Archive for the ‘Sport’ Category

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What, No More Football?

Reflecting on a month of non-stop football coverage, Alex Clements this week mulls over the effectiveness of high profile advertising and sponsorship.

The World Cup is now over and things are, once again, returning to normal. Wives get their husbands back, kids get the right to watch TV back and the men are in recovery for another four years until the next World Cup. I will confess, I’m not a huge fan of grown men kicking a ball around a pitch (I’d rather watch grown men beat the life out of each other in a cage!). I did, however, watch a few games of the World Cup, including the England vs. Germany game, which was an interesting one to watch with Vanessa, my fiancée who, just to make things more interesting, comes from Wuppertal in Germany!

Despite not really caring who won the World Cup, I found myself subconsciously supporting Spain in the final. The only reason I can think of for this is that I quite like visiting Spain on my holidays. The least I can do is support their football team in return for their hospitality.

I’m quite easily distracted at times and my mind can wander to a vast array of weird and wonderful things. The example I’m going to share with you on this occasion came to me during this football (or “soccer” for those of you in the US) match between Spain and the Netherlands. As I watched the ball go back and forth between opposing players – and on occasion directly from one goalie to the other – my mind wandered as I noticed the multitude of banners advertising different companies around the pitch. There were banners for Adidas, Sony, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Budweiser to name a few. I sat there and wondered to myself, “How effective are these adverts?”

I decided that some of these adverts must be more effective than others when using this platform to reach their target market. I praise the strategic placement by Adidas because it is a company that manufactures sports clothing, which is likely to be of interest to a considerable percentage of football fans who will be watching. Similarly, people watching the game on TV at home or in a public bar could see the banners for Budweiser or Coca-Cola and as a result think “I could really do with a Budweiser!” – just as I did! Unfortunately, however, I was sitting at home with no access to any Budweiser… Of course, this is the aim of the banner and I’m sure it works quite effectively.

In my mind, I compared the effectiveness of the ‘drinks’ banners to that of ‘electrical goods’ banners which have used the exact same method to reach their target market. Let’s first think about the platform for advertising here: The World Cup final. A quick search on the internet suggests there were over 18 million viewers in the UK watching the game on British television. Before the game took place, FIFA expected an audience of 700 million worldwide to watch the final. Even if viewers turned out to be significantly fewer than this prediction, it would undoubtedly still reach a considerable number of potential customers. As a means of embedding your brand in the minds of your target market, I say this is a very effective way to reach millions globally.

Maybe the decision to advertise in this way would be more straight-forward for companies such as Coca-Cola as they are presumably targeting anyone who drinks liquid – which I shouldn’t need tell you is a pretty high percentage of the world’s population! However, for companies that specialise in electrical goods – which are not necessities of life (don’t tell my fiancée I said that) – as high value and infrequent purchases, from a consumer point of view there is more at stake and a bigger purchase decision to be made. Such companies must assess who they are targeting and who they would reach by each method of advertising before deciding on a platform.

At first, I questioned whether electrical goods companies would see as much return on investment as drinks companies would. Will people see these banners and think, “I could really do with a new TV”? My guess would be that the need for a beer would come before the need for a new TV, but then again, I was watching the game in high-definition on a 40-inch screen! Despite this, this approach still does the job of raising awareness and embeds the brand in the minds of millions. Not bad for something as simple as a banner with your logo on, is it? Not that a pitch-side banner at the final of the World Cup will be within every company’s budget, mind!

I’ll leave you now with one final example, which truly shows how effective advertising and sponsorship can be. Domino’s Pizza sponsored television coverage of the World Cup and Britain’s Got Talent, and it has been reported that the company has seen sales rise to 237.1 million – an increase of 21% in the last half year leading up to June 27, making a £17.5m pre-tax profit. Even more impressive, sales were said to have been up 65% on the day of England’s only World Cup win, increasing by a whopping 333% during the hours the match was shown! To find out more about Domino’s recent successes, click here to read Domino’s Pizza Plc Half Yearly Report.

