Marketing communications strategies and applications

Marketing Communications and Sports

Increasingly marketers are turning to professional sports to strengthen their brands by associating them with exceptional athletes, as is the case with Buick aligning itself with Tiger Woods on the PGA (Fitzgerald 2002) or Phil Mickelson with his Accenture-branded golf hat (Stogel, 2004). The same holds true for both commercially-oriented and consumer brands sponsoring NASCAR teams. Take for example the sponsorship of driver Tony Stewart by Home Depot over the last few years and the double-digit growth in ladder sales whenever he wins a race and climbs up a Home Depot ladder when he accepts the trophy to see everyone on the infield (Ferriss, 2005). Advertisers are seeing significant return on investment (ROI) from sponsorships in the NBA, major league baseball (MBL), the NHL in addition to NASCAR and the PGA. One group of researchers has gone so far as to quantify the impact financially on a company's performance of a celebrity endorsement (Farrell, Karels, Monfort, McClatchey, 2000) with this specific study citing the gains in Nike's branding performance based on Tiger Wood's successive victories at tournaments. The intent of this introduction is to define how advertisers create marketing communications programs that capitalize on the unique strengths of each of the sports mentioned. Beginning with the PGA and NASCAR, this introduction looks at the marketing communications strategies that advertisers rely on to gain the ROI on their marketing investments that make corporate sponsorships and co-marketing programs so lucrative.

Marketing Communications Strategy Formulation Begins With the Audience

The main attraction of NASCAR is the solid foundation of men fans, many of which do not watch any other televised sport, and the growing women fan base for the sport as well (Garrison, 2004). Sponsoring a racing team, advertising during these events, relying on co-marketing and co-branding opportunities all lead to get levels of awareness and credibility of specific brands. In the case of golf, the demographics also are gradually changing to a more youthful and more diverse demographic that increasingly includes women. As the ROI analysis completed (Farrell, Karels, Monfort, McClatchey, 2000) illustrates, the Nike brand does increase in value when Tiger accumulates wins, so the investment in celebrity endorsements from a golf standpoint is quite valuable. Advertisers have become more focused on the evolving demographics of these sports, concentrating the marketing communications strategies defined here to reach and eventually sell to these consumers.

Constructing Marketing Communications Strategies Capitalizing on Sports Marketing

Advertisers are increasingly relying on a multi-channel based approach to launching new products into the PGA and NASCAR markets. The marketing channels include websites specifically dedicated to these sports, extensive co-branding and co-marketing through a series of direct mail campaigns, with television commercial production and commercial air time purchases being the majority of their budgets. The marketing communication strategies also rely extensively on local and national events in addition to the races or golf tournaments their sponsored athletes are in. What follows is a break down the typical advertisers' marketing communications strategy as it relates to both the PGA and NASCAR, with exceptions noted:

Concentrating on strengthening the brand with the sponsored athlete or racing team is top priority. As NASCAR is the fastest growing sport in the U.S. today (O'Keefe, Schlosser, 2005) sponsorship revenues in this sport have soared to over $1.5B annually. Having a sponsored driving team and driver win can easily result in over $1.5M in media exposure instantly, and as Home Depot has mentioned publicly, a double-digit gain in ladder sales alone with their driver wins. It is the aligning of their brands with their drivers, and in the case of the PGA, with their golfers, which yields the greatest ROI on marketing communications budgets.

Extensive use of websites and e-mail promotions including blogs and social networking is becoming commonplace in product introductions. The examples of how Buick launched their entirely new series of cars (Fitzgerald, 2002) are a case in point, as is the sponsorship of Rusty Wallace by Harley Davidson. What advertisers do as an integral part of their marketing communications strategies is create small or what are sometimes called "micro sites" and heavily populate them with keywords that the advertiser pays for advertisements on Google with. This marketing technique is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and the use of Google AdWords advertisements gives advertisers both organic and paid search advantages when a potential customer uses Google to find out what's new with their favorite driver or golfer. A prime example of an advertiser using this technique of creating a micro site, populating it with keywords and then relying both on Google AdWords in addition to organic search through Google itself is EA Sports. Using this marketing communications strategy on the Web, EA Sports' link comes up on Google before Nike, which is quite a feat given how much Nike invests in Tiger Woods' sponsorship. EA Sports also works with bloggers to get the word out on their most anticipated games in the areas of the PGA and NASCAR.

Event marketing is critical. Advertisers rely heavily on the actual events their sponsored athletes or driving teams participate in to get millions of dollars of exposure on television and the Internet they would otherwise have to pay for. Dale Jarrett's key sponsor is the United Parcel Service (UPS), and it is common to see their rotating banners at events and commercials during major NASCAR races he competes in. In golf, Accenture, Buick, EA Sports in the U.S. And BMW in Europe have become synonymous with golf tournaments. The intention of these vents is to continually reinforce brand leadership in each of the specific markets that the advertisers gain access to through these sports. it's all about attracting the segments of a market most likely to purchase the advertiser's product.