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WINNING WITH SPORTS

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As global brands grow more competitive with one another, innovation will play a more central role in the financial health of many categories.

That’s where sport comes in. Sport offers a substantial and

opportunity to out-innovate competitors by connecting audiences to the things they love on an immeasurable scale. And in ways they never knew were possible.

But, it’s not automatic. Successfully transforming sports assets into value-enhancing, consumer-focused innovations that build communities and unlock the human spirit requires a deeper understanding of customers, increased agility, new analytics and the ability to harvest ideas from a more global and diverse network.

WINNING WITH SPORTS

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FIND THE EMOTION, ACTIVATE THERE

In markets worldwide—where millions of people will, of their own volition, announce to the world their affection for a brand—emotion matters. It animates screens, scales ideas and drives behavior. Unlocking the emotion embedded in sports partnerships requires viewing audiences as people, not demographics, and replacing instinct and hunches with research-backed insights from multifunctional teams and consumer immersions.

Understanding not just what its audience was doing or saying, but how it was really feeling led UEFA Champions League sponsor Heineken to create Star Player. The social gaming app lets fans simultaneously watch Champions League matches on television while playing it in real time against their friends on a computer or smartphone and publish their results on Twitter and Facebook. The social gaming platform grew out of Heineken research that found: a) 75 percent of its target audience—male fans of UEFA—were watching games at home while dual screening; and b) while often watching with their wife, girlfriend and/or kids, they said they were watching “alone.” Heineken Star Player, which connected them to each other, is the highest performing marketing investment in the brand’s history. Two-thirds of the players become brand ambassadors. Until Star Player, no marketing investment had achieved brand ambassador levels in excess of four percent.

8 IDEAS FOR WINNING NOW WITH SPORTS

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BUILD SERVICE INTO EVERY SPONSORSHIP

Purpose, one of the new 4Ps of marketing, is in the heart of audiences today. For most, the first question is not: “How inexpensive are you?” but “How will you improve my life?”

TAKEAWAY: In a world where values now count as much as value, partnerships that add value in a culturally positive way pay additional dividends.

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CREATE GREAT CONTENT, DON’T JUST BADGE IT

Awareness is not a proxy for success in sports. Credit is. Brands do not get credit for being the biggest sponsor or the brand with the longest tenure, but rather for bringing something new and better to the fan experience.

Around its sponsorship of London’s O2 Arena, O2 created PRIORITY, a scheme that enables participating customers to buy tickets for events at the venue before they go on sale to the public. On site, customers receive fast-track entry and access to exclusive lounges. There are now more than two million customers with whom O2 has regular contact based on a shared interest in music. There is a direct correlation between PRIORITY membership and customer satisfaction, which has reduced churn by more than one million people, according to O2. And, while the scheme is designed for existing O2 customers, it has also had the knock-on effect of improving acquisition. Econometric modeling demonstrated that during the quarters when Priority featured in O2’s above-the-line advertising, nearly 12 percent of new customer connections came about as a result of the communications.

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Coca-Cola, which used London 2012 to grow volume an average of three percent in markets worldwide while sales for the soft drink category overall were flat, created 120 pieces of Olympic content, including an anthem, a custom mobile app, live events, a documentary and a nightly TV show. More than four million consumers uploaded their own videos to Coke’s Olympic Facebook page. Coke added more than 40,000 fans per day during the Olympics and its integration of Olympic content and apps with SMS enabled it to build a database of users who opted in to receive offers in key markets such as China and India.

Similarly, around its partnership with Federacion Mexicana de Futbol, Coors Light created Fanáticos del Frio, an interactive online and mobile experience for legal-drinking-age Hispanic consumers. Coors Light also brought U.S. fans of Liga MX a monthly TV series that airs on Univision Deportes Network; it is also called Fanáticos del Frio.

Sport offers marketers an infinite landscape from which to engage in new, creative and energetic ways. To get credit, create valued enhancements rather than just piggybacking on what exists. To build awareness of the enhancements, promote with a combination of paid, earned, owned and shared media.

CREATE GREAT CONTENT, DON’T JUST BADGE IT (CONT.)

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MAKE IT PARTICIPATORY

As the information web has transformed into the participatory social web, the stories that brands put out are dwarfed by those created about them.

Sports give audiences a reason to care and share. And social and location-based technologies turbo-charge their ability to rip, mash and redistribute content across networks.