• If you would like to find out more about measuring and monitoring the effectiveness of advertising, please click here.

Posted in Advertising Research, Alex Clements, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Return On Investment, ROI, Sponsorship, Sport, Thursday Night Insight |
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Marketing Laid Bare

 
The FIFA World Cup is in full swing and it’s no surprise that companies are taking advantage of the marketing opportunities this global event offers. One such ‘quirky’ marketing tactic comes to us courtesy of Pepsi Cola.

Apparently Diego Maradona, coach of the Argentina football team, has claimed that if Argentina wins the World Cup he’ll celebrate by running around naked in Buenos Aires.

Pepsi has pounced on this statement and jumped on the World Cup band wagon by announcing that, if Argentina is victorious, their soft drinks bottles will be sold in Argentina for a week without labels.

The following print advert, demonstrating Pepsi’s promise, is currently running in the country:
 

 
The bottle is bare except for a label around its neck saying “SI EL DT SE DESNUDA, NOSOTROS TAMBIEN” – which is to say “IF THE COACH GOES NAKED, WE WILL TOO”.

Would a week without branding be compensated for by the hype surrounding such a bold, high-profile move? One would certainly imagine so. Still, the staff of our English office are not expecting Argentina to win the World Cup anyway…!

Posted in Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Sport |
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World Cup Advertising: Louder and Longer, But Will It Last?

For this week’s Thursday Night Insight, Oliver Truman kicks off with B2B’s first World Cup-related blog post of the summer.

Well, it’s almost here. And don’t we know about it.

The 2010 Football World Cup is upon us, and everyone’s got their knickers in a twist. Cue endless speculation about who’ll be in each nation’s team. Cue furious flag waving and shows of unbridled patriotism that would otherwise cause a diplomatic incident. Cue four weeks of shouting at the television. Cue the inevitable Thursday Night Insight analysis of what this all means.

I’m sorry to go all “grumpy old man” on you here, but is it me, or does the run up to the tournament feel like it’s been over-done this time around? Like Christmas, the speculation and hype around the competition (and England’s ritual, quadrennial shaming in a penalty shootout) seems to begin earlier and earlier every time. The adverts get brasher, longer and more stomach-churningly jingoistic, and this year appears to be no exception.

I am perhaps in danger of exaggerating my ennui at the situation, however. From a cultural and marketing point of view, events like the World Cup are fascinating insights into what advertisers try to do to switch us on.

At least from a UK perspective, the theme in this year’s World Cup advertising – like Maradonna in the late 1990s – appears to involve an excess of everything. The recipe for a successful commercial, it would seem, is as follows:

• Feature celebrities and other well-loved national figures in barrow-loads: There’s no better example than the current Carlsberg advert. Beefy Botham, Phil “The Power” Taylor, Jeff Stelling and Ranulph Feinnes are but a few of the luminaries spouting words of wisdom in what the lager brand describes as “probably the greatest team talk in the world”. Burger King are even running a promotion where the first “prize” is to “Watch the final with Jimmy Greaves” with three of your friends and a Whopper.
  
• Find any way of making your product patriotic, no matter how tenuous. A play on words helps: KitKat have done this by suggesting that England fans should “cross their fingers” and hope for the best. Get it? “Cross your fingers”… Like you’d cross fingers of chocolate-covered biscuit. Here’s a picture just in case you’re struggling to understand the duality of meaning here:

  

• Make it viral: Plaster the thing on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter before you put it on television. Nike did this with their global “Write the Future” campaign and 12 million (and counting) views on YouTube is testament to the interest and awareness levels that social media can generate.

  Also critical is incorporating some interactive element to the campaign – For instance, both Nike and Carlsberg encourage fans to upload films of themselves playing or giving a team talk.

• Make it really, really long: The premiere of the campaign is the big chance to show the full, unexpurgated version of the advert. Appropriately, the musical backing to the Nike ad is Hocus Pocus by Dutch progressive rock stalwarts Focus – a genre noted for its temporal excesses.

