From advertising hoardings to centre stage: the evolution of brands in sport

I am a huge cricket fan, always have been, but I think it’s fair to say that the magic of Test Match Special and the technicalities of the Super Over aren’t conversations that I’d normally expect to translate very well into the workplace. 

It’s not really a sport for everyone, is it?

There’s a need for sponsorship strategies to evolve to more authentically connect and engage with the passions that exist around sport.

But recently I seemed to enter a parallel universe... everyone’s talking about cricket? What the heck was going on?

After the pure drama of July 14's sporting schedule, where 18 million of us flicked between the Wimbledon Men's Final and the Cricket World Cup Final, the power of sport as a cultural passion point was clear to see.

Unsurprisingly, it’s a passion point that brands have long recognised and gravitate around, with sports sponsorship an important mainstay of many a marketing strategy. Brands like Carlsberg, O2 and NatWest have found continued success through sporting sponsorships going back 20+ years.

Above: Arsenal's Emirates Stadium.

When you look at these sponsorships, brand placement has been a key part of the package - from the advertising hoardings, to naming rights, talent endorsements to a logo on the shirt of your audience’s favourite team, these have been the key goals and negotiating battlegrounds of a sponsorship deal.

And while these are still legitimate and practical ways to drive awareness and reach, there’s a need for sponsorship strategies to evolve to more authentically connect and engage with the passions that exist around sport.

Brands are now universally expected to provide value above and beyond the product that they sell.

This point couldn’t have been better exemplified than in Paddy Power’s current Save Our Shirt campaign, where in one of the most convincing football hoaxes i’ve ever seen, they announced the seemingly counter-logical act of taking their logo off the shirts of football teams they are sponsoring. The result is a campaign that’s generating huge PR and shows Paddy Power bringing value to football fans in a way that only they could.

Above: PaddyPower's recent Save Our Shirt campaign. 

This is important because brands are now universally expected to provide value above and beyond the product that they sell (Havas’s 2019 Meaningful Brands study showing this to be true for 64% Baby Boomers, 84% Millennials and 87% Gen Z), and this means value can’t just be the remit of the product teams, it needs to come from marketing too.

It requires a conscious shift away from the long-standing and well-established ad land strategy of ‘badging’ culture.

Although marketing teams haven’t traditionally been geared around creating audience value, sports sponsorship represents a relatively easy win, and a great opportunity to make this shift. It’s entry to a pre-existing cultural party, where you can have a positive impact on peoples' passions and build the type of relationship your audience is increasingly demanding of you.

But it requires a conscious shift away from the long-standing and well-established ad land strategy of ‘badging’ culture. An evolution that must see brands move away from talking, to actually doing; drawing on a content-led approach and taking a more active role in shaping and adding value to the sport that’s been invested in.

At Just So we think of it as a three stage strategic process.