21 February marked the 100 Countdown until the start of the ICC Champions Trophy 2017 and saw the milestone saw the engine rev up and the handbrake lifted for the start of the tournament’s Nissan Trophy Tour – a global journey backed by the auto sponsor that aims to bring the excitement of the Champions Trophy to cricket fans around the world.
The Nissan Trophy Tour launch was held at the ICC Academy in Dubai’s Sport City: an event which gathered together local school teams, cricket fans, academy coaches, ICC staff, Nissan employees and former Pakistan Captain Shahid Afridi.
Fans were all welcome to attend, check out the trophy and have their photo taken alongside it.
‘I want to thank the ICC and its sponsors for their support of cricket,’ trumpeted trophy Tour ambassador and former Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi.
‘By taking the Champions Trophy on a global tour, they’re enabling fans to connect with the event regardless of where they live and hopefully help us build a new generation of fans.’
In addition to leveraging ambassador Afridi’s social channels (such as his Twitter feed), the countdown event and tour launch was also amplified digitally and socially across Nissan channels and platforms
#ShahidAfridi taking a selfie with the #ICC trophy at @iccacademy announcing the 100 days #NissanTrophyTour. #NissanME pic.twitter.com/bzUDb8Zhlv
— Nissan Middle East (@NissanME) February 21, 2017
The @ICC #NissanTrophyTour has kicked off in Dubai. Get ready, there’s less than 100 days to go until #CT17. Are you excited? pic.twitter.com/T3uIicEjG9
— NissanUK (@NissanUK) February 22, 2017
The trophy will visit all the competing nations in the next 100 days.
The next stop is Mumbai, India on 4 March, followed by Bengaluru and Delhi, and after leaving India it will head to Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan in March, before flying to South Africa, New Zealand and Australia in April.
The Tour will arrive in host nation England at the start of the summer and the tournament, which features the world’s top eight teams, itself is being played in venues throughout England and Wales from 1 to 18 June (https://www.icc-cricket.com/champions-trophy).
As a global partner and official car of the ICC, Nissan is transporting the Trophy in its official vehicles not just to major cities and famous cricket venues, but also on some more unusual journeys with the objective of surprising and delighting cricket lovers all over the world.
Nissan is also collaborating with the property owner to developed a series of tour events in England during May to get the trophy and the fans together as the initiative aims to drive awareness of and excitement around the competition.
‘We partnered with the ICC to bring cricket fans closer to the excitement of the game,’ commented Nissan Corporate Vice President and Global Head of Marketing Roel de Vries.
‘We want the Nissan Trophy Tour to build excitement and anticipation on the journey towards the ICC Champions Trophy tournament in the UK in June.’
‘The global trophy tour is the start of what will be a fantastic summer of cricket celebration in the UK with two major back-to-back events: the ICC Champions Trophy followed by the ICC Women’s World Cup,’ added ICC Chief Executive David Richardson at the event.
‘Our thanks to Nissan for bringing us this global trophy tour, providing the fans from the competing nations with a special experience in the build up to the events. We are confident that the ICC Champions Trophy will be as competitive and thrilling as preceding editions, bringing together some of the finest 50-over cricketers in a short and sharp event in which every match counts.’
The ICC is also using the tour to drive tournament ticket sales through the official website (at www.icc-cricket.com/tickets) and the rights holder also amplified the Tour launch.
Shahid Afridi was on hand in Dubai today to help launch the ICC Champions Trophy 2017 Nissan trophy tour! #CT17https://t.co/cgvaF6DbaM pic.twitter.com/gaz2swRoBl
— ICC (@ICC) February 21, 2017
100 Days to Go to ICC Champions Trophy 2017 was marked yesterday at Edgbaston, one of the host venues, with Ashley Giles & the #CT17 trophy! pic.twitter.com/t9ncMaqxri
— ICC (@ICC) February 22, 2017
The ICC has been promoting the tournament since it rolled out a campaign launch video in September 2016.
The start of the trophy tour also followed hot on the heels of the ICC rolling out a fresh new web look and identity.
https://t.co/QFFLfBGXJ0 has a fresh new look! Let @irbishi show you what's new, and as he says, remember the site! Check it out now! pic.twitter.com/JZzqj9KQbI
— ICC (@ICC) February 1, 2017
Activative Comment:
Nissan’s ongoing ICC partnership – which spans several major international cricket events (eg the ICC Men’s and Women’s World Cups see our ‘T20 Play Of the Day’ and ‘T20 Ambassador’ case studies), is just one example of Nissan’s strategic commitment to leveraging sports partnership as a core pillar of its global growth strategy.
Other major sponsorships in Nissan’s portfolio includes its UEFA Champions League partnership which this week was activated through a new Agüero/Bale campaign (see case study) and previous work has been explored in our 2016, 2015 and 2014 case studies, the Canadian Football League, the Heisman Trust and Heisman Trophy (see case study), the City Football Group (which includes the Manchester City, Melbourne City and New York City clubs – see our ‘Man City Advent Calendar‘ case study), the Rio Olympics (see case study) and various national Olympic bodies such as Team GB (see our ‘Spoof Spots’ and ‘Facebook Live Train With Us’ case studies),
While Nissan’s NCAA partnership in the US is the widest-reaching sponsorship in the history of collegiate sports: supporting around 100 colleges and universities, as well as select NCAA Championships and covering 22 different sports (see our ‘Die Hard Fan’ case study).
Links:
Nissan
https://www.youtube.com/user/nissanineurope
https://twitter.com/NissanEurope
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+NissanEurope/posts
ICC
https://www.icc-cricket.com/champions-trophy
https://www.instagram.com/icc/