• Make it meta: “Self referencing”, “Post modern”, “Reflexive” – call it what you will. There must be a snarky, clever, knowing element to your campaign. In the case of the Nike ad, the premise appears to be “Look what the modern media has done to us! Our idols can be built up, only to be knocked down and crushed in an instant by a moment of misfortune on the pitch! How fickle we all are!”. Even so, we all know that marketing like this is part that very-same building up and knocking down process.

• Don’t forget the oldies: Some brands have actively chosen to stand aside from the thrusting, testosterone-fuelled frenzy of it all, and have taken a folksier, down-to-earth approach. Think former managers Terry Venables and Graham Taylor depicted in an old people’s home, or England’s legends of 1966 flogging suits.

At its heart, all of this jostling for position comes down to achieving awareness and interest in brands during a key time in the calendar for advertising. When all around you are shouting, shouting louder, longer and with bigger laughs is central to securing a share of voice.

Of course, investment of this sort in marketing cannot come without accountability. Marketers must use research to understand the impact that advertising has had – Not just in terms of whether more beer, trainers or televisions have been sold, but also whether people’s longer term disposition to brands have been enhanced or damaged.

Pre and post-campaign studies are one way of tracking brand health, but so too is tapping into what wags in the blogosphere, in forums and on Twitter have to say (not Wives and Girlfriends, by the way – the other meaning). Mining this publicly-available seam of insight is an emerging technique in consumer markets, and the world of business-to-business could well follow.

Like a World Cup advert, I think I’ve gone on long enough, but I’ll leave you with a prediction for the tournament. We can all then come back here in a month’s time and guffaw at how wrong I was. Argentina to win it – not least because they’re my selection in the office sweepstake.

Posted in Advertising Research, Commercials, Marketing, Oliver Truman, Sport, Thursday Night Insight |
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Marketing is in the Eye of the Beholder

An article in The Times last week amused us. In ‘Why do women wear ugly trainers?’ Luke Leitch takes a lighthearted look at, amongst other things, the trainers that some women are now wearing to tone their leg muscles, improve their posture, and the like.

But Luke does make a serious point of which marketers should take note. He feels that these trainers have to look cumbersome and ugly or we won’t believe they will be any different to regular trainers (you know, those things you wear to run around for a ‘proper’ work out). Likewise, healthy foods seemingly have to taste horrible; otherwise we won’t feel they are doing us any good.

What he’s basically saying is it’s all about perception…sometimes we need to be (unnecessarily) reassured of certain things in order to be convinced into making a purchase. See for yourself in the article below:

Before we get to these horrible, horrible shoes, let’s talk wheatgrass juice: remember that? You would if you’d ever tried it. Seven or eight years ago wheatgrass juice was the must-have health drink. Its benefits were unclear but it cost a fortune and tasted uniquely repulsive — almost as if the health-bar barista had eaten the grass prior to squeezing it.

It was in 2003, I clearly recall, that I drank a shot, gagged and thought “Wow: anything this disgusting has got to be doing something good”, only to spew it back into the cup seconds later.

That exact pre-spew thought, I contend, is what ricochets daily through the skulls of countless women who look down and realise that yes, they are yet again wearing MBTs, FitFlops, Chung Shis or any of the other brands of curvily soled, laughably expensive and aggessively ugly trainers out there.

It’s those chunky/curvy/wedged (depending on the brand) soles that give these shoes their prime selling point. Instead of lying flat and true betwixt foot and pavement, these soles bulge hither and thither. This makes the wearer’s gait unstable and insecure — as if she is padding barefoot across a knobbly veldt — and gives a bit of a work-out to the calf muscles, hamstrings and glutes. This does kind of make sense (although I’ve yet to meet a woman whose posterior has been transformed from pineapple to peach by a pair of trainers). These shoes may well work.

