We had a nice surprise when we opened the IOC’s latest Olympic Review*: throughout the cover story on the Olympics and social media, the IOC gives a starring role to #Socialympics, the term and event we created early last year to signify London 2012′s status as the first Olympic & Paralympic Games of the mainstream social media era. Here’s an example:

Even though #Socialympics went viral and became part of the global vocabulary around the Olympics, it’s still great to see it receiving ‘official’ recognition from Lausanne.

Here’s a reminder of when #Socialympics was born.

*You can subscribe the the Olympic Review via the IOC website here.

By Synergy on January 7th, 2013

Tags: Default ,Olympic sponsorship ,Olympic sponsorship consultants ,Olympics ,Paralympics ,Rio 2016 ,Rio 2016 Sponsorship ,Rio 2016 Sponsorship Consultants ,Sochi 2014 ,Social Media ,Socialympics

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by Bruno Scartozzoni and Guilherme Guimaraes

2012 was a landmark year for sports marketing in Brazil. London 2012 handed the Olympic and Paralympic baton to Rio 2016, Corinthians won the Copa Libertadores and the FIFA Club World Cup, and with the 2014 FIFA World Cup now less than 2 years away, it’s really starting to feel like Brazil is the sports marketing capital of the world.

To mark the end of the year and give you a taste of the best of Brazilian sports marketing, we’ve put together our five favourite campaigns of 2012. As Brazilians, we make no apologies for the fact that they’re all football!

Penalty & Vitória

Vitória, one of north-east Brazil’s main clubs, has a traditional jersey, striped in red and black. Nowadays, it is manufactured by Penalty, the Brazilian sports brand.

Penalty embraced Vitória fans’ motto “My blood is red and black” to create a social campaign. In order to increase blood donation among the fans, they turned the red stripes white and Vitória fans were incentivized to donate blood in specific locations to give the red back to the jersey. Every match the team jersey got one red stripe back.

In the end, the team shirt was back to normal.

Guaraná Antartica & The Brazilian football team

This year the Facebook page of Guaraná Antarctica, the Brazilian soft drink made from Amazonian fruit, reached 5 million followers, equal to the population of many countries. To celebrate this, Guaraná Antarctica created a special activation of the Brazilian national football team.

Mano Menezes, the Brazilian coach at the time, invited young people to sublit a 1-minute video showing why they should play for the Guaraná Team. He then selected 12 players who played against Costa Rica’s U-20 team. Why Costa Rica? Because the country is the same size as Guaraná’s fanpage.

The activation generated a lot of buzz – and the Guaraná Team won the match!

Brahma & the 2014 FIFA World Cup

Brazilians always dreamed about hosting a second World Cup, but, when it happened, the dream suddenly turned into a nightmare in Brazilians’ public consciousness. Since the announcement, people have been saying: “Imagina na Copa…” (“Think of it during the World Cup”) in a sarcastic way, meaning that the usual problems will be amplified during the event.

Brahma, the number two Brazilian beer by market share and one of InBev’s international brands, embraced the cause against the pessimism with a campaign that showed a more positive point of view about the 2014 World Cup.

In summary, the video below says that Brazil 2014 will be the biggest party ever, and that joy and happiness will triumph over pessimism and problems.

VW & Bebeto

Brazilian striker Bebeto created a unique and famous goal celebration at the World Cup 1994 to commemorate his son’s birth. If you didn’t see it at the time, you’ve definitely seen someone copying him since.

This year, 18 years later, Volkswagen brought Bebeto and his son, Mattheus, back to promote the best-selling car in Brazil, the VW Gol (‘Goal’ in Portuguese). In 1994, Bebeto scored an important goal for Brazil, and now, he gives his son a ‘Gol’ just as he turns 18, the age at which people are allowed to drive in the country.

Zurich Seguros

Imagine that you bought tickets to watch Man United v Man City. You are in the stadium waiting for the game when you see Arsenal and Chelsea players entering the pitch. WTF?! In other words, no one understands what is happening. Then the referee whistles and a message is shown to the fans:

“We haven’t invented insurance for calendar changes yet. But you can count on Zurich Insurance to take care of your properties, life and future.”

Crazy! But it really happened in a Brazilian football game between Palmeiras and Santos. Minutes before the game, São Paulo and Corinthians, two of their main rivals, entered the pitch.

The other weird fact - Zurich doesn’t sponsor either of the clubs…

Bruno and Guilherme are partners at Ativa Esporte, the Brazilian sports marketing consultancy which is Synergy’s partner in Brazil.

