David Roberts, group account director, Multiply
The one thing that unites all sports lovers in Britain, and brings them under one neat umbrella for the brands wishing to target them, is passion. We as a nation are incredibly emotional about our sport. To indulge in – and to be a spectator of sport is a treasured past time, a escape from the hum drum of everyday life.
This is the most important point to note for brands looking target sports fans as a demographic. Most sports fans elect to undertake a journey when following their team or their favourite sporting hero. They’re in it for the season – often for a lifetime – a legacy of support that is to be passed down through the generations.
The potential pay-off for brands is huge – if they get their marketing strategy right then they too can accumulate fans for life. So how can they do this? By tapping into and being a part of the emotion that sports fans illicit when watching their activity of choice. Brands must think along the lines of adding value to a spectator’s day, so that over time the spectator comes to integrate whatever the brand experience on offer is into their schedule of activity. Sports marketing isn’t about producing ‘one hit wonder’ activity that might get a fan to buy once or twice. It’s about cultivating a relationship.
This is why sports marketing works so well for drinks brands – and I’m talking both alcoholic and soft here. Coca-Cola did a great job with its sponsorship of the Olympics, pushing key brand messages by creating consumer experiences and brand interactions which add fun, vitality and a sense of legacy in keeping with the overall Olympic theme. Similarly, alcoholic brands can achieve real resonance with sports fans too.
We work with Caledonia Best, the official beer of Scottish Rugby, and carried out extensive sampling and branding work around the recent 6 Nations tournament. It would have been easy to carry out a simple match day sampling campaign in perhaps one or two key locations, but instead we helped facilitate a literal takeover of Edinburgh city, which included co-operation with bars and retail outlets and a mass scale sampling campaign on match days themselves, with brand ambassadors handing out 50ml samples of the brand along the route traditionally marched between city centre and stadium.
The drive behind the campaign was to embed the brand into the activity already taking place – to give it a presence along the ritualistic route that Scottish rugby fans were taking. The number one tip that I can give to brands looking to get themselves in front of sports fans is to think long term about embedding what they have to offer into the overall spectator experience.
Originally Posted July 10 on Field Marketing