Nick Barron is CEO of MediaCom MENA
“Congratulations to Tokyo on winning the bid for the 2020 Olympics. Sport is still unique in its ability to generate consistent and enduring excitement and drama, and as a result sport partnerships have never been more powerful or more effective than they are today for marketers. Sport can help brands to build a connection with an audience. Maybe in part that is because sport is often what brands aren’t – unexpected, exciting and tantalising in nature.
Sport sponsorship is a $50 billion industry that’s grown at twice the rate of traditional advertising in the past decade, according to Kantar. It has evolved from simple logo placement and a bit of hospitality, to all-encompassing deals including infra-structure, full media rights and talent usage to allow brands to create an engaging experience for consumers, and allow them to offer content opportunities across multiple platforms.
In many ways sport is the epitome of an integrated strategy and execution. The consumer connection is at the heart of everything and delivery channels are driven by customer demand. Yet when does the sport strategy of a client ever appear on a media brief? More importantly, when do media agencies work at understanding and incorporating this fundamental communication relationship in their communication planning? If media agencies genuinely want to be at the client’s intellectual top table we need to become fully integrated into the consumer mindset and include all channels in our thinking.
London didn’t win because it put together a plan to run a sporting event over five weeks or so, but because it created a huge programme to culminate in a genuine legacy that included everything from stadia, transport, competitors, spectators, media, volunteers and hospitality to name just a few, but all joined up, mutual and focussed on a single goal. Now that’s integration.”