By Synergy on December 18th, 2012

Tags: Brazil ,Brazil 2014 ,Default ,Football Sponsorship ,Olympic sponsorship consultants ,Rio 2016 ,Rio 2016 Sponsorship Consultants ,Social Media ,World Cup ,World Cup Sponsorship Consultants

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One of the biggest sponsorship deals in the world this year took place last week when Pepsi announced a $50m global endorsement deal with pop superstar Beyoncé.

As part of the deal, Beyoncé will appear in a number of ads, including one following her hotly anticipated halftime show at the Super Bowl in February. Beyoncé’s image will also appear on a limited-edition run of Pepsi cans, the first time since Michael Jackson’s image adorned packs in 1984.

Pepsi will also contribute a multi-million dollar Creative Development Fund for the co-creation of relevant consumer content, though any idea as to what this entails as of yet is unclear, and from some quotes it appears this “might well have no explicit connection to Pepsi products.”

Beyoncé is naturally upbeat. Well, she would be wouldn’t she? She claims the deal “allows me to work with a lifestyle brand with no compromise and without sacrificing my creativity.” Quite a bold statement from an artist whose previous work with Pepsi included dressing up as a Roman Gladiator, singing “We Will Rock You” alongside Pink and Britney Spears, to Emperor Iglesias.

Pepsi are similarly buoyant, with their President saying the partnership is “great for music fans”. He adds “The global relationship gives Beyoncé multiple outlets to tap into in order to express her creativity, and will attract new consumers to both brands with great new experiences and content.” I wasn’t aware Beyoncé was particularly struggling to find outlets to express her creativity or attract new consumers, but clearly Pepsi feel that’s what they can offer her.

The problem, however, is that once you get past the sound-bites and platitudes, under scrutiny the deal doesn’t seem to make sense for Pepsi for two main reasons.

It’s an outdated approach

 Pepsi are essentially buying Beyoncé’s vast fan base and distribution network. Nothing new in the music game, and no different to what they’ve historically done. The problem is the world has moved on since 1984. Viewing consumers as a homogenous mass market, believing they will drink more Pepsi as a result of their worship of a global music icon is answering a new challenge with an old solution.

The increasingly fragmented communications landscape we now inhabit means marketers need to meet the demand for greater personalisation of brand messages, through increasingly creative and radical solutions. With the advances in technology witnessed over the last decade alone, this opportunity exists like at no other time in history. Yet Pepsi have chosen the easy way out.

It’s easy to understand why, of course. Pepsi is a brand experiencing serious problems, in the US in particular, having given up second place in the Cola rankings to Diet Coke.

Much of this can, of course, be attributed to macro pressures, but you can’t help feel this deal is a knee-jerk reaction to a perceived failure of the hotly-debated Pepsi Refresh project.

Pepsi Refresh was an honest attempt to do something bold and different that capitalised on a world that is becoming increasingly social, both in terms of media consumption and consumers’ expectations of brands to be more socially responsible – The Social Era, as we call it at Synergy.

The mistake Pepsi made, however, was to gamble too much of the house on the campaign, reducing commitments in other areas, such as Super Bowl advertising – so much so that it significantly affected the bottom line in a tough economic climate.

The standard response to failure is to return to what you know best. It’s worked before, why won’t it work again? Great businesses, however, respond to big challenges by taking risks and revolutionising their approach, not returning to the comfort zone of ‘tried and tested’.

It’s not authentically connected to a strong brand proposition

The Pepsi brand has been through a host of changes over the course of the last decade, so much so that it’s hard to understand what the flagship brand even stands for anymore. When compared with the refreshing and culturally impactful “Choice of a New Generation”, Pepsi feels like it’s struggling to find a unique voice in the rapidly changing modern world.

Pepsi’s current brand positioning is ‘Live for Now’. How spending $50million on a popstar who was been on Pepsi’s roster for almost a decade reflects that position, however, is beyond me. This isn’t to say Beyoncé isn’t culturally relevant and she is very much of the now; what’s missing is how that makes Pepsi culturally relevant.

It’s hard to understand what Pepsi’s authentic role is within music through this deal, beyond cold hard cash to make up for diminishing record label promotional budgets. Pepsi execs claim “Consumers are seeking a much greater authenticity in marketing from the brands they love.” I fully agree, and the most important consideration in identifying and activating any sponsorship should always be to establish an authentic role for your brand. However, actions speak louder than words and simply stating the relationship is all about authenticity, creativity and collaboration will instantly fall flat should Pepsi not be able to live up to those promises.

It was all so much easier in 1984.

By Paul Whitehead on December 17th, 2012

Tags: Advertising ,American football ,Brand marketing ,Branded content ,Celebrity ,Default ,Music ,Social Media ,Sponsorship ,Sponsorship consultants ,Synergy

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Around 60 years ago modern sponsorship was born, driven by the mass penetration of television and broadcasters’ simultaneous discovery of sport as premium entertainment content. Brands, naturally, followed. Subsequently there have been three major evolutions of sponsorship, and we are now at the start of the fourth, which is in many ways the most exciting and far-reaching yet.

In the first evolution, in the 1960s and ’70s, sponsorship was a dark art: a minority activity among brands and, inevitably given its newness, more than anything a leap of faith. The sell was all about how much on-screen coverage you could achieve for a logo. Tobacco led the way by embracing motor racing and just about every other sport, and stadium naming rights deals in the USA began to multiply.

History is made at the 1968 South African Grand Prix with the first fully-liveried tobacco-sponsored F1 cars, for Winston's Gunston brand

And as with every evolution of sponsorship, this type is still very much around today: the architect of Emirates’ sponsorship strategy, Mike Simon, for example, freely admitted a few years ago that Emirates’ sponsorship strategy was totally predicated on how many media impressions a sponsorship achieved.

The second evolution began in the late 1970s, when Horst Dassler and Patrick Nally created the multi-sponsor event model for the FIFA World Cup, and sold it to Coca-Cola. The IOC followed, so did just about every other major event organiser in sports, and the model became the template for how most sponsorship is still sold today.

Coca-Cola's pioneering sponsorship of the 1978 World Cup created the template for brand partnerships with major events

In the third evolution, which began in the 1990s, sponsorship took off and brands got strategic about it. Sponsorship was everywhere, if you did it right it worked, and if you weren’t doing it – especially if you were a global brand – your competitors almost certainly were. This drove intense competition for key assets and big increases in rights fees. Sponsorship became seriously big business, so big business began to think and act seriously about sponsorship. QED: by the end of the ’90s, for the first time, you could see brands beginning to adopt global sponsorship strategies based on platforms rather than on individual sponsorships. When I look back at this shift, I think in particular of Nike and they way they planned and activated football worldwide, and of Red Bull, who created a global portfolio of owned assets to drive their brand USP. Familiar behaviour now, but very new at the time.

Red Bull Stratos was the latest episode in Red Bull's long term global brand activation strategy

I believe the fourth evolution of sponsorship has started, and that it’s the social evolution, in two senses. First, in only a few short years, social media has come from nowhere to play a starring role in the sponsorship mix. It is transforming consumer behaviour and brand marketing strategies, especially around sponsorship, with an impact not seen since the advent of TV. Second, the ability of sponsorship to help brands drive and showcase their social responsibility programmes is now everywhere you look in the sponsorship landscape. And it’s no coincidence that these are simultaneous developments, because there is increasing evidence to suggest that social media is accelerating brands’ social behaviour.

When we look back at this fourth evolution, I believe that London 2012 will be seen as a defining moment of these two seismic forces in action in a big way together for the first time: the transformation of Olympic and Paralympic Games marketing in the shape of the Socialympics (a term Synergy coined back in February which subsequently went viral globally) coming together with an unprecedented array of activities by the Games’ sponsors to use sport, through the Olympic and Paralympic Games, for social good.

Welcome to the evolution.

By Tim Crow on December 13th, 2012

Tags: Brand marketing ,Default ,London 2012 ,Naming Rights ,New Product Development ,Olympic sponsorship ,Social Media ,Socialympics ,Sponsorship ,Synergy ,Television

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Having played a vital role in London 2012, BMW unveiled its next major investment in British sport only a few days after the Closing Ceremony, in the shape of a new partnership with England Rugby. The partnership, conceived for BMW by Synergy, will develop the next generation of elite England Rugby talent through the newly-created BMW Performance Academy, as well as seeing BMW create a range of initiatives for England rugby fans at Twickenham and nationwide. 

The launch event to unveil the partnership was led by England Head Coach Stuart Lancaster, backs coach Andy Farrell and Director of Operations Rob Andrew, and hosted at BMW Group UK’s Brand Academy and centre for excellence at Wokefield Park. the national rugby media heard the RFU and BMW present plans for the 30 players that have been selected by the England coaches for the BMW Performance Academy. Through BMW’s support, the players will receive tailored programmes to help them progress from the RFU coaching team, access to BMW mentors, advanced driver training and work experience. This combines BMW expertise with development needs of young players and will help develop the performance pathway.

