As a triumphant Rory McIlroy left this year’s US Open, he did so carrying the inevitable label of the game’s next superstar. His flawless golf, which made him the youngest champion since the great Bobby Jones, sparked premature talk of him overtaking Jack Nicklaus’ 18 Major trophies.

With previous US Open Champion Graeme McDowell labelling him as ‘the best player he’s ever seen’, it was unsurprising that the sporting community began to draw comparisons between McIlroy and the best player of his generation, Tiger Woods.

Tiger, who current stands at 14 major trophies, was well underway to becoming the greatest golfer of all time. These wins brought with them a whole host of sponsors, all throwing millions of dollars at him, clambering to be a part of his success story.

And it seems McIlroy is set to follow suit.

His current $10million per year contracts with his sponsors (Jumeirah, Oakley and Titleist) pale in comparison to that of Woods who, during his peak, reportedly earned $92million per year from sponsors alone and in doing so, became sport’s first billionaire in 2009.

But following his US Open success, companies have supposedly been queuing up to offer Rory huge new endorsement deals, vying for a space on his shirt and cap.

So, is it pure coincidence that Rory’s rise to stardom has coincided with Tiger’s fall from grace? Could it be possible that all the hype been created to satisfy the golfing world’s need for a new megastar?

Let’s examine the facts.

McIlroy didn’t just win the U.S Open with 8 shots to spare; he smashed 12 records along the way.

And when two of the game’s greats, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, claim that he is already ‘well ahead of their pace’ and he could ‘conceivably be the next Grand Slam winner’, it would seem that he is in fact the real deal.

But take away all the talk of records and major victories, McIlroy remains a marketer’s dream.  His youthful exuberance, infectious smile and fearless brand of golf is a shot in the arm for a sport that had been jaded by the scandals of late 2009.

What sets McIlroy apart from other players is the way he interacts and engages with his fans and media alike. How many European players would get a standing ovation after a 4th round meltdown in a major competition or have their name chanted by usually partisan US crowds?

He is as gracious in defeat as he is in victory, handles the media with the maturity of someone well beyond his years and, as I witnessed first hand at this year’s BMW Championship, will happily take the time to sign autographs and pose with fans.

With his first major under his belt, McIlroy’s already huge universal appeal to sponsors and fans alike is only going to increase. Even his usually understated manager Andrew ‘Chubby’ Chandler predicted that his endorsements could reach the levels that so far only Woods has achieved – and we’re only on the first tee…

By James Tan on July 15th, 2011

Tags: BMW, Celebrity, Golf, Sponsorship, Sport, Tiger Woods

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‘Tis the month for a good debate – you only have to click here to see the ongoing and lively discussions generated on our global poll to find the greatest sports marketing innovation of modern times.

With just over a month until this year’s BBC Sports Personality Awards, it’s right about now that I, along with people up and down the land, begin to debate who should be in the BBC’s final short-list. Growing up watching the show, having attended the last two and with this year’s Birmingham ceremony on Sunday 19th December already in the diary, I can’t wait for the night itself.

One of the privileged few who actually does help to decide the final shortlist, SPORT’s editor Simon Caney, shared his own top 10 in today’s magazine which got me thinking who would make mine.

It must be said, Ryder Cup 2010 aside, with no Olympic Games and a truly feeble showing by England in this summer’s World Cup, it has not been the most historic of years. But there are two clear stand-out names for me.

Graeme McDowell checks out his Ballantine's Championship blend

1. Graeme McDowell – having worked with GMAC for Ballantine’s (have you tried Graeme’s very own Ballantine’s Championship blend? Lovely.), Graeme would get the nod for personality alone. Cracking guy. Add to that his performance in October’s Ryder Cup, helping Europe to win the trophy and most importantly, back in April, becoming Europe’s first US Champion in 40 years; he’s had an incredible year.

2. AP McCoy – Tony McCoy. The greatest jump jockey horse racing has ever seen. Finally won the Grand National this year on Don’t Push It, 15th time lucky. Ridden over 3,000 winners and been jump racing champion every year since 1995/96.

Difficult to see beyond those two for me. However, let’s not forget a few other worth contenders:

Powerade ambassador Jessica Ennis

3. Jess Ennis – Powerade ambassador, flying the flag for both Sheffield and GB (as team captain). European Heptathlon Gold medallist in Barcelona earlier this year.

4. Mo Farah – Bupa flash runner, NFL honorary captain and, more importantly, one of this year’s big sporting success stories having won both the 5,000m and 10,000m at the European Championships. Nice chap to boot.

5. Graeme Swann – standout bowler in this summer’s Ashes win, the ECB’s Cricketer of the Year and all-round great Tweeter.

6. Lee Westwood – finally crowned the world’s number 1 golfer (Tiger who?), especially excelled this year in weight losing and Ryder Cup winning, before injury forced a temporarily break from the game.

7. Tom Daley – his gold medal Commonwealth Games performance in Delhi would have secured the 16-year old Olympics gold. True fact.

8. Phil Taylor – has a darts player ever won before? No. More than enough reason for me to back ‘The Power’ and he’s certainly the greatest in the sport. Would eat my hat if he did win. Happily.

9. Lewis Hamilton – has the ability to win SPOTY based on this Sunday’s performance in Abu Dhabi alone, the last race of what has been a fascinating F1 season. Leading the British charge to stop Alonso, Webber or Vettel taking the world championship. Win the title, win the Sports Personality. Possibly.

Bupa Ambassador Mo Farah

Long shots for my final nod include Amy Williams (fearless Olympic gold medallist in the Winter Games), Stuart Broad (if he has a stonking first Ashes Test in Brisbane this month), Phillips Idowu (for services to bonkers hair colour) and Mark Cavendish (five Tour de France stage wins and one of the world’s greatest sprinters on the road).

Never easy to make the final call. If I was pushed, I think Amy Williams would get the nod for #10. And Mark Cavendish to replace Lewis Hamilton is he doesn’t win the F1 Championship on Sunday.

Yep, I’m done. Have I got it right? And who’d make your list?

By Stephanie Branston on November 12th, 2010

Tags: Ashes, Athletics, BBC, Cricket, Cycling, ECB, Football, Formula 1, Golf, Lewis Hamilton, Media, NFL, Olympics, Ryder Cup, Team GB, Television, Tiger Woods, World Cup

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Regular visitors to this parish will know that previously I’ve written several posts about what I believe is one of the most important and most overlooked trends in modern sports marketing: NPD. The creation of new and re-invented events and formats has been a seismic force shaping the sports marketing business worldwide for years: the Premier League, Champions League, Tri-Nations, Super Rugby, Twenty20, IPL – the list goes on and on. And arguably, in terms of re-invention, the daddy of them all is the Ryder Cup.

Less than 40 years ago the Ryder Cup was an anachronism, unloved by all but the golfing cognoscenti and slowly dying. So what turned it into a sports marketing phenomenon: the biggest event in golf, and one of the biggest in world sport?

1. The Greatest Sports Marketing Idea of All Time?

Following years of overwhelming US victories over a hopelessly outmatched GB & Ireland team, by 1977 the Ryder Cup was on its last legs. But from 1979, at the suggestion – ironically – of US golf icon Jack Nicklaus, GB & Ireland became a European team to make the matches more competitive. The rest, as they say is history. Nicklaus’ suggestion must surely rank as one of the greatest, and most altruistic, sports marketing ideas of all time.

2. From Predictable to Unpredictable

Pre-1979, everyone knew the US was going to win the Ryder Cup. Today, no-one knows. And nothing draws fans, the media and sponsors like the drama of knife-edge sporting competition. With the addition of European players to the GB & Ireland team, the Ryder Cup went from being a predictable mismatch to one of the most unpredictable, finely-balanced competitions in world sport. That’s a rarity, and it’s one of the key ingredients in the Ryder Cup’s global appeal.

3. Seve

Sport needs heroes to market itself successfully. Nicklaus was particularly mindful of this, and of one European player in particular, back in 1977: Seve Ballesteros. Seve became the talisman of the new European team and inspired its first game-changing victories over the US in the 80s. Brilliant, charismatic and fiercely competitive – especially against the US players and galleries who he perceived as having slighted him early in his career – Ballesteros was, above all, the catalyst for the Ryder Cup phenomenon. Virtually single-handedly, he transformed the image and appeal of European golf in general and the Ryder Cup in particular.

