Feature: Rugby World Cup: still time to learn from football

This year’s Rugby World Cup will be more heavily sponsored, in increasingly sophisticated ways, than ever before. The question is: Will sponsors get worthwhile returns on their investments? Everyone knows that merely ‘badging’ events delivers insufficient stand-out, but this barely scratches the surface of sponsorship’s pitfalls. More alarmingly, there seems to be little difference between various brands’ communications to sports fans. This is not helped by the continual use of star endorsement.

Potential rugby sponsors should remember the last football World Cup. Apart from ‘sports-based’ brands, all communications seemed to be from just three obvious platforms, with World Cup stars bolted-on for credibility. Nationalist jingoism was used in sectors as diverse as credit, confectionery and lager. For FMCG and grocery brands, the way forward came from using the tournament as a big event. A third assortment of brands mainly opted for a simple message claiming a passion for football.

So, how do brands make sporting links work without blowing budget on high-priced stars?

The answer is creativity. Brands need to be more creative in their activation, particularly in their communication platforms. If brands are to become involved with sport, they need to prove that they are passionate and that they care. This is the only way to hit key opinion formers and benefit from the trickle-down effect that turns fans into consumers.

For obvious reasons, McDonald’s has needed to work harder than most on building credibility. However, through its sponsorship of grass-roots football, McDonald’s identified a shortage of coaches. It campaigned to recruit more than 10,000 across the UK, a target hit in a little over three years. This is a great example of a brand identifying an issue that resonates with its target market and reacting positively, thus creating credibility and much-needed brand affinity.

For real engagement with sports fans, brands need to invest in them. Steve Bruce, iconic ex-player and now football manager, said recently that the average fan is being priced out of attending matches regularly. A day or so after his comments on player salaries, it was announced that David Beckham will ‘earn’ £500,000 per week from his next contract in the USA. Almost simultaneously, we heard that Beckham’s replacement as England captain had signed a new £120,000-per-week deal with Chelsea. Surely a backlash against such salaries is imminent? If not, football as we know it is not sustainable. Rugby has yet to reach such a state - but it could.

Brands should look beyond the easy answer of star endorsement, considering other aspects of sport. The Rugby World Cup offers potential for highly-visible investment in a host of sport-for-community programmes, rather than appearing to boost the bank balances of already overpaid professionals. Brands could even invest in the fans themselves, looking at ways to improve the day-to-day reality of peoples’ lives as rugby fans.

Research around football’s World Cup showed that sponsors were often missing their targets through insufficient regard for supporters and their needs. Unless brands take heed of the lesson before rugby fans head for France in October, the same could happen with the Rugby World Cup.