The fan-focused element of the partnership got off to a flying start with two activations launched at the QBE Autumn Internationals.

BMW’s Sweet Chariot Twitter promotion gave BMW followers the chance to win a ride home after each International in a BMW X5, the perfect end to a day at the rugby.

And the BMW Lounge was unveiled in the West Car Park at Twickenham, giving fans a premium experience in a convivial atmosphere pre- and post- match and the chance to meet England players.

 Keep an eye out during the RBS 6 Nations for more from BMW and the RFU on the road to 2015.

By Kate McGregor on December 13th, 2012

Tags: BMW ,Default ,Experiential marketing ,Rugby ,Sponsorship ,Sponsorship consultancy ,Synergy

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What happened

VICE is described by its CEO Matt Elek as ‘MTV for millennials’. Now a huge digital news outlet aimed at a global mass youth market, they have come an incredibly long way since their launch in 1994 as a small magazine in Montreal.

Over the past couple of years there has been a real shift in Intel’s marketing strategy, from targeting the IT geek, to anyone who wants to connect with their favourite past times via technology, be it art, music, sport, or fashion. Whether you love or hate VICE, Intel have identified its audience as key to becoming ‘relevant’.

Enter noisey.com, VICE’s partnership with technology brands Dell and Intel, brought to life only last year. In essence it’s a digital entertainment channel designed to enhance ‘video driven music discovery’.  VICE travels the globe to find emerging talent in order to create ‘access all areas’ footage that gives you a sense of what life is like in a band, with Dell and Intel providing the innovative means through which we can access and experience it.

Why we Love it

Firstly, music matters to everyone, and noisey.com brings fresh content to the site daily in a five-piece series that includes documentary-style footage, along with never-before-seen performances.

Secondly, it feels organic; noisey.com appears more like the end product of a creative collaboration borne out of a successful brand partnership, not just Dell and Intel providing the technological means for VICE to do something cool. The channel adds substance and credibility to their claims of pioneering the way for innovative technological solutions.

Finally, it might seem like a dichotomy to create a website that exists purely to celebrate live music, but noisey.com can also be experienced offline as well. The music was taken to their youthful target audience through the Noisey College Tour in the USA last year, and it seems only a matter of time until it ventures across the Atlantic…

What the brand said

The only potential downfall is that Intel and Dell are ultimately pushing out the same message: John Galvin, director of Intel’s Partner Marketing Group said that “no one is positioned quite as well as Intel to push the technical boundaries of Noisey.com”, whilst Michael Tatelman, Dell’s Vice President of North America Consumer Sales & Marketing believes that “Dell’s influence was to push the bounds of digital delivery and ensure noisey.com was something no one has ever seen before.”

It’s an extremely bold move to partner with a media brand that comes under so much scrutiny from its readers, so potentially there has been a missed opportunity for differentiation in brand personality. They are not talking about themselves in way that does justice to what they’ve created, or explaining the technology that went into the process.   Even so, I’m sure we will see noisey.com go on to accomplish more innovative and creative technical feats that capture the imagination with VICE, Dell and Intel at the helm.

By Charlie Smith on December 13th, 2012

Tags: Digital marketing ,Music ,Online communities ,Sponsorship ,Synergy Loves

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Here at Synergy, we’ve all been very impressed with Marmite’s Christmas lights activation just down the road from us on Oxford Street. Marmite’s sponsorship of the lights is all about giving exposure to the new Marmite Gold. But it’s certainly not just a badging exercise; Marmite has gone the extra mile, creating a campaign that engages customers while reinforcing its traditional brand territory around Love and Hate, and at the same launching a new product. Impressive stuff.

So what has Marmite done? Never afraid of innovating, it has created an ambitious campaign with a strong online / offline link. For the first stage of the campaign it invited lovers and haters to have some fun with a new app on Facebook, allowing them to submit photos of themselves expressing their feelings about Marmite to then appear on a large digital screen within the famous Christmas lights.  But it is the next stage of the activity that has really caught our imagination. A photobooth has been installed at an Oxford Street bus stop, allowing customers to take their own photo and once again become famous for just a minute, with their picture appearing within the Christmas lights. Check out Synergy’s very own Luke Auty below. Clearly not a fan…

Why does this work? Well, everyone loves taking photos, and few can resist the lure of fifteen minutes of fame. But it also works for Marmite as a brand, with Love and Hate central to the photo activity as people are asked to show their emotion about the product. All this comes together in a great piece of experiential activity that provides genuine fun for customers while also landing the brand message. Acknowledging that people hate it has always been a bold approach, but one that Marmite clearly finds fruitful from a long-term brand-building perspective.

