EURO 2008

Last summer the European Soccer Championship (EURO 2008) has been played in Swiss and Austria. The head sponsor of the soccer team is Nationale Nederlanden (Dutch bank). The Dutch team was one of the favorites for the title. They performed well in their group C, that wasn’t an easy group, and became group winner. The expectations were high, many people thought that the Dutch team would win EURO 2008, but in the quarter final they lost from Russia, totally unexpected. Everybody was depressed and had negative feelings about the team because they always perform badly at major championships. The last time they won the European Championship was twenty years ago (1988). But the big question is, does the loss of the team has negative influences for the (head)sponsor of the team?

Use of stimulating medicines, a responsibility of a sponsor?

Market research institute MarketResponse researched under more than 400 Dutch people about the effect of negative publicity of a sport event on the sponsors of the event or the participating teams and athletes.

One-third of the respondents get a more negative image of the sponsor, when they sponsor a team or athlete who is accused of the use of stimulating medicine. More than 25% of the respondents say that they will use less products or services when is established that the team or athlete used stimulating medicines.

The reaction of the sponsor on this statement is of major importance for the image of the sponsor. 40% of the respondents declare that they don’t want to purchase products of the sponsor in case they don’t take action. In general they think that the sponsor has to withdraw. 21% of the respondents said that spontaneous. Other actions of the sponsor to react are: fire the athlete, and don’t take the whole team out of the event.

Furthermore MarketResearch concludes that there are divided meanings about the responsibilities of the sponsor. Almost half of the respondents (45%) are of the opinion that a sponsor has to take care that the team or athletes don’t take stimulating medicines. And if they identify stimulating medicines, three-quarter thinks the sponsor attaches no blame.

Negative publicity also just publicity

ABN AMRO has chosen for sponsoring for the Volvo Ocean Race because in their eyes it was the perfect way to bring their brand under world-wide attention. The corporate values of the bank, namely integrity, teamwork, respect and professionalism were compatible with the project.

They invested sixteen months in developing, testing and building of two boats. They paid an amount of 40 million euro to invest in the boat, the crew and the marketing campaign. Against these facts they had a world-wide public of 1.5 billion viewers.

Despite the fact that the risk of sponsoring an individual athlete is more risky than sponsoring of a team, there are enough situations to think of where a sports team comes negative into publicity. But negative publicity does not always have to have a negative effect..

An example here is Hans Horrevoets, he belonged to the crew of the ABN AMRO II. During the seventh stage of the Volvo Ocean Race from New York City to Portsmouth he fell overboard due to a strong storm. It happened 1300 miles out of the coast. The crew tried to revive him, but they were too late.

In Holland there has been a research accomplished to investigate what the effects of sports team non-performance on the corporate brand image of the sponsoring company were. The research is not finished yet, but they can already conclude that in the situation of ABN AMRO it did not had a significant negative effect on the corporate brand image. It even can help, sometimes unintentional and in this case not that proper, realize your communication goals.

Because in the end, negative publicity is just a form of publicity..

“ Wim van Est made a 200-foot fall, his heart stopped, but his Pontiac not at all!”

In 1951, Wim van Est nicknamed Iron William, was the first Dutch cyclist who was wearing the yellow jersey in his first appearance in the Tour de France. He obtained the yellow jersey after joining a small breakaway group during the twelfth stage, which gained eighteen minutes on then race leader Roger Leveque.
Iron William won the sprint out of his group, and not only captured the yellow jersey, but he won also the stage.
The thirteenth day the first appearance of the high mountains with a foray into the Pyrenees. Van Est had never raced in such terrain. He came from a poor family and had not the opportunity to travel very often so had almost never cycled in the mountains. He did well to stay in contact on the both climbs, but his luck soured when he had a flat tire at the summit of the second mountain, he lost three minutes. After this he had to take risks through each of the hairpin turns, eventually locking his brakes through a particularly nasty bend. The frond wheel locked, his tire blew and he sailed over a small wall into what appeared to be an endless abyss. He fell over 200 feet.

Van Est said about it: “I wanted to go left but the bike went straight on…”
Wim van Est suffered only minor scrapes and cuts and wanted to continue the race, but his manager ordered him into an ambulance and taken to the hospital for evaluation. This was the end of his reign in yellow and his bid to complete his first tour.
Back in Holland van Est’s fame grew following the Tour thanks to a successful advertising campaign run by watch maker, Pontiac. As it turned out, the company had given the entire Dutch team watches prior to the race’s start, and they were quick to capitalize on this fact by coining this clever slogan: “ Wim van Est made a 200-foot fall, his heart stopped, but his Pontiac not at all!”

INTRODUCTION

The explosive growth of the amount of medium types, a fragmented public, the emergence of the phenomenon ‘multitasking’ and the continuous increase of the advertisement quantity make it difficult for advertisers to reach the consumer. Interest has become scarce , and as a response will companies search constantly for other manners to reach their target group. Next to it, more and more consumers resist to traditional marketing communication instruments. Advertisement is seen as “dishonest, deceptive, and manipulative (Cornwell, Pruitand Clark, 2005). The unanimity of the supplied products ensure that it is more difficult for companies to distinguish from their competitors, through which they are obliged to outshine in activities around the brand.
Sponsoring seems to be the ideal answer to these developments. It offers advertisers the opportunity to present their self through a non-traditional, creative platform. By tying up with social projects, art, media, science or sports, advertisers are able to associate their brand with specific emotions and in this way, distinguish from their competitors.

Over the previous years, advertisers take more and more initiative to develop sponsor activities. With this, they create platforms that are totally focused on their image and their communication message. A few examples are brands that are the driving force behind a television program. But the most common sport sponsoring events are still the readymade images “off the shelf”. A few examples of existing events in Holland in which sponsors have attached their name are the Volvo Ocean Race, the ABN AMRO tennis tournament, the Samsung Super League (horse riding), the ENECO-tour (cycling), the Essent Cup (speed skating), the TNT Dutch Open (golf) and the Rabo Hoofdklasse (highest division field hockey). These are all examples of how popular sport sponsoring is in practically all divisions of sport.

But in the world of sport sponsoring not everything is always OK. The 2007 edition of the world’s biggest sport event is one to never forget. The pretended lies of the leader of overall placing, Michael Rasmussen, about his accommodation preliminary of the Tour de France and the continuous rumors about his presumed drugs abuse, enforced sponsor Rabobank, to remove him out of the cycling course. This was an unique event in the history of the Tour de France, with only four more course days to go. The ‘affair-Rasmussen’ has brought a lot of different thoughts and meanings. The big question here was, if this affair has damaged the image of Rabobank or that the bank came better out of it.

Is cycling with all her drugs affairs still attractive for sponsors? And more in general: Will the brand image of a sponsor be influenced when a sponsor object does something what not in accordance is with the law, if someone is involved with a scandal, when somebody performs undersized or if somebody comes in the media in a negative way?