Happy New Year. Top 10 stories of 2009.

By the time this post goes out via our daily email, Australia and New Zealand will have already left 2009 and the ‘noughties’ behind. It’s been an interesting year and an even more interesting decade.

Thanks to you for reading and helping Yachtsponsorship to achieve huge growth in 2009. I am always thrilled to find out that this site is considered a ‘must read’ by many influentual people in the business, not just of sailing, but sports marketing and sponsorship.

Happy New Year. See you in 2010

Here are our top stories of 2009, determined by the number of times they were read.

1. Measuring Sports Sponsorship – ROI? ROO?
2. Two More Open 60’s Go Up for Sale.
3. Is Yacht Racing a Pretend Business?
4. The World’s Top 200 Sports Properties? Did Sailing Make it?
5. Where to Spend £10 Million… in Sailing
6. Sponsorship Value – The Commerical case for a DOG Match.
7. The Changing Face of Yacht Racing. Oman Sail Launches A100.
8. Louis Vuitton World Series Shows Promise.
9. iShares Cup 5th Man – The Best Seat in Sport?
10. Who’d Sponsor AC33?

Your top story not in the list? Let us know in the comments below which was your top story of 2009 and why.

BluQube’s Sailing Sponsorships Deliver 500% Return.

A while back, we interviewed Simon Kearsley; CEO at Accounting Software Vendor bluQube. Simon has written a piece for business website Fresh Business Thinking outlining again why he uses sailing as a platform for achieveing his marketing goals.

Here are some excerpts from the article…

In the beginning, we looked at a range of different sports sponsorship but finally eliminated these in favour of sailing. We felt that this sport uniquely had the right attributes to complement our own company identity and product branding and were convinced that many of our target audience such as CFOs, Finance Directors and other senior managers would share an affinity with sailing.

Many often feel that sponsorship is a bit of a luxury and is one of the first things to go when marketing budgets are squeezed. For bluQube though it has been a completely different story, one that many other organisations could learn from.

Like many companies we operate in a highly competitive marketplace often against rivals that sell similar solutions but may have far larger marketing budgets. Like other forms of PR, sponsorship can help level the playing field as well as promote you as different from the rest of the pack.

As a result of sponsorship bluQube has gone from an unknown brand to becoming a key player in the accounting software world. But how has this happened? The mistake that many organisations make regarding sponsorship is that they sign a deal, part with the funding, then sit back and wait for something to happen. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that and the size of the return will be proportional to the effort and conviction you put into the project.

What Dreams are made of

The advantage of sailing sponsorship is that it gives you the opportunity to present an on-going human interest commentary often tied into events within the sailing calendar. Amongst other races such as the FastNet, the OSTAR was Katie’s biggest challenge and attracted the most interest, not only from the media but also amongst our existing customers and prospects. What was even better though was that Katie, aged 22, also managed to set a record for being the youngest ever female competitor to finish the race. This is the kind of press you can only dream of and translated into pages of coverage in national (The Sunday Times), business (Management Today) and lifestyle (Womens Fitness) press. In parallel we ran a series of communications with existing and potential customers which kept them updated with Katie’s progress. We even created our own bluQube blog which was hugely popular.

Get the balance right

My advice to others contemplating sponsorship is that you need to consider how it fits into your overall plan.
If it’s just stuck out on a limb and has no part in all your other marketing messages and campaigns then you could waste a big part of your investment because not enough people know about your sponsorship and it may jar with the rest of your branding.

500% return

From our own experience I can confidently say that the return so far from our investment has been as much as 500%, which is staggering when you look at typical ROI from other types of marketing expenditure such as advertising.

What can sailing sponsorship deliver

• Unique hospitality and networking events for existing and prospective customers (e.g. Sailing days etc.)
• Beating the gatekeeper – information on sailing can break down the usual barriers of getting in front of decision makers
• Differentiation, credibility and the ability to compete against larger competitors in the marketplace
• Motivation for own staff and understanding/reinforcement of key brand values
• On-going market research
• Lead generation through PR linked to sponsorship
• Visibility of your brand on a national & global stage e.g. bluQube has had branding within the last 12 months in Vendee Globe, Cowes Week, London & Southampton boat shows, FastNet race & The Silicon Cup
• Empathy with target audience due to own interest in sailing giving opportunity to reach prospects in a ’soft’ way
• Full boat branding & opportunity for merchandising e.g. clothing, mugs etc.

www.bluQube.co.uk

Fernando Íñigo on the Sponsorship Benefits of the Audi Med Cup.

