Identifying Potential in the Barclays Premier League’s Transfer Window 26th November, 2014

It’s not even December and the rumour mill is in full flow regarding the opening of the Barclays Premier League’s January transfer window. Already dominating football-related conversations in pubs and bars across the UK, can we take a leaf out of our American counterparts’ book and capitalise on this excitement?

Football is right at the epicentre of British culture. With revenue reaching €3 billion last year in the UK alone, it comes as no surprise that brands have attached themselves to every perceived point of value, from stadium naming rights to TV ad spots.

The Potential

With speculation rising as to how teams are aiming to strengthen through the mid-season transfer window, it seems an apt time to discuss the potential of the transfer market as a whole. As of the launch of Sky Sports News HQ in August this year, ‘Deadline Day’ is gaining traction and fast becoming a staple in the diets of football fans across the UK. As we saw last autumn, the transfer window offers a unique opportunity for brands to both reach and engage with their core audience in the off-season.

Furthermore, transfer deadline day is impossible to miss on social media. This year, Radamel Falcao’s switch from Monaco to Manchester United sparked a surge on Twitter with his name being mentioned over 1.6 million times before the window had even closed. Above all else, this clearly demonstrates the active participation of viewers.

The market is growing too, in just the last decade, due to the influx of wealthy overseas owners, English clubs have increased their spending in the transfer market from a combined £265million to £835million.

One of the challenges that we face is that in its current form, transfer deadline day is actually pretty dull; moments of excitement are surrounded with hours of ‘dead time’ and speculation. Whilst advertisers are aware of the increased interest on news outlets on deadline day, as yet none have been bold enough to do more than pay a premium for advertising space.

It’s Not Impossible

The NFL – America’s most watched sport on TV, and one that is making real progress in terms of successfully opening a London-based franchise, has proved that the transfer market is an area that holds great potential for the sponsorship industry. Their incredibly strong commercial strategy has contributed to their increasing success in the UK, having sold out Wembley for the Dallas Cowboys vs Jacksonville Jaguars game earlier this month.

Bud Light signed on as the official beer of the NFL in 2011 and has since adopted the NFL draft (a once-a-year event in which NFL teams select eligible college football players to add to their rosters) as a core aspect of their strategy. According to Mike Sundet, senior director at Bud Light, “the NFL Draft has become an unofficial holiday for fans – something they begin looking forward to almost as soon as the previous season ends.”

This year Bud Light is offering 32 fans, one representing each NFL team, an opportunity to be directly involved in the second-round draft, aired live on primetime US TV. Bud Light not only provides a channel for fans to directly connect and interact with their favourite teams, but also engages with fans increasing both brand advocacy and awareness.

The Opportunity

If a brand were to take total ownership of transfer deadline day with a clear strategy on how best to exploit the vast interest from the fan-base, there are huge potential gains for both the brand and the English Football Leagues.

If cooperation from the Premier League Football Association and Sky Sports could be secured, the space would be a blank canvas for a brand to create something both memorable and incredibly effective. The only part of the equation missing is the brand that’s willing to think outside of the perceived limits of the existing area.

Flexibility: The Key to Driving the Sponsorship Industry 5th November, 2014

Great sponsorship is borne from collaborative flexibility. The industry revolves around the ability to adapt and create innovative sponsorships that engage with consumers. An open-minded approach is a pre-requisite, the challenge for sponsorship agencies lies in absorbing brand anxiety and persuading them that sponsorship, strategised and executed correctly, is an incredibly diverse marketing platform that has the capacity to produce great return on investment.

The sponsorship industry has a level of flexibility that is unrivalled in the marketing world; where there’s sufficient synergy, activations can be created at any level of financial investment.

Three core considerations:

Mindset: rights-holders have to understand the value that a brand can add to an event or product beyond financial investment. A certain level of flexibility needs to be retained by rights-holders to accommodate appropriate sponsors and their objectives.
Budget Planning: brands need to be open-minded when planning budgets – an explorative and inquisitive mind-set is integral when considering properties they perhaps would normally overlook. Marketing objectives change and with it comes new opportunities for brands to interact with new audiences and events.
Strategy: both parties need to accommodate the other’s objectives from the sponsorship – in most instances, both parties will need to be flexible when it comes to the actual delivery of the sponsorship.

Moving Forward

Flexibility is the key to delivering a successful sponsorship – the industry needs to not be constrained by pricing or bureaucracy, instead understanding how freedom of variance is required to create the most beneficial strategy for all parties involved. Clever sponsorship is able to deliver on virtually any marketing objective a brand might have, and so it should be doing so at every chance it can. The challenge is to look beyond the traditional benefits that any old marketing platform can provide brands, and delve deeper into other achievable objectives.

Think Bigger

The success or failure of a sponsorship should not be based purely upon ticking the boxes of each asset, but rather based upon the factors that emanated further down the line, the insight that evolves as a result of the synergies formed between both parties working collaboratively.

Being able to directly interact with a brand’s core audience is something that sets sponsorship apart from TV, radio, and outdoor advertising. If we can persuade brand managers to see the bigger picture in terms of the possibilities within sponsorship, the flexibility of the industry means that campaigns can be 100% individual. One of the most unique and exciting aspects of sponsorship is the endless opportunity; a little bit of creativity, vision, and desire, even if the investment is small, can lead to disproportionate benefits for everyone involved.