Sports Marketing by Martial Fuss

Tours football club reached the second league of the French football championship this season. Going with this dynamics, a lot of actions are put in place around the club like the one intended for the game against RC Lens on monday 20st october. The club and the fine arts museum from Tours proposed a crossed action: during the game, players wore totally new jerseys with at the usual place of sponsors a work of art dating from 1750 in reference of the exhibition “La volupté du goût – la peinture française au temps de Madame de Pompadour” currently in the museum of Tours. To complete this action, spectators of the game will have a free entry to this exhibition with their game ticket. Who said that sport and culture did not match?

Every years the “Stade Français”, famous rugby club, displays a lot of imagination in order to propose new jerseys more and more innovative. Progressively in the seasons, jersey of Max Guazzini’s club has become mare and more tight-fitting, more and more pink, more and more flowery. Always surprising, sometimes disturbing, those jersey always sold themselves very well. Thought, the last collection let us perplexed, notably the third jersey which is a patchwork Andy Warhol’s way of “Blanche de Castille”, French queen in the 13th century. This jersey is also full of historical references in the way that “Blanche de Castille” contributed to the explosion of the Toulouse county in 1229 which resulted in a loss of territory for Toulouse. It is just an other way to symbolize the domination of “Stade Français” on Toulouse, its worse ennemy in the French rugby championship.

From my point of view, the Parisian club has gone too far. If the fact that proposing every years new jerseys is favorable in terms of turnover for the clubs (this is the reason why clubs playing european play off now have a third jersey), opting for a too staggered model will probably freeze more than a potential customer. Even if mind changes and fluorescent jerseys are more and more tendency in football as in rugby, I am affraid that the choice of this “Blanche de Castille” Warhol’s version is too far from the rugby values. On an other side, who thought few years ago that rugbymen would play in pink and would be naked in a calendar?

No big team without big stadium!The Yankee Stadium, fabulous historic stadium, leaves its place to be replaced by an other one, obviously more modern and adapted to nowadays commercial strategies. Sport wolrd evolved a lot and sport business is uncompromising. The stadium is one of the weapon to fight on this field and is a major asset to grow. The Yankee Stadium will have its own mall, luxury shops, upscale hostels and private boxes reserved to companies. Stadium has become an entertainment place on the field as well as outside, a show place, a place where meet all envy to hang around and also to spend money.

The stadium is obviously a tool which solidify the sport sector and also allows a resources increase. It allows a better visibility and strengthen a brand image. The Yankee Stadium is a good example because of the many generations that succeed in the stands to see base ball, football or even boxe fight. Spectators identified themselves to this asset full of glorious stories and a stadium a also that, a strong image for the club.

New Yankee stadium presentation

The 43st edition of the Super Bowl, the American football championship (NFL) final will takes place in the next month of February in Tampa Bay. As usual, American television viewer and so advertiser will be present for the sport event of the year in USA. The latest news speaks about $85000 for a second of advertising. Advertisers obviously expect a return on investment. On the first hand, they can reach the maximum of television viewer with the big audience which was evaluated to 133 Millions in 2005, what aproximately represent an American on two. On the second hand, they expect to favour the brand name recall. Advertisers ask institutes to realize study on the effect of the publicity for the brand name recall. Some companies pitch on a staggered marketing because of the price of an advertisement. For example, in 2004 a naked man entered on the field of the game with advertising on his body. Free advertising and effective!!!

Super Bowl XLIII will be broadcasted in 225 countries for a global audience of a bilion television viewer. The NFL and NBC have announced that Bruce Sprigsteen and the E Street Ban will perform at Super Bowl half time. In France, the game will be broadcasted on France2. It is also important to highlight the raising internet and mobile phone coverage with for example Yahoo! Sports, Sprint Mobile or ESPN Mobile.

Top ten Super Bowl ads 2008

The brand was created in 1999 and in almost ten years it knew how to impose its style in French sport manufacturers landscape. “The panther” is nowadays a major actor of football sponsorship. The brand is the first sport manufacturer of the French football championship. We have to notice the dynamism, the original positionnement and the communication used by Airness. With partnership with stars like Didier Drogba and by communicating on the lifestyle side of sport, the brand reached a young target, got a real legitimity and developped its notoriety. Today, the company is trying to change its brand image.

At the occasion of a party at the “Showcase” in Paris, Airness and L’Oreal presented a range of fragance and deodorand called Instinct which was conceived by four specialists. Those fragrances are in sales since May 2008 in 3000 sales point especially in mass distribution between 15 and 18€ for the fragrances and 4 and 6€ for the deodorant. With this operation, Airness proceeds its diversification going from sportwear to mobile phone passing by glasses. This partnership with L’Oreal offers the possibility to Airness to get rid of its brand image aimed at the “Hip Hop” generation. Now, it is aimed at the big audience. The sale of these perfumes in department stores perfectly fits this strategy which allow the brand to reach a larger target and offer quality frangrances. Thanks to the packaging of its perfumes, Airness hopes to emerge of the particulary competitive market of the sports brands developing fragrances like Adidas. So bow to the Airness brand which is trying to get rid of its “Hip Hop” brand image by a successful diversification.

Tv commercial of Airness

Coca Cola is one of the most powerful company in terms of marketing and is using a lot of sports marketing. For instance, Thursday 20th march 2008, Coca Cola France was presenting its brand strategy for the football event of the year, the European football championship 2008. The slogan “We all speak football” launched two years ago for the German World championship is used once again. The idea of sharing and proximity is kept and in order to symbolize it, the communication has been based on “hug” and declined into several television advertising. The strategy inserts many viral videos and a sharing videos web-site in partnership with MSN.fr. About the packaging, the brand launched collector cans with some French team players on it. In conclusion, this operation is only a huge advertising campaign using a sport event.

The Coca Cola Hug

Before to start an analysis of a sport marketing campaign, it would be interesting to define it. Sport marketing can be define as all the means using directly or indirectly sport, its image or even athletes in order to market a product. So what is a sport product? Sports products are all the products presenting a link with sport: going from the pair of shoes used by an athlete, passing by the energy drink he takes before his game or race, to the athlete himself when he is professional and has a sponsorship deal with a big brand. There are many actors of the sport world using sports marketing: sports organizations, sports manufacturers, sports media. There are nowadays so many sports activities that companies can use sport as a strategic positionement. We are going to see in my next post an example of a sport advertising campaign with Coca-Cola.

Sports marketing is nowadays part of the economy for instance with all the sponsors you can see around a football field. It is becoming a real marketing strategy for the company working in this sector. For many years, I am an american football player, I even played at high level with the junior French team that’s why I am today so interested in sports marketing. I would like to get more experience in this field in order to work for a NFL’s franchise .

In this blog I will speak about different way to communicate around the sport field and analyze some example of company’s strategy.