4. Defining Moments

If we’re honest, sport often disappoints. We all regularly tuned into marquee events expecting hoping to see something special, only to be disappointed. But since its re-invention, the Ryder Cup has never disappointed. Every event since 1979 has produced unforgettable, defining moments that have entered the pantheon of sporting (not just golfing) legend. And to me, this isn’t about serendipity: it’s the inevitable result of the contest being re-invented to become even and unpredictable, blending perfectly with a format which is guaranteed to produce moments that win – or lose – the match. The Ryder Cup is a perfect sports marketing template.

5. Controversy

Sport thrives on controversy. Controversy creates today’s stories, history’s legends, and tomorrow’s fans. Controversy sells. And since the Ryder Cup was re-invented in 1979, and the contest became as close and as fierce as anything that sport can offer, controversy has never been far away: indeed, it’s become part of the event’s DNA (Kiawah, Brookline) and its global appeal, part of why we look forward to it, part of what we expect from it. Golf’s rulers and traditionalists might not like it, but controversy is another element that sets the Ryder Cup apart, and gives it an appeal way beyond golf’s normal fanbase and media footprint.

6. Otherness

The Ryder Cup is entirely unlike the golf that we see week-in, week-out, all year. Tournament golf is selfish: the Ryder Cup is selfless. It’s not about individuals playing for a title and million-dollar purses. It’s about teams, playing to win for their team, for pride and honour only (Ryder Cup players aren’t paid). And this works and appeals in a way that tournament golf simply doesn’t. It gives the fans a team to support: that makes it bigger and easier to buy into that tournament golf (remember, worldwide, it’s team sport that rules). It makes heroes and villains out of players who, ordinarily, we don’t passionately support or oppose in their tournament identities. And most importantly, it works because it demands of the players something different, something other, something somehow better. Take Jack Nicklaus conceding a putt to Tony Jacklin in 1969 to spare Jacklin the possibility of losing the match. And conversely, take Tiger Woods: well before his disgrace, his reputation suffered because he was widely perceived not to be a team player because of his Ryder Cup performances and attitude.

7. Less is More

One of modern sport’s biggest problems is that there’s too much of it. Football, tennis, rugby and especially cricket, for example, have all over-supplied the marketplace in different ways, leading to numerous negative on- and off-field effects. This has increasingly worked to the Ryder Cup’s advantage. It doesn’t come around very often, but when it does, we can’t wait. Less is more.

8. A Year-Long Narrative

The organisers of many major events would do well to study and emulate the way in which the Ryder Cup creates a compelling long-range narrative that extends way beyond the event’s three-day playing window. The qualification story always generates regular coverage and steadily-building momentum throughout the year leading up to the event. And as we saw again this year, the final week of qualifying and the announcement of the captains’ picks are announced initiates a massive spike of hype which – ironically – completely overshadows that week’s tournaments. It’s a PR case study par excellence.

9. Uniqueness

One could argue with justification that there is much in the above that makes the Ryder Cup unique. But I’d suggest that there’s one element of its re-invention in particular that has turned it into a sports marketing phenomenon: the creation of the European team. Nowhere else in major sport does Europe compete under one banner. At a stroke, it added hundreds of millions of fans and transformed the event as a sports marketing vehicle.

10. US Involvement

It’s easy to forget that sport in the USA is a primarily a domestic affair. At top level, the four dominant team sports – American football, baseball, basketball, and ice hockey – are contested internally. As a result, as a sporting nation, the USA rarely ventures outside its borders onto the world stage, or hosts other nations for a major sporting prize. So when it does, it’s rare, and it’s a big deal. And they don’t come any bigger than the Ryder Cup.

By Tim Crow on September 30th, 2010

Tags: Default, Golf, New Product Development, Ryder Cup, Tiger Woods

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It was rather counter-intuitive of Nike yesterday to use Twitter to stage a fan Q&A with Tiger Woods. Given his recent travails and – I would imagine – a resultant antipathy to social media, Twitter is perhaps the last place you’d expect Tiger to take the latest of his tentative steps back onto the public stage beyond a golf course. But Twitter he did, and I was an interested observer. Here’s what I learned.