Optimizing participation—crowdsourcing, voting, content creation, etc.— can create not just customers but “customer evangelists” who voluntarily promote brands and magnify the value of their marketing investments.

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WEAVE IN YOUR BRAND STORY

Whether consumers encounter a brand at home, in the store, on TV, at the stadium or on the move, great stories draw them in and hold it all together.

TAKEAWAY: Every touch point is an opportunity to prove who you are. Sports can amplify the return of all other media—digital, social, print, etc. But the opportunity is diminished if carried out in isolation or simply tacked on as an afterthought.

Coca-Cola says people who engage with the brand via content creation are worth on average 10 times more than people in the same demographic who do not engage. And, it uses its sports partnerships to engage them.

Consider M.J. Bale, a fashion brand that needed to generate awareness and significantly expand its retail footprint in Australia. As Official Tailors to the Australian Cricket Team, it had access to one raw material its competitors didn’t: Australian victory. It leveraged this minor sponsorship in a way that revolutionized its products and made its brand story exciting to consumers and retailers. Bale replanted grass from the Sydney Cricket Ground at its Merino sheep farm, then made suits from wool harvested from sheep fed on the sacred grass. Bale added 38 new retailers to its network, suit orders grew 520 percent and ROI in year one was $14 to $1.

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BE RELEVANT, BE AGILE, BE FAST

Our world is now truly social, searchable, mobile, addressable and interactive, and illuminated by data that should be collected and applied to make instant corrections to stay relevant.

It is now so cheap to test, launch thousands of smaller scale ideas and move on. Establish launch-and-learn analytics. Give small bites, continuously. Fresh is key. Create snackable content—shareable, playable, postable bits and quips that build and maintain strong relationships and give the world something to talk about.

With their large, live audiences, sports are ideally suited for the Age of Now.

When the lights went out at the 2013 Super Bowl, Oreos tweeted: “Power out? No problem = you can still dunk in the dark.” Over the next few hours it was retweeted an astonishing 14,539 times.

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MEASURE WHAT MATTERS, NOT JUST WHAT’S EASY TO COUNT

Most marketers rely on intermediate metrics such as reach and media equivalencies to measure their sports investments. However, these outputs fail to reveal whether or not a partnership is building market share, brand value or shareholder value.

And especially in categories facing mature markets and slower growth in many parts of the world, the winners will be those that shift the focus from outputs to outcomes. It’s not enough to sponsor the right stuff or even build the right platforms. Winning now also requires knowing how the pieces in the mix work together, which ones could significantly increase efficiencies, which audiences are most responsive and the best channels and timing to reach them.

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BALANCE THE PORTFOLIO

No single sports deal will do it all. Marketers should manage sponsorship as a portfolio rather than a series of one-offs. Managing holistically reveals both conflicting images that dilute brand impact, as well as overlapping strengths and weaknesses.

For example, each property in Heineken’s portfolio plays a different role. Champions League creates awareness in countries where the brand has a limited presence; James Bond is about trial; while rugby delivers against the brand’s retention objectives.

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SPORTS LOSERS SPORTS WINNERS

Instinct Insights Interrupt Enhance Awareness Credit Attention Participation Content Stories One Big Idea Perpetual Beta Measure Outputs Measure Outcomes Swim Lanes Portfolio

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IEG has shaped and defined sponsorship over three decades. It is the globally recognized source for industry insights, trends, training and events via sponsorship.com, its annual conference, online publications, trend reports, surveys and webinars.

IEG is part of ESP Properties, a WPP company. As a commercial and creative advisor for rightsholders, ESP Properties helps organizations unlock greater value from their audiences and brand partnerships.

Our consulting team assesses and advises how to grow the value of rightsholders’ commercial programs. We do this through a full range of services across data, digital and content development to better understand audiences and create more relevant ways to engage with them. This provides brand partners with new ways to connect with communities of fans and followers, growing the potential value of commercial partnerships.

Our sales team provides partnership strategy and sales representation to the world’s most active sponsors, within and beyond the WPP network of brand clients. Through WPP we have extensive contacts and deep insights into what it takes to create successful partnerships.

For more information about the value of sponsorships and partnerships, IEG and ESP Properties, please visit www.sponsorship.com, www.espglobal.com, or call Lesa Ukman at 312/725-5199.

ABOUT IEG AND ESP PROPERTIES

© 2013 IEG, LLC. All Rights Reserved. www.sponsorship.com 12

LESA UKMAN

Chief Insights Officer IEG