It’s September, which means that for the next 12 weeks or so, companies will be looking at their marketing budgets for 2010 and listening to pitches from all kinds of sports looking for sponsorship.

The Audi Med Cup has been steadily growing over the last few years and is recognised by sailors at least as being one of the top events on the world sailing calendar. This has been helped somewhat by the vacuum created by the stalling of the America’s Cup – with teams like Emirates Team New Zealand choosing the Med Cup as a vehicle to keep the team together and practise big-boat sailing.

Sailing makes it really hard for those raising sponsorship by announcing dates and venues too late for the aquisition process, but the Med Cup have already announced their five dates for 2010 helping to de-risk commercial partner’s decisions a little.

The following interview with Fernando Íñigo, Marketing and Communications Director of the Circuit, was released by the series a couple of weeks back.

Audi MedCup: How has the Audi MedCup Circuit developed in relation to what you had hoped for at the start of the season and how close is what we have to what you had hoped for? What have been the particular successes and what has been the feedback from the cities/venues?

Fernando Iñigo:

“The people really like the public village, which the local organisation, the venues and local authorities help to promote through the activities of the Audi MedCup, bringing it all closer to the local population and visitors. That’s something new in 2009, and is an idea that comes from our experience -Santa Mónica Sports- in football, where we have the ‘Club Selección’ related to the Spanish National Selection, a series of activities opened to the public prior to any football match where the Selection plays. We decided to add this idea to the Circuit, and in both cases it has proven to be a real success. We are working to create more content for the race village and to be able to follow racing live from the village.

In general, the interest of the media following the Circuit has reached the goals and has been increasing, especially on the international television front, like there is now an agreement with Eurosport and CNN are broadcasting then there is more interest from local media at each venue. In Spain, for example, we have broadcast agreements with the main TV channels -most importantly TVE, Canal 9 and TeleMadrid- and newspapers -ABC, Marca, El Mundo,…-. The value of the media impact has been growing since we joined the Circuit; considering the six target markets, in 2007 we had around 12.5 million euros, in 2008 around 18.3 million and our goal for 2009 is 23 million -excluding internet coverage-.

We are also very happy with the evolution of the VIP Experience day and have had some great feedback from the VIP’s as one of the best products there is from the sponsor’s point of view.”

AM: How do you convince a sponsor to join the Audi MedCup Circuit?

Fernando Iñigo:

” The Audi MedCup Circuit is got a great balance between investment, media impact -return-, brand exposure, brand association, and Public Relations return. I would also say that it is very unique in some of those aspects in the sports’ arena. In order to make that information credible, we contract the best companies in auditing and measuring the information and numbers, not just in terms of quantity, but also in quality. From their data, we calculate the Circuit’s Return On Investment (ROI). That term means the ratio of money gained on an investment relative to the amount of money invested. In general, when that ROI is bigger than 1,2 (120% of the investment) it is considered very good, and when is bigger than 2 (200% of the investment) it is considered Excellent; I can tell you that Audi ROI vastly surpasses the 200%. That ratio is very attractive to any sponsor.”

AM: Commercially this must have been a tough season to keep the Audi MedCup Circuit at the forefront of world sailing?

Fernando Iñigo:

” This year has been a great challenge from the commercial and organisation point of view and we have to invest money in order to not only maintain the level, but also to increase the level with things like the public village, the Virtual Eye and the web site in all six languages. I am sure this will allow us to attract more teams to the Circuit and also more sponsors both for the Circuit and for individual teams.”

AM: What has been the audience and feedback like for the investment in the Virtual Eye viewer and bringing the racing live to the spectator and web viewer?

Fernando Iñigo:

” It is without doubt one of the best evolutions of the Circuit, we have been reaching our maximum with more than 1000 connections each day in each of the two languages, the system is evolving constantly.”

AM: What do you hope for the future of the Circuit?

Fernando Iñigo:

” From the marketing and communication point of view the circuit is on an upward trajectory it is one of the big sports circuit events in Europe now, with good feedback from the media and with excellent support from the Cities and the regional authorities. One of the aspects we want to help with is to see the individual teams consolidate and grow, we want to help with the marketing strategies in order to keep improving the return on investment for sponsors.”

AM: What has been the feedback on the integration of the GP42 Series?

Fernando Iñigo:

” It has been a fantastic success from the sports point of view, from the media point of view and for the image of the Audi MedCup Circuit itself. I am sure the GP42 Series has a good future, increasing the number of teams and keeping the level of competition high.”

AM: Can you see the Spanish sponsorship market improving in 2010?

