AIB’s GAA campaigning between Club and County was heralded as the winner at this week’s Onside Sponsorship ‘Who Won the Summer of Sponsorship’ breakfast in the Aviva Stadium.
Two of the team behind keeping a 26-year campaign so fresh and relevant revealed some of the secrets behind the success.
“When we reviewed our programme of sponsorship in 2013 the AIB Club Championship, in it’s 20th year was ranked as the 22nd best sponsorship in Irish sport,” Group Propositions and Brand Director Brian Keating told us.
“We knew there was a lot of heritage in the campaign and that it had great potential but we knew that had to be unlocked for the justification to continue the support to be possible.”
Keating spoke at a Sport for Business conference on Digital Sport back in 2014 and we can remember the excitement in the launch then of a new video highlighting the Battle of the Islands as part of that year’s Club Championship.
“The whole campaign around the GAA focused on hero content from the dressing room and spectacular moments like the ‘tearing up of the ticket’ we ran at Croke Park on All Ireland Day,” according to Sponsorship Manager Patrick Somers.
A Kerry fan was offered money for their club in return for tearing up their ticket for that day’s final.”
The reaction was fantastic and set us on a path that has led to today.”
“In 2013 we had 30,000 views of GAA related video content,” continued Keating.
“That Tear Up video reached 250,000. It was ‘The Toughest’ Choice and the Toughest campaign grew from there into The Toughest Trade our TFV documentary and then onwards again.”
There was a Kerry inspiration for ‘The Toughest’ as well with Kerry legend and AIB employee key to it.
“Colm told us that all around his home in Killarney there was little by way of medals or photos of his All Ireland triumphs.”
“The only medal on open display, and proudly so, was the one his brother had won for winning the All Ireland Club Championship and if that was the impact in that storied household then that was where we started.”
“We spent time and energy creating the idea of the Club Championship as being the real highlight of the year and then the opportunity arose to partner with the Senior Inter County Championship.”
“that gave us pause for thought alright but we put together our own thinking and our agencies and we decided we could make the transition, once each yaer and then back from “The Toughest” at club level to “Club Fuels County” in the high days of summer.”
“Digital content and especially video remained key to activating both and this year to date we have hit over 20 Million views of content.”
That’s nearly five times the population of Ireland and as fellow Director Mark Doyle told us in an exclusive interview earlier this month, the sentiment scores that the GAA marketing were able to achieve were far ahead of any other form of marketing.
“Good teams don’t rest on their laurels,” said Somers.
“Last year we had moved on with live reactive content and innovation like the 360 Virtual Reality filming we did at Croke Park.”
“In 2017 we focused on four areas.”
“First was to livestream the Junior and Intermediate Club Finals from Croke Park. They drew an audience of 150,000 across 180 countries around the world.”
“Second was to supersize The Toughest trade with Michael Murphy and Lee Chin switching to play Rugby and Ice Hockey in France and Canada.”
“Third was to use the access we have through partnership at the highest level to go ‘Behind the gates’ with Rosccommon for a mini documentary series.”
“Fourth and the ‘king hit’, which had us trending above Justin Bieber, was the Journey to croker with Jeff Stelling and Chris Kamara.”
“It was a winning year and the trick now is to find the core areas we will use to get there again, and maybe beyond in 2018.”
With 76 percent of fellow marketeers rating the campaigns as having delivered in full, the AIB GAA team deserved the acclaim they got. It’s praise though that they wear lightly, never forgetting that the trust which fans place in them is hard won and easily squandered.
So in marketing then as it is in life and where better is there than sport to highlight that again and again.
Well done AIB, winners of the Summer of Sport.
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Image Credit: Dan Sheridan Inpho
