Sports and Marketing:

Identifying customer needs physically and profitably

Premasara Epasinghe

BA(Cey), Dip in Ed, Dip in Mktg, Lecturer, Public Relations Marketing Consultant, author-writer and internationally reputed cricket commentator, recipient of ICC award as a cricket administrator, a former member of the SLC Interim Committee and National Sports Council

Part I

Premasara Epasinghe

The physical activity done, especially, outdoor and indoors for exercise and amusement usually played in a special area and according to fixed rules can be defined as sports. Cricket, soccer, rugby, football, volleyball, hockey, netball, track and field events, athletics, can be considered as outdoor games or sports. Some of the indoor sports are table tennis, boxing, wrestling, chess. These are some of the main sports disciplines.

What is marketing?

Philip Kotler of the North Western University, defined marketing as – human activity directed at satisfying needs and wants through exchange process. According to Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller, marketing can be identified as meeting human and social needs. To put in a nut-shell marketing is meeting needs profitably. According to John A Howard, University of Columbia, marketing is (a) Identifying customer needs, (b) Conceptualising those needs in terms of an organization capacity to produce, (c) Communicating that conceptualisation to the customer.

The true nature of marketing today is not serving the customer, it is outwitting, outflanking (gain an advantage) outfighting your competitors.

In short, marketing is war, where the enemy is the competition and customer is the ground to be won.

An indepth study in detail relating to marketing shows that it is human activity that take place in relation to markets. Marketing means working with markets to actualize potential exchanges for the purpose of satisfying human needs and wants. In short, marketing means “human activity directed at satisfying needs and wants through exchange process.”

If you define marketing broadly it is a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging value with others.

The book titled ‘Effective Public Relations’ written by Scott M Cutlip, Allen H Center, and Glen M Broom, states that marketing is the management function that identifies human needs and wants, offers products and services to satisfy those demands, and causes transactions that deliver products and services in exchange for something of value to the provider. Let us study the value of sports and how it helps to build an image of a company, firm, establishment, organization coined with social and image marketing.

Olympic Games is the pinnacle of the sporting event in the world. This year's 2012 Olympic Games will be held in England in a few months time. This grand event will be viewed by billions of people throughout the world. Marketeers have already spent billions of Dollars and Pounds to get advertising rights, packages to transmit the message of their clients. Why? They know that this event is viewed globally and they know this is the best opportunity, the platform to advertise their products. The people love sports.

Olympics is the greatest sporting event where world's the best champion athletes participate. Thousands of the best athletes in the world compete each other at the Olympics. People will be able to see the ‘fastest man on earth'. Not only the event, but also the individual athletes will also be sponsored.

“Sports and education are the two most powerful weapons which you can use to change the world,” stated the greatest leader of the 20th century Nelson Mandela, who was born on July 18, 1918, at Mvezo, a tiny village in the banks of the Mbashe river in the district of Umata the capital of the Transkei, 800 miles east of Cape Town, 550 miles south of Johannesburg, which lies between the Kei river and Natal border, between the rugged Drakensburg mountains to the south and the blue waters of the Indian Ocean to the east.

Incidentaly, I visited this place, the beautiful Table mountain, Cape of Good Hope, Blomfontaine, capital Pretoria, Kimberly, Kruger, Pillensburg Park, Suncity and Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years), with my son Bhagya, who was an accountant serving at Botswana in 1998. Presently, he is employed and domiciled in Australia with his family.

It was this great leader Nelson Mandela who is considered the greatest man of the twentieth century, who is considered as the ‘Father of the Nation’ – South Africa, who united the country – ‘one country – one nation'.

He used the Rugby World Cup which was played in South Africa as one of the marketing tools to achieve this end, in July 1995. By 1994, Mandela was half way in power. A keen lover of sports – boxing and rugby football, he entrusted his dynamic ministers, the tough challenge of providing housing, education, electricity, and water to those whom apartheid had deliberately denied the basics of a dignified modern life. The 1995 Rugby World Cup was held in South Africa. Nelson Mandela was the first leader to ‘market’ 1995 Rugby World Cup as a tool to build the great nation South Africa to become one country – one nation.

Sports was a real force for the development of a country. In sports, there is no caste, creed or colour. Everyone was equal. For any country to develop or prosper sports and marketing should go hand-in-hand. With proper advice, guidance and motivation given by Nelson Mandela to South African rugby captain Francois Pienaar, an Afrikanar, who grew up in an industrial town, south of Johannesburg called Vereeniging and his team's World Cup victory, helped South Africa to be united under one parasol.

It shows how important sports and marketing for a development of a country.

Further, it was good example to show the importance of co-operate responsibility in developing a nation.

Every market offers a basic idea. In a factory you make products. The stores sell them. Products and services are platforms for delivering an idea. The social marketeers promote these ideas. The popularity of the organization is vital. This is one reason that some of the leading companies, organizations, banks, mercantile firms, offer jobs to leading sports personalities as an ‘image building exercise’ for their organizations.

(Detailed accounts will be given in the part II of this article).

Internationally reputed tennis players, golfers, soccer players, boxers, rugby players, baseball, basketball players, cricketers etc earn billions of Dollars and Pounds through sponsorship packages. Marketing is closely linked to these icons. It is a two-way process. Companies gain the publicity and image building. In the other hand, sports personalities earn ‘big money’ through these sponsorship packages.

What do you mean by the word sponsor?

The most relevant definition that will go with this article is “A person who put forward or guarantee a proposal for a new programme or for a musical, artistic or sporting event, in order to use them for advertising, a person who pays money to charity in return for a specified activity by another person can be described as a sponsor.

In management, there are two basic approaches to measuring the effects of sponsorship activities. These two are supply side method, which focus on potential exposure to brand by assessing the extent of media coverage and demand side method, focuses on the reported exposure from the consumers.

Today, no sports can prosper without sponsors. Therefore in the present context, sports are closely linked with marketing.

In brief let us discuss these two methods, namely supply method, and demand method. The time or space devoted to media coverage of an event can be considered as supply side method.

If you give an example, the number of seconds that the brand is visible on TV screen or column inches in the print media covering an event that mentions the brand. This ‘impression’ transmitted into a ‘value’ in advertising in Dollars, Pounds, Rands, Poola or Rupees. Some believe 30 seconds TV logo exposure can be worth 25 percent of a 30 second TV spot. The ‘demand side’ can explore the ability of event sponsorship on consumers brand knowledge.

Today, many companies promote their bands and corporate name by sponsoring sports, cultural events. Through identity media of the companies obtain a visual identity that the public immediately recognises. These visual identity is carried by company logos, stationery, signs, business forms, business cards, outdoor and indoor hoardings, buildings, dress codes and uniforms.

The sponsorships placed in well targeted sights, derive better results. For example, leading mobile phone companies like Hutchinson (Hutch), Dialog, Mobitel etc advertise their messages in outdoor displays throughout the country.

Sometimes, they use sports personalities in these advertisements. Why? Because these sports personalities will enhance the relevant company image.

For example, as a cricket commentator, I commentated for little more than four decades, and I established my name, my voice to a certain extent, with millions of Sinhala listeners. Recently, Hutchinson company invited me to present cricket updates relating to local and international cricket matches in advertising their Hutch Triple Five Voice Portal Service. I understand that it has given a big advertising mileage to this company.

(To be continued)