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Admap Magazine
October 2002, Issue 432
www.warc.com

How Sports Sponsorship Can Always Win

Karen Earl
Karen Earl Sponsorship

Why sponsor a team/event/personality/building/or even part of a motorway? Historically, sponsorship was seen as a whim of the board an
easy way to ensure the chairman good seats at Wimbledon and use up the leftovers of the marketing budget.

Today however, consumers, besieged by marketing and advertising at all levels, have become increasingly cynical and even immune to
traditional forms of marketing. Sponsorship has become a way for brands to communicate with their target audience by attaching
themselves to a trusted property giving brands an excuse to talk to an audience happy to listen.

All successful sponsorship over the last few years have seen it at the centre of the marketing mix and with a fully integrated campaign both
below and above the line. Our advice at Karen Earl Sponsorship (KES) would be if you are not going to exploit it, don't buy it.

Two examples of successful but very different campaigns, both managed by KES are described below Coca-Cola's sponsorship of football
(soccer) and NTL's sponsorship of the British and Irish Lions' rugby tour to Australia in 2001. These sponsorships were purchased after
extensive research, against clearly stated objectives and a commitment throughout the business to the exploitation of the property.

Coca-Cola and football

Coca-Cola has purchased football World Cup rights for the last three decades. The secret of the brand's success lies not only in the choice
of sport football delivers a powerful concoction of passion and accessibility, which football fans can enjoy worldwide but in its ability to
activate its sponsorships through customer and consumer promotions, all forms of media, internal communications and public relations.

Let us take one small example of the way in which Coca-Cola use its World Cup rights purchases. In the UK (not the host country of the
2002 World Cup) Coca-Cola was able to use the World Cup itself for promotional activity for one day only. It joined forces with one of its
key retailers, Sainsbury's, and at four venues around the country enabled football fans not only to touch the iconic trophy, but also to be
photographed with it and to meet football legends. Some 3,000 fans held the cup and were photographed. The Sainsbury's stores were
completely overrun with fans. But most important of all to Coca-Cola, sales increased during the period by almost half a million cases.
Imagine activities like this taking place worldwide, and you begin to understand the power of well-planned sponsorships (see Exhibit 1).

NTL, and the British and Irish Lions

NTL's sponsorship of the British Lions' tour to Australia in 2001 won an inaugural sports industry award in the UK this year for the best
sponsorship of a team. The judges commended the sponsorship for its fit with objectives, the presence and awareness achieved and the
integration of the property into the NTL product portfolio.

It is worth examining the NTL sponsorship case study, as it clearly demonstrates how well-thought-through sponsorship strategies and
activity programmes really can deliver results.

Pre-contract preparation

A Lions tour, like the Olympic Games and football world cups, only happens every four years and sits at the pinnacle of international rugby.
The chance to sponsor the event was a strong but still unexploited opportunity for any company wishing to gain access to the elusive ABC1
male following of rugby union.

The opportunity came at a time when NTL was a young but already well-established company with prompted brand awareness of almost
80%. The problem was that only a third of prospective customers actually knew what the company did. This was further complicated by the
pending launch of NTL's broadband service a product few people had heard of, let alone knew what it was.

NTL had acquired a number of businesses in a short space of time and this created a demand to make the diverse divisions work together
as a cohesive unit. The success of the sponsorship was the ability of the company to drive the benefits through the entire business from
external advertising to employee motivation.

These three points were the core reason behind the sponsorship. The further potential benefits were seen as:

● Synergy between the values of the Lions and NTL brand passion, inspiration, the pinnacle.
● The Lions and NTL were a strong geographical fit, where all four home nations represented key markets for NTL.
● Use of a trusted medium (rugby) to raise awareness of NTL products (telephone, TV and broadband internet).
● Improve internal pride and motivation.
● NTL had the right to film the behind-the-scenes video and so would own exclusive content that could be used to drive consumers
towards NTL products on TV and internet for access during the Tour and for a post-event video release.

Crucial to the ability to judge whether or not the sponsorship was a success was the setting of clear and ambitious targets at the outset.
These objectives were:

● Raise NTL spontaneous brand awareness among ABC1 males to over 25%.
● Deliver a media value of 1.2 million (including press and TV, and valued at 30% of the rate card).
● Raise NTL product awareness especially broadband.
● Take ownership of the tour.
● Unite the diverse divisions of NTL.
● Deliver viable showcasing for product via an internet site, exclusive TV channel, interactive TV and cut-price telephone calls.
● Build internal pride and morale among NTL employees (Associates).

Ensuring the assets

The contract negotiations for the sponsorship were key. NTL needed to buy the rights it could use to drive the activity through its various
divisions and build a tailored campaign. It negotiated shirt branding colour logo for the first time ever 50% of all other signage, 37 player
appearances plus one full squad appearance, website rights and exclusive behind-the-scenes access.

So, what did NTL then do to exploit the sponsorship fully and hit its pre-tour targets?

Above the line

A national advertising campaign was created to drive the theme of 'Up Close and Personal', and showed the ease and depth of access to
the tour that NTL could give the rugby fan. Advertising appeared in media that penetrated the target audience The Times and Daily
Telegraph and their Sunday versions (see Exhibit 2). NTL also sponsored The Sunday Times supplement a publication that was considered to
be the comprehensive guide to the tour.

A TV commercial was filmed using Lions players in 'restricted' areas to again push the 'Up Close and Personal' message, and an on-line
media campaign promoted NTL's exclusive content. The web campaign was based on the creative theme and enabled web surfers to click
straight through to NTL.com/lions, and a giant ad was erected outside the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff to coincide with Welsh Six Nations
matches.

