In 2015 Copa América host nation Chile, top tier sponsor Santander has taken a family focused approach built around parents and kids and expressed through a flagship pre-tournament TV commercial launched in the first week of June.
The spot, which has quickly racked up 543,244 YouTube views, runs with the tagline ‘In the 2015 Copa América, we all move the same passion.’
The spot includes the campaign hashtag #SantanderCA2015 and drives fans to the sponsor’s host nation website at www.santander.cl to ‘experience the cup in more depth’.
The umbrella idea behind the financial brand’s tournament activity is to share the excitement of the competition ‘with those you love most’.
One key pillar of Santander’s activation revolves around its sponsorship of the tournament’s ‘Player Mascot’ programme and the bank’s own ‘Goals’ cause-led family initiative.
Several new early June spots featuring Brazilian legend Pele promote its ‘Goal’s’ CSR programme.
The ads see Santander donate money to its family cause programme for each and every goal scored throughout the tournament. ‘Goals at Copa America can change the lives of thousands of families in settlements, because for every goal the bank’s ‘ROOF Chile’ housing project receives a $2,000,000 donation from the bank.
The spots also urge fans to take part in the cause project by making their own donations to the initiative through the sponsor’s tournament website at www.Santander.cl or voa social platforms using the hashtags #GolSantanderTecho and #SantanderCA2015.
Running parallel to the ‘Goals’ initiative is the Santander sponsored ‘Player Mascot’ programme.
The bank has been promoting the scheme throughout 2015 as it held a competition for Chilean kids to win a chance to be a player mascot at the tournament.
This was led by a commercial (with 572,000 YouTube views) launched in April that invited parents to ‘fulfil their children’s dreams to become a Copa America player escort’ by signing them up to enter the raffle at www.santander.cl.
The bank’s competition sees 400 children aged between six and 10 walk out onto the pitch before each match holding the hand of one of the star players.
In addition to these twin initiatives, earlier this year Santander was activating its tournament rights with more product-focused campaign strands – such as this family oriented credit card promotion.
Launched back in January and February and leveraging the theme of shared family experiences, the add also gave consumers a chance to enter into the bank’s draw for pairs of match tickets.
Comment
Santander is one of three platinum sponsors of the 2015 Copa América (along with Kia and MasterCard) currently trying to balance the activation of its expensively acquired tournament rights with potential backlash stemming from the FIFA scandal.
A tough challenge for any partnership marketer.
But Santander’s approach based around families and good causes ought to help guard against any potential sponsor brand backlash and criticism.
It will be interesting to see how the other partners address the challenge.
The tournament sponsors, who have been signed by WeMatch (the trade name of the joint enterprise between Traffic Sports, Full Play and Torneos y Competencias’ Datisa) consists of 10 partners split across five tiers.
In addition to the three top platinum partners (reported to have invested US$5m on rights), there is one gold partner in the form of telecoms sponsor Claro.
The next level sees DHL, Kellogg’s and Coca-Cola act as silver sponsors, while the official suppliers are LAN & TAM airlines and Canon and the local sponsor is AirBnB.
All sponsors are understandably weighing up the challenge of maximising their partnership investment with the issue of whether heavy activation spend at a time when football (including Latin American football associations, key figures and Traffic Sports itself) is mired in the FIFA scandal which cold lead to damaging the brand of both the property and its sponsors.
Links:
Santander Chile YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/user/SantanderChile/videos
Santander Chile Website:
Santander Chile Google+:
https://plus.google.com/106746109829288853341/videos
Copa America 2015 Website:
