Daily Research News Online no. 1837

Sponsorship or Not?

August 30 2002

When it comes to major sponsorship events like the World Cup, non-sponsoring companies can choose to take a back seat, or they can apply clever marketing strategies to offset the heavy exposure and endorsement of a competitive brand sponsorship, according to findings from a recent ACNielsen Online study.

The ACNielsen Online Omnibus polled nearly 8,000 Internet users between 13 - 31 July across 13 markets in the region, including Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.

Surveyed on their unprompted recall of World Cup sponsors, consumers provided some interesting insights into the power of non-sponsor marketing tactics. 'Australians correctly nominated a number of the key sponsors, such as Hyundai, McDonalds, Coca Cola, MasterCard and Adidas. However, they also nominated a number of other competitive non-sponsors such as Nike and Pepsi', said Tom Markert, group chairman, ACNielsen Pacific.

Despite new Australian regulatory guidelines, the introduction of tougher legislation does not appear to have deterred non-sponsor marketers from creative advertising communications around major sporting events.

So how do non-sponsors protect their brands' positioning during a major sponsorship event such as the World Cup? Are non-sponsors becoming smarter at implied relationship advertising? 'To limit the impact of heavyweight sponsorship against their brands, non sponsors appear to have adopted 'creative' strategies, portraying a sense of association with the event category to ensure consumer awareness and recall of their brand,' said Markert.

Across the Asia Pacific region, Coca-Cola achieved the greatest recall, with 19.5% of respondents mentioning them as World Cup sponsors. Coca-Cola's impact was even greater in Japan (39.4%), Malaysia (36.5%) and China (34.1%). Rival Pepsi, although not an official sponsor of the World Cup, was recognised as an official sponsor by 3.6% of respondents. Pepsi achieved nearly as high recognition in India (13.3%) as official sponsor Coca-Cola (15.6%). In Australia, recall of Coca Cola as sponsors was 6.2% compared to Pepsi, 2%.

Pepsi ran advertisements featuring a David Beckham led soccer team competing against a soccer team of Japanese Sumo wrestlers. The communication was topical, amusing, involving and aided Pepsi's 'sponsorship' recall by respondents across the region. Adidas was the most associated sports brand with the World Cup, with 17.7% of respondents in Asia Pacific spontaneously recalling them as an official sponsor of the games. Key markets for Adidas were Malaysia (30%) and Indonesia (27.8%). In Australia, recall of Adidas was 5.4%.

Nike and Pepsi were among the high profile, global marketing companies who advertised tactically and comprehensively in the lead-up, during and post World Cup period. The regional average recall for Nike as a sponsor was 8.4%, but they achieved nearly as high awareness as Adidas in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.

'For Adidas, who spent a reported AUD$65 on their global sponsorship deal, unaided recall across the Asia-Pacific region was just double that of non-sponsor Nike, who used an ad campaign featuring The Cage - Soccer tournaments in a Tanker starring high profile World Cup Soccer stars'.

Nike pre-empted the World Cup launch by staging an online 'secret tournament' in April. The campaign started with a mysterious scorpion floating its way across the pages of several sports related sites. Once clicked on the scorpion, visitors were directed to the 'Nike secret tournament' site where they could try to tip the winner of the upcoming tournament.

Metro and regional TV ads were used to promote the 'secret tournament' and web site. In April, an online banner component was also used in the campaign. Both the TV ads and online ads directed people to the nikefootball.com website where they could play their own tournament, register for Nike events, and review the 'secret tournament' games and results. Nielsen//NetRatings BannerTrack for April showed over 290,000 Australians saw the online on average more than 3 times.

'Recall aside, Adidas have since claimed an 11% increase in its order backlog - an important indicator of future sales - for the last quarter, compared with 7% for Nike,' said Markert.