Greg Hall, CMO of MoneyGram.
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In January 2022, MoneyGram became the title partner of the MoneyGram Haas F1 Team, a racing team competing in one of the most technologically advanced sports in the world, the F1 World Championship.
The pond is small here, with only 10 companies in the world that own naming rights to a team. We as a company are far from the “big fish” here, alongside the likes (and massive marketing budgets) of household names with decades of sports sponsorship experience like Red Bull, Oracle, Ferrari and Mercedes Benz.
We were on the hunt for a team that would naturally become a strategic partner, enabling us to play up our unique strengths and reach new heights together. And with the investment that we were considering in a sponsorship of this size, it was absolutely critical that we get this right.
When marketing via sports teams, it can be tough to prevent becoming just a shiny sticker on a car or a patch on a uniform. Through our search, we learned that building a successful sports sponsorship strategy should provide brands with an authentic, relevant story to tell their target audiences with a partner that shares the brand’s goals and values.
How Can You Find The Perfect Partner?
Let’s start from the beginning and discuss the benefits of sports sponsorships and how they can become a powerful form of marketing.
According to a recent SportsPro report, sports generated $8.6 billion in sponsorship value for brands in 2022, with brands like Nike, Adidas and Emirates the heavy hitters. It is a fact that sponsoring high-level teams can almost always bring more eyeballs to your brand. Soccer has an estimated global viewership of 3.5 billion fans annually. Basketball and American football are smaller with 400 million viewers (still not too shabby).
Moreover, there are few other branding/marketing opportunities available to reach a truly worldwide audience. Soccer is popular on just about every continent, and cricket draws many fans from Asia-Pacific and the U.K. For F1’s part, global interest is surging, helped by the hit Netflix series “Drive to Survive.” F1 race weekends averaged 1.21 million viewers per event during the 2022 season—up 28% from the 2021 record.
But not every sport and not every team will provide a uniform benefit to each brand, so how can you select the right partner?
The biggest questions marketers should be asking themselves are:
1. What are your business goals and expectations for this partnership?
2. Do they align with the goals and expectations of the team, sport’s governing body and/or event?
I’ll be first to admit that the process of searching for a sponsorship partner can be overwhelming. Here is a framework my team and I used to select our opportunity:
1. Develop A List Of Brand Synergies
What are the mutual values and objectives?
With your brand piggybacking on the team’s or league’s embedded fan base, geographic reach and social media influence, perhaps the most important aspect of an authentic partnership is ensuring you share business values and goals.
You will be leveraging the brand equity of the sport and your partner, so it is important to ensure alignment of their brand attributes with those you want to amplify.
If your brand is all about tech innovation, ensure your sport/partner utilizes technology to enhance the fan experience and competition.
Is your company seen as a “challenger brand” in a dynamic marketplace? Consider partnering with an up-and-coming team defying the old guard at the top of the league.
2. Dig Deep Into Audience Strategy
Who are you speaking to?
Every team, league and sport boasts different demographics and psychographics: household income, gender, age, geographic reach and more.
Do your research before investing. Hold your prospective partners’ feet to the proverbial fire to obtain their most recent data on audience metrics and personas. And be certain you know their future plans for audience engagement.
Are they doubling down to grab more mindshare from their current fan base? Do they intend to reach out to new, untapped audiences? Use this intelligence to determine where your current and potential customers overlap with the team’s current and future followers.
3. Assess Goals For Brand Ethos And Messaging
What are you trying to accomplish?
It sounds simple, but it is critical to understand and stay true to what you are trying to achieve. Are you aiming to generate overall awareness? Or are you trying to amplify specific brand attributes and/or generate a change in perception? The answers help you stay rooted in what KPIs will be critical.
As you move through the process, it’s easy to get enticed by the flashiness of sports marketing. But having the “why” established upfront will help you navigate opportunities objectively. If you are looking to truly invigorate your brand, seek out a partner whose ethos and messaging align closely with yours.
Key Takeaways
Along the path of navigating our new sports sponsorship, we remained focused on finding an opportunity to truly differentiate our brand and influence how our customers (old and new) would perceive our brand.
We learned a critical point that every marketer should keep in mind: Be willing to consider doing exactly what other brands are not doing. Do not be afraid to try eyebrow-raising strategies, especially when your brand is seeking to punch above its weight in marketing campaigns.
It blew some people’s minds that we jumped into the F1 world. This was the cut-through we were seeking. In the first few months following our announcement, the media narrative changed from “surprise” to the “why” of our sponsorship. We leaned into MoneyGram’s focus on progressive innovation and F1’s legacy as the most technologically advanced motorsport, and that synergy helped others begin to see us for the company we’ve become.
As other brands flocked toward the top teams in the sport, we were willing to consider the “non-obvious,” and we gained a collaborative partner that is now dedicated to enhancing our brand, just as we are to theirs.
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