Category : editorial

Seven Golden Rules Of Naming Rights Sponsorship For Brands

This post was originally published on Mundo do Marketing in portuguese and was adapted from our partner Tim Crow´s article “Why There Are Now Six Golden Rules Of Naming Rights Sponsorship For Brands“.

Very recently some Brazilian football clubs announced that their arena´s naming rights were on sale. In Brazil this kind of sponsorship is very common in movie theatres and music venues, but it´s taking the first steps in the sports world.

Atlético Paranaense was a pioneer in 2005, when they sold their arena´s name to Kyocera. But, three years later, the contract was not renewed and, since then, the club wasn’t able to sell this property to any other sponsor. So, what´s the reason why brands in Brazil do not seem to be interested in sports arenas’ naming rights?

Some time ago our friend Tim Crow, Synergy Sponsorship´s CEO, wrote a nice post with his 6 golden rules of naming rights. The post was focused in the European market, and we “tropicalized” these rules, adapting to the Brazilian reality. That´s why we have seven rules instead of six.

1. The stadium should have a short name only. If it has two names, one of them being the sponsor brand, guess which the media and fans will cut. Good examples are The Reebok Stadium, Bolton Wanderes´ home, and The Emirates, Arsenal´s home. These two work well. On the other side you will find SportsDirect.com@St Jame´s Park, Newcastle´s home. What’s the chance of somebody pronouncing the entire name?

2. It´s clever to avoid renaming a traditional stadium. If you do the media and fans will probably cut your name. In other words, it´s a lot easier to start with a new stadium. This rule explains the reason why Brazilian brands appear to avoid naming some local stadiums. On the other side, it is a good opportunity for the new stadiums being built for the World Cup 2014.

3. The exception to rule 2 is when a stadium doesn´t have appeal with the fans or is declining for some reason and, as a result, needs to be re-launched. In England, the Millennium Dome, an exhibition venue that never conquered consumers’ hearts, was recently re-launched as “The O2″. In the same way, Corinthians, the Brazilian football club, could upgrade its traditional “Fazendinha” (Tiny Farm), and a new name could do well.

4. The sponsor should pay enough for the naming right, and the main problem of not doing so is that the media and the fans can interpret this as bad faith. In England there was a case when the sponsor paid only £ 150,000 per year to guarantee naming an arena, a very small amount of money in comparison to the expensive TV campaigns produced by the company. Fans didn´t like it. In Brazil, the average fan wouldn’t probably acknowledge such a detail, but they are starting to be picky with which brands they want to see associated with their club.

5. The brand should bet on long term due to two reasons: it demonstrates a commitment to the club and the ROI will be a lot bigger. Besides that, the media and the fans need some time to get used to the new name.

6. It´s not clever to rename a stadium that already has a nickname. Ideally, the nickname should be part of the naming strategy. Recently, Corinthians announced its new stadium for the 2014 World Cup, at it was automatically named “Itaquerão” (from the neighborhood where it is located). The nickname has been adopted by media and fans, even before the stadium is ready, and the club is having a hard time finding a naming partner.

7. After following rules 1 to 6, then the hard work really begins – earning respect and admiration from the fans and media, what is only possible with activation and creativity.

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The Top 5 Brazilian Sports Marketing Campaigns Of 2012

This content was originally posted as our constribution to Synergy Sponsorship´s blog. You can find the original link here. Find out more about our partnership with Synergy here.

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 ANTARCTICA + 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 + COPA DO MUNDO 2014

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.

 

VOLKSWAGEN + 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.

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Ativa Esporte at Wall Street Journal

We don´t like to write posts about ourserlves, but, in this case, it is worth sharing.

Guilherme Guimarães, Ativa Esporte´s general manager, was interviewed by Wall Street Journal in a piece about the brazilian football moment.

You can read it here.

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Sports marketing is in the details

The NBA and Dream Team star Lebron James recently bought shares of the group which controls Liverpool, the English football team.

Lebron has a contract with Nike, including a sneakers collection endorsed by him. A new model based on the team, with the same colours and a dragon (very close to the one in the team badge), has just been released. Check it out:

The link between the shoe and the club is very clear, but Nike does not confirm it. Actually, Nike can´t do it, and the main reason is that Liverpool is sponsored by Warrior, and until recently was sponsored by adidas. And there it goes the first question: why would a brand like Nike bring something that is owned by a competitor?

The answer is simple, and this post is obviously not about a new sneaker model, but about a sophisticated logic that is being adopted by sports companies.

Nike and adidas are both trying to explore its sponsored stars´ stories. A more organic monitoring of their lives take place of old standard advertising process. Brands which support athletes should celebrate their victories, overcoming episodes and personal interests, like Lebron and Liverpool.

Another good example is the adidas´ mini-documentary made to celebrate Derick Rose´s return to the courts, after a long lasting injury. Sadly, after the documentary launch, the Chicago Bulls player got injured again, but, anyway, adidas showed how to support its stars:

Doing this kind of thing demands attention to the athletes´ career steps. Thinking about Nike and adidas, we have to consider hundreds of them.