1. The whole event was deliberately low-key and under-the-radar. It was previewed with single postings on the Nike Golf Twitter feed, and on the Tiger and Nike Golf Facebook pages. That was it. This was Stealth PR. Big headlines, of the type we saw adidas attempting – not entirely successfully – to generate with the Messi stunt in London yesterday, were not the objective here. This was, instead, about quietly re-introducing Tiger to the world, with golf fans the target.

2. Anything outside of golf and – this being a Nike event – equipment, was strictly off the agenda, as the preview posts made it clear: ‘Nike Athlete Tiger Woods will be answering your equipment and golf questions live on Twitter today…’ (my italics). This was about Tiger the Nike Golfer, not Tabloid Tiger.

3. As to the content of the Q&A itself, unless you were the most avid Tiger fan, it wasn’t what you’d call a scintillating half-hour. If you’re interested, the full transcript is here, courtesy of NG Nation.

4. Twitter, with its currently functionality, is absolutely not the place to do a fan Q&A. Even if Tiger had wanted to answer in more detail (and I can hear golf writers the world over darkly laughing at this thought), there’s only so much you can say in 140 characters – especially when you include a re-tweet of the question in your answer. As such, the experience for fans was distinctly limited – frustrating even – and only served to reinforce the impression that Tiger hates doing this stuff. (Incidentally, if you followed Stephen Fry’s Twitter Q&A the other day, you’ll already know that Twitter is not the place for a Q&A: Fry tried it without re-tweeting the questions, and admitted that it made the whole process ‘incomprehensible’).

It will be interesting to see how Tiger’s journey back develops, and what role – if any – social media plays in helping him to rehabilitate his image and re-engage with the wider world.

One thing’s for sure: based on yesterday’s small, faltering step, there’s a long way to go.

By Tim Crow on September 16th, 2010

Tags: Golf, Social Media, Sponsorship, Tiger Woods

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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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Having just returned from two weeks at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games, I’m still catching up with my UK reading. So it was that I turned last night to the February 10 edition of Marketing magazine, and an article on sponsorship by one of my favourite columnists, Mark Ritson, on which I really have to comment. Here’s why.

In his characteristically forthright style, Mark lambasts the sponsorship industry in general and a number of people in particular for predicting that Tiger Woods’ travails would not damage his image and endorsement deals:

‘Then there was the scandalous inability of an array of experts to predict correctly the impact of Woods’ misdeeds on his sponsorship deals…If ever we needed proof that most pundits in the world of sports sponsorship and celebrity endorsements are buffoons, here it was, in spades. This is one thing they are supposed to know about, and they managed to be 100% incorrect in the assessments. Not just wrong, but dead wrong.’

I’m not about to defend the industry, or the people Mark names and shames. What I am here to do is point out that Synergy did call the Tiger situation correctly. On December 12 last year, the day after  Tiger announced he was taking an indefinite break from golf, I made the following post on Twitter:

‘Tiger’s move will play well in the media. It also makes it easier for his sponsors to quit – or to stay. Most will quit: Nike will stay.’

Time has of course proved me right. I’m not sure whether Mark is on Twitter – and if you want to follow me Mark, you’ll find me there as @synergytim, along with numerous other Synergists – but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he had Synergy in mind when he said ‘most’ – ie not all – pundits called the Tiger situation wrong!

By Tim Crow on February 25th, 2010

Tags: Golf, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultancy, Synergy, Tiger Woods

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Previously, golf’s best-known connection with Tweeting was the (probably apocryphal) story of Tiger Woods’ ’I just wopped Tweety Pie’ SMS to friends, having just beaten an infamously canary-clad Sergio Garcia in the final round at The Open in 2006. But now Ian Poulter is opening up a new front for golf in the Twitterena.

After only a matter of months, Poulter’s microblogs have attracted almost 250,000 followers - a phenomenal number for the platform – and won him widespread media coverage and praise. Which is just how the savvy, outspoken Poulter likes it. “It’s a very clever marketing publicity tool and one that I have complete control over”, he was quoted as saying recently.

