NewsLine Column: Pushing Sport To The Sidelines
Over the last few years, advertising during sporting events has become big business for brands. However, James Papworth, ad marketing manager at IPC Prospector, claims that paid-for magazines provide a valuable opportunity for marketers to target non-sports fans.
Johnny Wilkinson may be bored with seeing his world cup winning drop goal (The Sun, 6th Feb) but I’m not. I enjoy watching rugby, and I think the sight of us getting one over the swaggering Aussies, in their back yard, is great. Particularly after two hours of alternately cheering, screaming at the television and being unable to watch.
Millions of other fans feel the same – we all love to see the ‘local hero’ do well.
Watching the local boys/favourite team, in any sport is a passionate affair, often a torrid relationship, and one that media owners are secretly jealous of.
For years now, above-the-line media have been talking about the relationship their consumers have with the brands they buy and, buy into. They talk about how their brands exist within consumers’ lives, how consumers’ are inspired by them, and how they aspire to be like them. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s true, arguably more so in paid-for consumer magazines than any other medium.
Readers do feel strongly about their titles. They believe and trust the editorial, to an extent the adverts too, and they get upset if they can’t get their regular copy. But would they travel 300 miles and stand for 2 hours in freezing rain to read a magazine, which does take about 2 hours on average? (QRS) Probably not, but hundreds of thousands will do it for football and rugby and the like.
They’ll cheer in support, cry with victory, scream at foul play, cry with defeat and then do it all again the following week. Aside from family, friends, Queen and Country, sport is the biggest passion we have – and advertisers have taken it over.
In the old days sport was pretty much ‘something for the weekend’ in as much as it was World of Sport or Grandstand on a Saturday with maybe the Big Match or Ski Sunday to follow. And it was for just for men.
Advertisers were nonplussed about appearing after the darts and before the wrestling, audiences were there for the big events (FA Cup Finals etc) but not as a matter of course, and the sponsors, if they existed at all, were local businesses.
Nowadays sport is 24/7, audiences are huge, sponsors are multi-national conglomerates and advertisers pay enormous sums to appear in the half-time break – except ones with Janet Jackson in.
With so much pride and passion involved in sport it’s no surprise that big business wants to associate with it. Take O2, for instance, sponsors of the England rugby team. Its hard to ‘feel’ real passion for a phone, but put Johnny Wilkinson in an O2 emblazoned shirt (my wife prefers him in no shirt) while he kicks the winning goal and by association O2 are an ‘alright’ company.
How many press sccs, TV news editorial seconds and grams of goodwill that generated is hard to say, but from an ROI perspective, it did give their Christmas sales a shot-in-the-arm.
Advertisers have a slightly different agenda for being there. While popping up right in the middle of the feel-good factor of success does no harm, it can’t be predicted.
What can be predicted is the opportunity to appear in front of millions of advertising-shy men, all at once. An opportunity too good to pass up. And rates go up accordingly.
And that’s the rub. Since the exponential rise of the cult of sport, advertisers who don’t want/need to be associated with it, or pay the premium for being active during sports-fests such as Euro 2004 or Olympics 2004 (and that’s 15% of the year just there) are forced into looking elsewhere.
With mainstream television, national press and outdoor space under pressure, and prices rising, where do non pro-sport advertisers go?
Well the cinema is nice, but that’s an infrequent activity, radio has frequency, but they talk ‘sport’ between all the records, so how about uhm – magazines. Yes the ‘quiet man’ of media.
Magazines are doing OK. Volume sales are up again and the number of different consumer titles available has increased 3% year on year to 3,229, second only to the USA.
Magazines are the only main medium to have had sustained ad revenue growth every year in the past decade and the Periodical Publishers association (PPA) has officially badged 52 Magazine Advocates, tasked with promoting the best use of magazine advertising among agencies and clients.
More to the point, aside from sports titles, magazines are the only mainstream medium which during sports-fests, are sports-free.
For those ladies not particularly interested in Brazil vs Costa Rica, the women’s beach volleyball or even the Six nations (now that Wilkinson is out) magazines provide entertainment on a range of subjects in which they are interested. And that’s where advertisers will find them. ‘An easy three points’ as they say in rugby.
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