Why are they so aesthetically offensive? After all, they don’t have to be — it’s perfectly possible to design a curvily soled shoe that looks good. The answer is that these shoes need to be ugly just as wheatgrass juice needs to taste foul — for if these products combined their putative results with fantastic taste, well, nobody would believe in them. They’d be too good to be true, like an ice cream that cures baldness.

But shoes that disgusting? Surely they have to be doing something good. That ugliness, along with the price, is the sacrifice penitent wearers make in return for their tilt at buns of steel.

Of course, they may wear their FitFlops only as they shuffle from sofa to fridge. They may slip on their MBTs merely to waddle ten minutes there and back again from Tube to office.

Even if these shoes do work, such stints wearing them are never going to hone walnut-cracking buttocks. So for onlookers, these horrible, horrible shoes are lose-lose.

Posted in Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Sport |
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Different Strokes for Different Folks

In her first Thursday Night Insight of 2010, Caroline Harrison takes the opportunity to go back to basics.

I’m sure – at least I hope – he won’t mind my telling you this, but I had something of a hand in my colleague Oliver Truman’s last Thursday Night Insight. Whilst knowing that Oliver had “volunteered” to write (I guess some might say “been coerced into writing”!) an article for the B2B International blog, I was also aware, with just a couple of days to go, that other commitments meant he hadn’t yet got around to it. So, when I happened upon an article in the marketing press about the possible rebranding of Newcastle United’s beloved football ground, St. James’ Park, and knowing Oliver to be something of a sports aficionado, I forwarded him a link to the said article, wondering if it might inspire him.

Inspire him it did, and some two days later, Oliver treated us to his latest Thursday Night Insight, which I read with interest.

But, while Oliver did use the article I had sent him as the basis for his ‘Insight’, what struck me the most was the specific content of his piece. His blog talked in a broad sense about many of the lucrative tie-ins between a company’s brand and the world of sport – be it shirt sponsorship, providing half-time refreshments or prizes, ‘pure’ advertising at the stadia…and, of course, buying the naming rights to the venues themselves.

While I could not disagree with any of the points Oliver raised, these were not the issues that had first jumped into my mind when I read about the possible selling of the naming rights to St James’ Park. I immediately focused on, if you like, the more ‘emotional’ side of things – the likely reaction of the fans to any proposed rebranding of their stadium and the potential risks or rewards for any company brave enough/rich enough/stupid enough/inventive enough to take on such an opportunity. In a nutshell, Oliver and I, when given the same basic trigger, had very different thoughts and approaches to the issue.

And so, with this in mind, the message of my Thursday Night Insight today is really very simple. Nevertheless, it is absolutely critical.

We can never forget that people are all different. Their various upbringings, culture, language, values, education, interests, priorities, desires and much, much more all combine to affect how they think and how they will react to certain situations and stimuli.

For example, as we all know only too well, the product or service you provide is never going to meet the exact needs of everybody out there. That is why segmentation of a target audience is so crucial to deciding which markets you can serve successfully and profitably.

Equally, if you show a room full of prospective customers your latest product for launch, I guarantee they will all have differing views on it. You may think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread – but so what? That doesn’t necessarily mean any or many other people will agree!

Even with the customers you already serve – you can’t assume everything’s always hunkydory with them, nor that they will stay loyal for life. Their needs may change, their expectations will likely shift. That’s one of the things that makes your job and mine so difficult.

But that’s also why we turn to market research. While we can never presume to know what all people are thinking all of the time, the great thing is that we are usually able to ask at least some of them how they are feeling.

It’s not that difficult to grasp that people can be unpredictable. Fortunately, nor is it that difficult to use market research to make things more certain.

Incidentally – for anyone who is even remotely interested – as of November 2009 until the end of the current season, Newcastle’s stadium is temporarily known as Sportsdirect.com @ St James’ Park Stadium. Personally, I think that’s a bit odd – but that doesn’t mean everyone will agree with me, of course…!

Posted in Caroline Harrison, Customer Satisfaction, Oliver Truman, Promotion, Sponsorship, Sport, Thursday Night Insight |
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