How brands can score at UEFA's Euro 2012 tournament

How brands can score at UEFA’s Euro 2012 tournament

19 July 2011 No Comment

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With UEFA’s Euro 2012 European Cup less than 12 months away, marketers and brands have a fantastic opportunity to cash-in on a lucrative sporting extravaganza around the world’s most popular sport. But many companies are missing out because they either don’t understand how they can use it effectively or because they are concerned about the legal implications for non-official sponsors attempting to align themselves with the event.

Promotional activity around the Euros doesn’t just have to be along the lines of some of the more infamous Guerrilla marketing techniques that were synonymous with the Fifa World Cup in South Africa. Instead, by thinking as creatively as possible around the issue, brands can realise some fantastic ways of getting a slice of the promotional pie without falling foul of any legal guidelines.

However, even the most creative promotional idea can still go wrong if brands don’t put the proper planning and risk management. So, here are the most important things, we believe, brands need to consider if they want to maximise the promotional potential of this sporting spectacle.

Plan ahead

The first thing to do is make sure that you enter into the pre-planning stage as soon as possible – with big events like this, the sooner you know what you are doing the better, otherwise you are likely to be left chasing everyone else’s coat tails.

But beyond that, the closer you get to any major sporting event the more expensive any promotional insurance cover will become. For example, we had an insurance quote for one of our clients based on England winning the Fifa World Cup in South Africa and it was half that of the cover they eventually had to buy a month before the event.

Brands need to get into the planning stage as soon as possible… and with around 12 months to go, now is the time to get the ball rolling.

Think creatively

There is also a lack of knowledge about how best to creatively devise promotions to take advantage of this massive European sporting event. While legal guidelines preclude unofficial self-affiliation with UEFA Euro 2012 logo and name, there are still opportunities for non-sponsor brands to exploit the events.

Here marketers can learn major lessons from much of the more refined marketing activity linked to the FIFA World Cup, 2010. Although still bound by the similar legalities surrounding logo and name usage as the Olympics, brands were able to align themselves with the World Cup, despite not being official sponsors. For example, Mando helped a major electrics manufacturer run a pan-European promotion offering people that bought their products the chance to win their money back if their country won the “summer’s hottest football tournament”.

If you’re concerned about the viability of any of your promotional concepts, the Institute of Promotional Marketing can offer support and advice to brands in this area.

Keep it simple

We’ve found that the more basic the mechanics of a promotion are, the more people will buy into it. For example, stay away from basing your promotion on the performance of specific people. If they are injured your promotion is going to fail and as these things need to be sorted out several months in advance there is no chance of reworking your promotion. The above example works well in this case basing promotion on a country’s performance not an individual’s.

During the last Olympics we ran a promotion for official sponsor Powerade, which allowed consumers to find special tops with different events on. If England won a gold medal in that category then you could claim a cash prize; simple but effective.

Get the right cover

As the Powerade example also demonstrates, sporting events can be unpredictable, with Team GB bringing home its biggest ever haul of gold medals, and in some unexpected areas. Had they not taken a fixed fee cover option the promotion could have ended up costing them more than they had budgeted. We calculated, based on past history and current performance, the areas where the team were likely to perform better and then managed the overall risk by advising on the frequency that each sport appeared on the bottle caps. Based on this we supported Powerade’s promotion for a set, one-off figure regardless of the outcome.

Source: www.utalkmarketing.com