This isn’t the first piece of photobooth activity we’ve seen this year. As part of its Olympic sponsorship, adidas installed a photobooth at the athletes’ kitting-out event, showing a softer side to Olympic athletes and generating significant media coverage. The booth was also installed for shoppers in Westfield shopping centre – with a surprise visit by David Beckham to unsuspecting customers a high point of the campaign. With clear potential to create meaningful touchpoints with customers it is no surprise we are seeing more of this sort of activity by brands. This is the opposite of brands forcing content on customers – here they are providing a platform for customers to become brand ambassadors themselves.

With the popularity of photobooth-type activity and its clear potential to engage with customers, we expect to see it forming part of brands’ campaigns to a greater and greater extent. Look out for innovations in the space too, with 3D printing set to become more commonplace, and brands becoming ever more inventive about where customer photos are displayed and how they are used. Marmite has given us lots of (dark, salty and spreadable) food for thought about experiential innovations. And even for those Marmite-haters out there, there is a lot in this idea to love.

By Jessica Enoch on December 5th, 2012

Tags: Advertising ,Default ,Experiential marketing ,Facebook ,Food & Drink ,Sponsorship ,Sponsorship consultants

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Listening to Radio 2 this morning, I was struck by the heated debate and the vehement opposition to the announcement that Talk Talk will be sponsoring lollipop ladies in South West London. With councils cutting funding to services in many boroughs, including school crossing patrols, Talk Talk will be funding three lollipop lady teams in Wandsworth. This follows a similar partnership between the brand and Bedfordshire Council.

The announcement from Talk Talk came following Wandsworth’s decision to cut some lollipop lady patrols. A move disputed by many, but as local government budgets shrink, how do councils decide what are ‘critical services’ and therefore those which should be prioritised in funding? As a mother living in Wandsworth, the thought of losing a service that keeps children safe on the roads is a concern. For this reason I praise the Talk Talk initiative.

Getting kids outside and walking or cycling is something we should all support. With increasing levels of child obesity and inactivity we must get behind the 4 million school children either walking or cycling to school every day, and do all we can to increase this number. And yet with 60% of road accidents last year involving children under the age of 10, we clearly need to protect and safeguard the children walking or cycling in our communities.

And if the council is no longer able to do this, why not a brand? In the 4th Era of sponsorship, the social era, consumers and brands are seeing the far-reaching benefits of connecting communities with partnerships that have a real social impact. The safety of children is clearly such a social issue and, for Talk Talk, potentially far more meaningful and impactful than, say, a multimillion pound media sponsorship of a popular, primetime, talent show.

Yes, there is no doubt that Talk Talk has a commercial interest in branding up our lollipop ladies. But in this case it is specifically to promote HomeSafe, a free network-level service that allows parents to control what their children can access online. Parents can block children’s access to content including pornography, gambling, violence and suicide websites. Talk Talk has actually connected two very powerful issues for parents. Keeping children safe on the streets is a seemingly natural product extension from protecting them online, and a great way to target a key audience.

Should a lollipop lady be ‘forced’ to wear a Talk Talk branded high visibility vest? Patrols in Bedfordshire have been very welcoming to Talk Talk. In a situation where patrols could lose their jobs I would be surprised if there were mass high-visibility vest demonstrations.

Is this a short-term solution? Possibly yes. But my personal opinion is that I would rather have an immediate solution than nothing at all. Councils are under pressure to save money and reduce debt, with the resulting cancellation of some previously provided services. Surely the priority should be that these services are protected, whether by public or private funding. And if the partnership offers commercial benefit to Talk Talk, there is no reason why it shouldn’t continue into the longer term.

We are all going to have to start thinking far more creatively about the delivery of public services as cuts begin to bite. This Talk Talk sponsorship provides a good example for other brands to follow and possibly some inspiration for cash-strapped councils looking for ways to safeguard vital services.

I think Talk Talk is on to a winner here. And in fact I have another idea. Ditch the £20 million X Factor deal. Invest the money into saving libraries across the UK and offering free, safe, community internet services. Now that really would be walking the walk.

By Lisa Parfitt on December 3rd, 2012

Tags: Advertising ,community ,Default ,Sponsorship

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