Fernando Iñigo:

” We have good expectations that the market will recover and reach previous levels , and I also see good synergies with the GP42 Series. We have good expectations as well for other markets, like France, which could mean adding a French team to the Circuit.”

Southampton (Boat?) Show.

It’s hard times, well at least it should be – we keep being told that the world is ending, but sailors are a hardy bunch and rather than let a little economic downturn impact their passion the sport is doing okay. Certainly jobs have been lost, but stil there are a hard-core group of people who want to go sailing. Recent numbers at Cowes Week and entries in the Rolex Fastnet Race bear this out.

Those in the lifestyle side of the business probably have a harder time. Trying to shift the same old white plastic yachts with little or no differentiation in a downturn is a tough gig. How then do you run a boat show and make anyone care?

The Southampton Boat Show recently announced that it would feature the Volvo Ocean Race Experience – a series of themed exhibits to enable visitors the opportunity to re-live the extreme race. As far as we know, none of the manufacturers who sell cruising yachts believe they have anything to gain by sponsoring such a race but at least it is sailing related.

But that’s not enough. Apparently a boat show needs to be more than just a way to showcase the best that the industry has to offer. Visitor numbers have to keep growing to justify costs to exhibitors. So what to do?

Attempt a speed-dating record of course. Someone somewhere in a creative agency has got numbers to back this up. There is probably some MBA type matrix that shows that singles love to buy boats. So why not lure them to an exhibition with the promise of a world record and a glass of champagne and then watch them write a cheque for a Sunseeker?

Mike Enser, an organiser of the PSP Southampton Boat Show, commented with no apparent irony:

“This is speed dating with a difference – not only could our visitors meet their perfect match, they could become a world record holder in the process. Who knows, next year could see our very first wedding held at the Show!”

Maybe the stunt isn’t about boats at all – maybe there is some association between the quickness of speed-dating and the expedition with which the show’s sponsor carries out global freight forwarding.

It’s a real shame that events like the Southampton Boat Show continue the perception that boating is not interesting enough in its own right to make the media. By running a PR stunt like this, the message is – we don’t have enough excitement to offer without a silly gimmick.

There are so many good stories, great companies and interesting people around sailing and boating. Why not celebrate it and promote it instead of desperately dragging people off the street to hit visitor number targets?

Extreme 40s and Gondolas. iShares Cup Opener in Venice.

Forget the lazy romantic pace of a gondola. Venice is about to get a new kind of water based tourist attraction. The extreme 40 catamarans will race in the Italian city in the opening round of the 2009 iShares Cup. Bacino San Marco – Riva Sette Martiri, will host the dynamic, fan friendly series from the 15-17 of May.

The iShares Cup is the European tour for the dynamic Extreme 40 – 40 foot catamarans that “fly” a hull in as little as 8 knots of wind. Providing spectacular sailing footage, and top class racing, in 2009, the iShares Cup will bring top international sailors and their teams right to the heart of cities in a three day regatta, putting on stunning displays of close quarter battles on tight race courses.

Gilles Chiorri, Events Director at OC Events, promoters and race organisers said:

“We have spent the past six months touring Italy to find an ideal venue for the regatta and Venice came top in all our research. The Bacino San Marco provides a perfect grandstand for the general public to watch these amazing catamarans as well as providing good shoreside VIP facilities for our guests and sponsors. It will be the most stunning backdrop to a thrilling spectacle; modern hi-tech racing machines competing in the historic venue of Venice.”

The iShares circus will roll into town on Monday 11 May when the teams start to construct their boats and the VIP and media facilities are built on the banks of the waterway. The boats are highly portable, packed into a 40 foot container, and can be transported anywhere in the world and built in less than a day. Each boat races with a core crew of four professional sailors along with a “fifth man”, a VIP guest or member of the media, who is onboard, racing in the heart of the action.

Rick Andrews, Head of iShares Marketing Europe, the title sponsors of the series, said:

“Italy is a key market for iShares and Venice is the perfect location to host the opening event of the 2009 iShares Cup. One of the key factors making the iShares Cup so unique is the ability to bring sailing to the public by racing right in the heart of the city and Venice offers just that opportunity “

The iShares Cup Venice is strongly supported by Compagnia della Vela, the Venice yacht club. The President, Giorgio Orsoni :

“We are thrilled that such an important international regatta is coming to Venice. In just three years, the iShares Cup has become one of the top five sailing events in the World and we are honoured that it will be visiting our city. Venice and the Compagnia della Vela have the unique opportunity to live again the never forget experience of the Moro di Venezia.”

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