Q: How does one of the world’s biggest football clubs attract sponsors?
A: A direct, business-to-business personalised appeal to 33 CEOs of the world’s biggest businesses.
At least that was the engagement phase tactic used by agency Saatchi & Saatchi’s ‘Get Me A Sponsor’ campaign in response to a brief from Chelsea FC to find a new shirt sponsor following the end of the team’s 10-year major partnership with Samsung.
Based on the belief that there were very few people in the world able to sign-off on such a deal, the objective was to elicit an emotional reaction from target company bosses.
So the initial engagement and attention phase of the project revolved around creating and delivering 33 personalised aluminium briefcases to target CEOs.
In addition to containing a Chelsea shirt and Premier League medal customised with the names of each chief executive, the lid of the case was an iPad showing a personalised POV film starring each individual CEO to showcase the experience of being the boss of Chelsea’s shirt sponsor.
Each individual video was created using a combination of digital mapping, thorough personal research and detailed post production, in order to offer each CEO an alluring and bespoke idea of what their Chelsea FC partnership might look like if they should sign-up as the club’s major sponsor.
Whilst this campaign was activated during 2014, Saatchi only publicly released the campaign video later in 2015.
In addition to the Saatchi team, the campaign production company was Blink, the editing outfit was Cut & Run, visual effects were by Motion Picture House, sound from Wave and the design company was Hothouse IWG.
Comment
In terms of results, of the 33 bespoke cases delivered, Saatchi claim that every single CEO responded personally.
Plus, of course, on 26 February 2015 Chelsea FC signed a (slightly surprising to some) five-year deal with Yokohama Tyres worth £40m-a-year.
Which at the time was the second biggest shirt sponsorship in football (after Manchester Utd’s £53m-a-season, seven-year Chevrolet partnership).
The agency also claim an ROI of £200 for every £1 spent on the sponsorship recruitment campaign.
Plus, at Cannes Lions 2015, Saatchi & Saatchi London scooped two bronze Lions – in the Acquisitions and Corporate Image & Communication categories – for the campaign.
Those three sets of results surely suggest this campaign was a major success.
And yet, while creating high-end bespoke packages specifically for CEOs might be a route past the gatekeepers, does it really reflect the contemporary reality of effective and mutually rewarding sponsor partnerships?
Surely we have moved beyond the era when sponsorship decision are made at the personal whim of the sponsor brand’s boss?
Our view is, that if we was Tadanobu Nagumo (the CEO of Yokohama Tyres), we wouldn’t want our board to think that one off the principle reasons the company made a £200m marketing investment was because some clever creative flattered my ego and appealed to my personal passions.
Links
Saatchi & Saatchi
Chelsea FC:
Yokohama Tyres:
