The marketing juggernaut accompanying the new football season dominates late summer sports marketing with blockbuster broadcaster promos, sportswear partner kit launches, pre-season tour sponsor spots, drinks brand battles and a slew of team sponsor activation.
In the UK the TV rightsholder fight pits Sky Sports’ ‘Greatest Moments’, against BT’s ‘House Party’ and Virgin Media’s ‘Animal Fans‘.
While beer wars also broke out between the official EPL beer’s ‘If Carslberg Did Kickabouts‘ and ambusher Carling’s ‘Shirt Amnesty‘ offering.
The stand-out kit campaign, in terms of sheer size and scale, sees Adidas unveil its first new Manchester United shirts (after its record-breaking £750m, 10-year deal) through a campaign called ‘Built To Break Expectations‘.
While among the more strategically interesting sponsor campaigns was the pre-season tour strategy delopyed by DHL in China leveraging its FC Bayern Munich partnership) and the first campaign in Liverpool FC’s so called search for ‘non typical category commercial partners’ in the form of a new campaign from Nivea.
Other current Premier League related campaigns include Fantasy Football initiatives (such as the Sun’s ‘Dream Team – Cheating Fans’).
In fact, when it comes to sports spots and sharing in the UK, it seems nothing can beat the behemoth that is football.
Last week saw Sky win the first mini marketing skirmish in the titanic battle between UK football broadcast rights holders when its ‘Greatest Moments’ spot topped this week’s ‘Campaign UK Viral Chart’.
According to the British advertising bible, the Thierry Henry fronted Sky Sports TVC is the most shared viral ad of the week – with 305.906 shares in the last seven days.
Interestingly, this week’s UK chart, compiled by Unruly, was dominated by sports-related spots and sponsorship activation which took 6 places in the top 10.
Following Sky Sports’ Number 1 campaign, this week’s Number 3 ranked commercial (and a former Number 1 itself), is the second instalment in the Always ‘Like a Girl’ campaign – ‘Unstoppable’ by Leo Burnett Toronto. With 58,255 shares, the docu-campaign (which references girls and sport, but isn’t specifically a sports or sponsorship piece) aims to increase girls’ confidence. It explores how young girls feel society limits them, asks them to write them down on white box and then crush it.
Notching up 11,758 shares at Number 5 is the inspirational and emotional, documentary-style Nike basketball ‘Flyease’ film telling the story of a Matthew Walzer – a 16-year-old junior from Florida with cerebral palsy and the shoe Mark Parker made for him.
At Number 8, racking up 5,060 shares, is Liverpool legend Robbie Fowler’s ‘Australian Skydiving’ film to launch the team’s new New Balance away kit.
With 5.057 shares (and more than 5m global views to date), the ninth most viral UK commercial was Samsung Mobile’s brilliant (and Cannes Lions award-winning) ‘Surf – We Are Greater Than I’ ad created by 72andSunny Amsterdam to leverage the Korean giant’s new global partnership with the World Surf League. This ad is one of 22 award-winning sports campaigns and sponsorship activations in our recent ‘Cannes 4 Fans’ Insight Briefing Report (Click to download briefing report).
And at Number 10, with 4,776 shares, was VCCP’s ‘Take That and England Rugby’ ad for O2 Sports leveraging its sponsorship with England Rugby. (Click to see our case study).
