Most people like watching sport and big brands love sports sponsorship. The theory is that if a company or brand associates itself with popular and emotional events, then the consumers of those events will have a warmer feeling towards the sponsor brand when spending their money.

Sports sponsorship is a crowded space. Sponsorship intermediary Onside counts 58 different sports sponsors competing for attention of Irish adults. In the GAA arena alone, Allianz sponsors the national league, rival AIG sponsors the Dublin football team, Lidl sponsors Ladies GAA, Littlewoods recently announced a new association with hurling and camogie, while AIB, eir and Supervalu share sponsorship of the football championship.

Vodafone Ireland, with 2.3 million customers and annual turnover of €985m, used to be involved with the GAA too, sponsoring the All-Star awards for decades and more recently the Dublin football team. Now the company’s sports focus is the Ireland rugby team, after a four-year deal with the IRFU was inked in May 2016.

Emotional Headspace

February and March will be a busy time for Anne Mulcahy, Vodafone’s Head of Brand & Communications. Everyone expects Ireland to do well in the RBS 6 Nations championship, and the organisers have scheduled Ireland v England at the Aviva Stadium as the final game in the competition. There could be a lot of euphoria around the country after that match, and Mulcahy’s task is to make sure Vodafone garners some of the emotional headspace.

There have already been some dry runs. When Ireland played the All Blacks in Chicago last November, Vodafone streamed live behind the scenes images into pubs around the country and onto a digital billboard in Dublin city centre. The company organised and paid for a documentary on the team’s tour of South Africa last summer which was aired on RTE television. Another programme on the victory over the All Blacks in Chicago airs on Feb.25.

In Association with

On the technical side, Vodafone has boosted network capacity around the Aviva Stadium so that fans can share selfies without fuss. For the three autumn series matches, the number of calls, texts and data consumed at games was twelve times higher than in 2015 before the Vodafone network was upgraded.

There is another big sponsor in the rugby space – Guinness, one of the lead sponsors of the 6 Nations tournament. According to Onside research, Guinness tops the league of most appealing sports sponsors, with one in ten Irish adults singling out the beer brand for special recognition.

Category Players

Anne Mulcahy, who joined Vodafone six years ago, used to work in Diageo, so she’s very aware of how important rugby sponsorship is for the Guinness brand. “There are many companies and categories that want to associate with rugby and if you view sponsorship as a partnership then everyone has a role to play,” she says.

“I'm not going to look over my shoulder at what Guinness is doing, as they have a different role because of their category. Our role is about connecting fans and the Guinness role is quite different. The rugby sponsorship is a way for us to drive affinity to our brand by connecting people inside what we call it the velvet rope. We are starting to see our spontaneous awareness grow but our game is not just about visibility, it’s about engaging with our customers.”

Ironically, the brand that used to adorn Irish rugby shorts doesn’t even exist anymore in Ireland. O2 disappeared when the company was taken over by Three, and now Three has a sponsorship focus on the national soccer team.

Mulcahy had long identified the national rugby team as a sponsorship target. “Vodafone is a global brand with local roots. GAA was good in this regard but our association with the Dublin football team was too narrow because we are a national brand and, let’s face it, not everyone loves the Dubs. We needed a property that fits in with our values and has potential to activate and connect with our consumers.”

Brand Personality

In Mulcahy’s view, forging a connection beyond the monthly bill statement is very important. “We are a brand that provides a service and it’s not like marketing a beer. It’s a less tangible and we really want to develop a personality and to be part of local dialogue. I read somewhere that when Ireland beat New Zealand in Chicago, it was one of the happiest days of the year for thousands of Irish people. Being part of that dialogue is really important to us.”

She adds: “Our brand purpose is to bring people closer to the people and things that matter most to them. The IRFU is about connecting fans to rugby and growing it as a sport that people are passionate about. There is a lot of commonality in what our purposes are, so that’s another thing that was a good fit for us.”

O2/Three paid the IRFU €2.65m a year for its rugby team sponsorship rights. The value of the Vodafone deal wasn’t disclosed, with press reports speculating on €15m over the four years. Sponsorship activation costs – advertising and below the line activity - generally amount to two-thirds of the headline sponsorship fee, and sponsorship payments plus activation costs can account for up to 20% of a corporate’s annual marketing budget.

Ad agency Target McConnell’s came up with #TeamOfUs as the key tag line for the Vodafone sponsorship. PSG Sponsorship is leading the PR and sponsorship activation and media buying is handled by MEC Global.

Activation Strategy

“How we activate and engage the fans is really important to all parties,” Mulcahy explains. “It’s important to the IRFU because they want to grow the popularity of rugby. Our strategy is to show how the team works, what the players’ routines are before they get to the match. It’s about bringing people closer to the players and feeding their passion and interest for rugby. All of our activations aim to take Irish sports fans beyond the 80 minutes on the rugby pitch and show the people behind the players.”

To assist with the activation piece, Vodafone is engaging the services of players Robbie Henshaw and Jamie Heaslip to act as brand ambassadors. “We have innovative plans to collaborate with Jamie and Robbie to create unique events and experiences that demonstrate a real insight into Irish rugby and create the most interconnected team and fan base in the world,” says Mulcahy.

Another tangible benefit of the IRFU sponsorship is that Vodafone secures priority access to good seats, handy for rewarding enterprise customers with a day out. “Everyone in the company from chief executive Ann O’Leary across all the senior leadership have really got behind this,” Mulcahy adds. “For me it is really important that everyone in the company takes ownership of the sponsorship. It’s something we are really proud of and that we want to make work. It’s not just a few brand people looking to generate warm fuzzy feeling.”

As for measuring the effectiveness of the rugby sponsorship, Mulcahy says that the main metric is that more people consider Vodafone when choosing their network provider. “This is about people considering Vodafone and admiring the brand,” Mulcahy explains. “The first thing is to get out there and set out our stall. When you grow consideration, sales will follow.”

Photo: Vodafone’s Anne Mulcahy with brand ambassadors Robbie Henshaw (left) and Jamie Heaslip