Poulter’s success is no accident. It’s down to two factors

First, his dedicated, thoughtful use of the platform. As he puts it: ‘…this is a great way of getting the information out there quickly and giving golf fans some insight they’ve never had before.’ And he’s as good as his word. Take this morning for instance, when Poulter uploaded pictures from each tee at Turnberry as he practised for The Open. Brilliant.

Second, his use of media interviews to market his microblog and create his very own content factory. Enter ‘Ian Poulter Twitter’ into Google, for example, and you currently get 120,000 returns, and plenty of interviews like this, from today’s Times.

Plenty of food for thought for marketers on a variety of fronts. But Peter Alliss won’t approve at all.

By Tim Crow on July 14th, 2009

Tags: Blogging, Branded content, Default, Digital marketing, Golf, Tiger Woods

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OK everyone, you can breathe again – he won and his knee didn’t give in. Last July I wrote a blog about the effect Tiger Woods’ absence from The Open would have on golf, and on his return I thought it would be interesting to see just how much the sport has missed him.

The world’s economy has of course changed dramatically since Tiger picked up his last trophy, impacting on all sectors, including sponsorship in North America, where companies are expected to increase spending on sports, arts, cause and entertainment marketing by just 2.2% to $16.97 billion this year, compared to 11% growth the year before (IEG). On top of this, viewing figures were down by almost 50% across eight tournaments minus Tiger compared to the year before (Nielsen).

Put the two together and it adds up to one big ‘Welcome Back Party’ for golf’s most vaunted star with more then a sense of perfect timing. The significance of this return can be measured by the eagerness of marketers to crash the party.

He may have lost one of his sponsors - Buick – in the downturn but his other backers are wasting no time in heralding his return. Gatorade, Tag Hauer and Nike (it’s brilliant – watch below) have all launched new campaigns this week with Cindy Davis, President of Nike Golf summing it up well – “We knew when Tiger returned it would be a big, if not the biggest, sports story of the year. We wanted to capitalise on that.”.

Need any more evidence? Well some of the loudest sighs of relief have probably come from the governing body of the sport in North America, who even launched their own ‘Tiger Returns’ micro-site (http://www.pgatour.com/tournaments/r470/video/tiger_returns.html).

It’s somewhat unlikely that even Tiger Woods can turn the world’s economy around (if only), but he does provide some much-needed distraction. I just hope that knee is well fixed – it has a huge corporate responsibility to support.

By Dominic Curran on February 26th, 2009

Tags: Brand marketing, Golf, PGA Tour, Tiger Woods

1 comment

If you get the product right, everything else follows.

So General Motors has inevitably parted company with Tiger Woods. Some commentators have claimed that this somehow proves that endorsements of this type don’t work. Nonsense. In Tiger’s case, Nike and Accenture in particular disprove the point. Tiger may be a miracle-worker, but not even he could have saved GM from its current predicament. The problem isn’t Tiger, it’s GM.

Also this week, the PGA Tour announced the FeEx Cup’s third format overhaul in as many years. As I wrote back in September, in this case, the problem is also the product – the Cup format. Only time will tell if, this time, the PGA has got the product right.

Which brings me to the latest example of NPD on the PGA Tour, the Kodak Challenge. Like both the FedEx Cup and the Red Bull Final 5, it’s a competition-within-a-competition, its USP being to link great holes on different courses, with $1m going to the player who posts the lowest score on the Kodak Challenge Holes over the season.

Again, only time will tell if Kodak has got the product right – on which point I suspect they’ve missed a trick by not adding a cause-related overlay to counter-balance the $1m prize  - but there’s a lot to like here, in particular the integration of Kodak’s ‘Kodak Moments’ heritage; the opportunity to leverage the wonderful imagery that great golf courses provide; and the season-long campaign platform. What I most like is that, as the Kodak blog reveals, Kodak planned their activation upfront – one of the keys to successful sponsorship.

By Tim Crow on November 28th, 2008

Tags: Branded content, Default, Experiential marketing, Golf, New Product Development, PGA Tour, Public relations, Sales promotion, Sponsorship, Tiger Woods

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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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