Tour, admitted that it was a case of back to the drawing board for next year in a recent media conference, although I suspect what he said will have done little to reassure the players, the media and most of all, his sponsor (whose current tagline is ‘Relax, it’s Fedex’).

Using the analogy of golf course designer Donald Ross and his work on the famed No. 2 course at Pinehurst NC, Finchem said that even a second set of format changes to the FedEx might not get it right:

“[Ross] made 213 or 220 changes in the first 12 years of [Pinehurst No. 2's] existence. Sometimes to get perfection, you have to keep working at it, and we intend to do that.”

Let’s hope, for the sake of FedEx in particular, it’s a case of third time lucky in 2009.

By Tim Crow on September 25th, 2008

Tags: Brand marketing, Default, Golf, New Product Development, PGA Tour, Public relations, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultancy, Sponsorship consultants, Television audiences, Tiger Woods

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They say one man is never bigger than the sport but there was one conversation that I heard many times over up at Royal Birkdale last week from the hospitality tents to the media centre – will we (media, sponsors, PR agencies & spectators) miss Tiger Woods?

Initial evidence would seem to suggest the answer lies in what side of the Atlantic you’re on. A nervous American TV executive told me that their viewing figures would ‘drop off a cliff’ while Woods kept his knee up at home. Evidence from previous tournaments would seem to back him up – US audiences regularly suffer a fifty percent drop when Woods is not involved at the top of a leaderboard.

Over here it was a different story though with an impressive though unofficial, over-night peak on BBC of 4.7 million watching Harrington collect his second consecutive Claret Jug. This was down on last year’s peak of 5.7 million BUT this figure was far larger than either of the previous years – when Woods was the winner. In addition, the story of a resurgent Greg Norman kept the pages and airtime filled and injected The Open with some much needed romance (and glamour from the new Mrs Norman). The galleries weren’t affected either with over 200,000 through the gates over the four days despite the inclement conditions making it the sixth highest attended in Open history.

Initial evidence is that the UK audience was not at all affected by the loss of Tiger - indeed it raised the hopes of a local winner. The more difficult question, that only the next few months will tell for the American TV exec, will be the longer term affect this will have on US audiences (the economic driver of the sport) and critically The Ryder Cup in a few months.

By Dominic Curran on July 23rd, 2008

Tags: Golf, Public relations, Television audiences, Tiger Woods

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