On the other side we will find brands that sponsor few athletes, sometimes one or two, and most of the time don´t know how to activate them to amplify their campaigns.

Sports brands are usually vanguard in using sports and athletes in advertising and marketing strategy, but the truth is that these examples open a clear path to any kind of company. In times of a more humanized advertising, an athletes´ journey can be a good call!

picture via UGSoles

news via Máquina do Esporte

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When sports meets culture

Right after London 2012 closing ceremony Creative Review wrote a great post showing the best Olympic contributions to creativity in many fields, such as advertising, architecture, technology, design and even arts. We strongly recommend you to read it.

Among all the items, the one that called our attention the most is the London 2012 video to present the brand new Velodrome. The design is inspired by Tron and the soundtrack is by Chemical Brothers. In other words, the final result is totally different of what we are used to see in sports events.

It´s interesting to note that this video can also be considered as a music clip. It would be a high quality content even if it wasn´t related to London 2012. Pure entertainment with a lot of references from outside the sports universe, but that fit nicely.

Take a look:

We believe that advertising involving sports can (and should) go beyond it, adding other elements to achieve a richer result, capable of engaging and amaze.

Another good example is the old Adidas campaign that mixed sports and pop culture, with stars at the iconic Star Wars cantina. We love it!

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Game of Thrones and sports teams

If you like to watch TV series, it´s very likely that you have already watched HBO’s Game of Thrones, based on R. R. Martin books. Both the books and the series are a huge success. Yvan Degtyariov, an ukrainian artist, played with this pop phenom creating logos based on an imaginary football league where each Game of Thrones’ house is a team.

In the series, each house (or kingdom) has a unique personality and fight each other to reign this fictional universe. House Stark, for example, has a strong sense of justice and honor, and also has the wolf as its mascot. House Lannister is represented by the lion and has the motto “a Lannister always pay his debts”. In other words, they are very rich. And so on…

Find below three of these teams logos and an explanation about the link between this joke and sports marketing.

For those who watch the series, it strangely makes sense to imagine a championship between those houses. Each house represents a bunch of values and, during the series, the spectators just sympathizes with one or some of them.

In the sports world it´s the same. Each team has its own values and personality. In Brazil, for example, there are the football rivals Corinthians and São Paulo. Corinthians fans explore the underdog narrative as they are usually proud of titles conquered with a high level of difficulty. São Paulo fans, on the other hand, prefer to glorify their team´s infrastructure and professionalism. São Paulo´s titles are understood by the point of view of the club´s sovereignty.

Narrative´s differences like that appear in many rivalries between teams in Brazil and worldwide, and this issue is usually ignored by brands in the decision process of which team the brand should sponsor.

It´s common to forget that teams usually represent values that stand besides number of fans and market location, and that brands will probably  absorb something from that sponsorship experience. It´s important to say that there aren´t right or wrong values, but values that fit better with a brand.

I will propose a funny exercise for those of  you who have a difficult time realizing which values a sport team stand for. What about inverting this Ukrainian artist´s joke transforming the club into a kingdom. How is this kingdom? How does the king behave? What are their values? How do people tell their story?

That way you could transform your favorite sport championship in a Game of Thrones parody.

arts via io9

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Sports show how incredible we are

This video show great images of people overcoming their limitations through sports.

It´s an inspiration source for those of us who work with sports marketing.

The connection between companies and sports go beyond brand visibility. Good sports marketing can cause the kind of sensation you had watching this video.

Think about it.

via Update or Die

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Kick Off

Writing the first post for the Ativa Esporte (the company which I recently became partner[GG] of) blog is a difficult task.

Should I write about how the company is cool? Who talks too much does too little.

Should I write about sports marketing? All future posts will be about it. Not this time.

Should I write about Brazil, World Cup and Olympics? I guess it´s very cliché.

So I decided to write about my journey with Guilherme Guimarães. How did we get here? This may be cool for a first post.
It started about seven years ago, in an agency where we worked together. He was an account manager, I was a planner. As we came to the agency in the same time, we ended up friends.

Then the first projects came and, together, the first celebrations, frustrations and learnings. Fortunately more celebrations than frustrations and learnings. Within this period we had a case which we managed to win the most valuable bid in the history of the agency so far. We, both under 30, competing against more experienced players. I was wearing a football jersey while our opponents were in suit and tie.

Then we went in different ways. I was studying and working with storytelling and transmedia, two issues very related to sports marketing, and lived experiences both as an entrepreneur and in other agencies. Guilherme did a Masters in sports marketing in England (University of Sheffield) and, back to Brazil, had great challenges, including working on the Rio 2016 bid comitee.

In the middle of his journey Guilherme created Ativa Esporte as a blog and consultancy. This explains the 50+ posts before this one. Eventually, the idea of ​​building an agency in a model that does not exist in Brazil matured and gained partners, investors and interested people… until I received the invitation to join the group and embark on this challenge!

Then, seven years later, I´m working with one of the best professionals I’ve ever known, full of desire to help building this company and make great projects.

Guilherme, thanks for the invitation!

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