Brand sponsorship - a good live brand experience?

Having seen the best football team in the history of the world give the best football team in England a lesson on how to play, I felt I needed to voice my opinion on a brand awareness sponsorship deal announced late last year by Barcelona football club.

It was mentioned that FCBarcelona will for the first time have a sponsor named on their shirt, ending 111 years of history. Their association with Unicef will remain, however the prominent name for next year will be The Qatar Foundation, a non profit organisation based in Qatar, home of the 2022 World Cup.

If you have a lot of money and are thinking of igniting your brand with a brand experience on the world stage can you think of a better way than spending £25 million a year on shirt sponsorship?

The biggest splash so far has been the PR around the deal. The Qatar Foundation are not on the shirt yet, however the brand awareness has risen enormously, and unfortunately not all the publicity is positive. The Mail Online reported that allegedly the Qatar Foundation has given money to a cleric who advocates terrorism, wife beating and anti semitism.

Not all publicity is good publicity when it comes to brand experiences and brand awareness.A successful 'Brand Experience' is not necessarily the one that captures the headlines it is the one that touches positively the people to whom it is targeted.

FC Barcelona sells around 1.2 million shirts a year, over 5 years that's 6 million shirts. If we say that at least 5 people not wearing a shirt will see someone wearing a shirt, the cost per person to the Qatar Foundation for that brand marketing is only £4.13 per person. That's not bad business. I wonder what they intend to do with this new awareness?

By Peter Lindsay

Brand Experiences – The Busyness!

Life’s been pretty full on for our Brand Experience & Live Communication team this month.

As well as the ongoing high street activity, store support and internal engagement events the team have just completed a national ‘Freshers’ roadshow around UK Universities as well as the  launch of  the Christmas campaigns (watch out for the snow domes!)

  

On top of this we’ve also launched our new Brand Experiences website. Having spent over 5 years delivering high profile experiential campaigns we thought it about time we made a bit more of a song and dance about it (you’ll be glad to know not in the literal sense!).

The site includes regular updates on the work we’re delivering as well as being a source for all the latest industry news and experiential campaigns.

Take a look at www.brandexperiences.co.uk – we welcome your feedback on what you find (or don’t as the case may be!).

The Power of the Mind

We were debating appropriate inspirational speakers for a client requirement yesterday which got me thinking about my own experiences of speakers over the last 12 years. The brief was somewhat woolly - inspiring, a story to tell, humorous, entertaining... and not much money (but ideally well known!). A pretty common brief truth be told.

Eddie Izzard struck me as a perfect candidate - 43 marathons in 51 days, and funny. Forget the funny...43 marathons in 51 days - what! how? why? I'm training for a half marathon - but 26 miles...not likely! But I am training, BMIs good, heart rate ok...blah blah...but this guy did next to no training. Sir Ranulph Fiennes was another who made me sit up and take notice - celebrating turning 60 with 7 marathons on 7 continents in 7 days, just months after a heart by-pass operation. Ok, he trained...but by climbing Everest when everyone (probably wisely) warned him against it.


Bear Grylls summed up why he's achieved - the difference he points out between similarly skilled poeple is some talk about it and some get on and do it...he gets on and does it.
 
The book, Bad Science (author Ben Goldacre - recommended) illustrates time and again the power of the placebo effect during clinical trials - help people believe they're capable/cured and just watch them achieve/recover. The Power of the Mind.
 
So back to the speaker thing. It is difficult to sometime pinpoint what we mean by inspiring - and sometime even more difficult to justify the kind of money some of the speakers charge. But having now reflected on my own personal experiences of speakers I've found the truly stand out candidates to offer me both short term energy and long term positive frames of reference. I can't tell you exactly why, and I may not make it up Everest but they've influenced many of my decisions at work at home and at play...and perhaps still yet will have me running 26 miles around London in April 2011 for a good cause.
 
Some classic, remodelled Eddie Izzard for light relief
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv5iEK-IEzw