NTL bought title sponsorship of exclusive radio access to referees' comments during rugby matches to penetrate Twickenham (1) during
the Six Nations. It delivered the NTL message of bringing fans 'Up Close and Personal'.

A micro-site (NTL.com/lions) was launched to give fans the opportunity to gain exclusive access to 'Diary of a Lion' including a daily one-
minute clip from behind the scenes of the tour; a fantasy Lions game, and an interactive Lions message board giving fans the chance to
ask questions of the players on tour.

Finally, an exclusive Lions TV channel for NTL customers was placed next to Sky Sports to capture channel-hoppers, featuring 24-hour
looped content of exclusive footage.

This central activity resulted in 33% of the target audience being aware of NTL's sponsorship post-test matches, which rose to 62%
amongst those who had watched more than five hours of the tour. During the same timeframe, spontaneous awareness of Vodafone's
association with the English cricket team during the Ashes series was 25% this in its third year of sponsorship.

Post-tour results showed that 83% of respondents thought NTL was a telephone, TV and internet company. 57% of respondents associated
NTL with broadband.

For online advertising, the click-through rate was 4.15% against an industry standard of 0.4%; NTL.com/lions saw 27,000 streams per day
of Diary of a Lion, over 100,000 players of the games and over 850,000 hits a week during the tour.

PR and media
A vigorous PR campaign was launched, using the same messaging used in the advertising and split between pre and on-tour. The pre-tour
activity, centred on male and female lifestyle media, was targeted to capture the ABC1 audience via editorial content and competitions.

On-tour activity used photo opportunities showing the players in environments away from the rugby field to create greater brand standout
and ownership of the tour.

A key requirement of the media coverage was to explain NTL's products. A creative theme was developed 'Technology on Tour' through
which NTL brought tangible benefits to the players in return for PR, such as an internet den and videoconferencing facilities.

Regionally, player appearances were used in key areas for local press promotions, working in conjunction with NTL regional PR managers.
The measured results had an overall media value of 2,277,572 (Sports Marketing Surveys) broken down as press value of 1,329,171 and
TV value of 949,401.

The press value is more than Manchester United/Vodafone (1million) generated during the last soccer season (9 months) compared to 6
weeks of the Lions tour (Sports Marketing Surveys).

Over 350k of coverage was generated by PR activity six national lifestyle competitions were placed and five editorial lifestyle pieces were
generated despite the problems for player appearances caused by the UK's foot and mouth disease emergency, which led to a delay in
squad announcement.

Consumer activity

NTL concentrated its efforts on three areas third parties, concessions and acquisitions. From 110,000 door openers, door drops, regional
radio ads and direct mailers to almost one million homes, to bill stuffers and press inserts, all NTL's communications were Lions-themed.
The results were substantial.

Lions-themed inserts had the highest response rates in Q2 (12% compared to an average of 9%) and Lions-themed radio ads came in at
half the cost per response (CPR) of regular NTL ads.

Divisional activity

The Business and Broadcast divisions of the business using the sponsorship, undertook their own promotional activity, which included
taking key clients to Australia on tailored trips, sending a direct mailer to 5,865 prospects and 350 top customers, as well as a national
press advertising campaign run in key business publications. Again, the results were measurable in terms of increased and new business.

The interactive division's objectives were to increase the use of NTL interactive TV by using exclusive Lions content highlighting interactive
functionality and to promote cable modem services and broadband. NTL interactive featured coverage of the Lions tour in the shape of
news, results, statistics, player profiles, a fantasy game and transcripts of videodiaries.

All of this resulted in almost 250,000 page impressions throughout the tour, with over 77,000 unique users over the 6 weeks it was running.
This was above average and, to put it in perspective, the highest in the period was TV's Big Brother at 85,000 over 8 weeks.

NTL's content arm, PTV, produced a quality behind-the-scenes video to go on sale after the tour. This provided exclusive Lions content for
other NTL divisions and positioned PTV as a major player in sports television production. The revenue from sales of the video resulted in
the filming being self-liquidating.

The Lions tour video is a perfect example of the sponsorship being effective throughout the NTL divisions. PTV filmed the footage, Business
and Consumer used the video as a door opener, Interactive and New Media used it for NTL.com/lions, Interactive TV, PR and Media
syndicated it and Internal Communications sent daily transcripts of the Diary of a Lion to all staff via an intranet.

Finally, the sponsorship was used by Internal Communications. Emails were set up for all employees that gave them information on the
Lions just before it went public. Lions-based competitions were set up, ranging from trips to meet the players to winning a six-week supply
of Lion chocolate bars targeting more than just rugby fans! A giant tour shirt was taken on a tour of all the NTL offices. Employees wrote
messages of good luck and the shirt was presented to the team by NTL employees.

Conclusions

Sponsorship of the Lions tour by NTL was well-conceived, but its success lay in the way in which it was used by all the business divisions
within the company. A steering committee was formed and met regularly. It comprised representatives of all the divisions and decided
upon activities, ensuring maximum effectiveness and minimal duplication and wastage.

This was sponsorship at its strongest a full commitment throughout the business and a healthy investment in exploitation. This is the
blueprint for modern, successful sponsorships that are now signed off by marketing directors and not a chairman dusting off his blazer in
anticipation.

notes
1. England, who play at Twickenham, had separate TV etc, deals for internationals

NOTES & EXHIBITS

Karen Earl

Karen Earl is Managing Director of Karen Earl Sponsorship (KES). Karen has worked in sponsorship since 1973,
and set up KES in 1984. Current clients include Coca-cola, Orange and Norwich Union.

EXHIBIT 1: COCA-COLA: THE POWER OF WELL-PLANNED SPONSORSHIP

EXHIBIT 2: UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL: THE NTL NATIONAL ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN

© Copyright World Advertising Research Center 2002
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