In this series through the early stages of the Euro 2016 tournament we catch up with the main partners of the FAI to discover what they have been doing to activate their relationship with Irish soccer fans and how that might continue through the coming weeks.
First up we spent time with Colum Campbell, The Carlsberg Football Brand Manager with Diageo. Being a native of Northern Ireland and graduate of the University of Ulster he has a double loyalty at the Euros and will be getting to see Northern Ireland play live through the tournament as part of a major Carlsberg gathering in France.
Sport for Business: Carlsberg has a long heritage with the tournament and the FAI. How does this year’s tournament differ from others in terms of your activation?
Colum Campbell: We’ve been proud partners of the FAI for over 20 years now and sponsors of the Euros themselves for even longer and I think it’s fair to say we’ve learned a lot in that time about what the fans want from brand involved with football.
We also have more content being created at a global level than ever before which poses both challenges and opportunities.
The biggest challenge is to ensure we’re still finding a way to cut-through and be relevant with Irish fans when some of our content is being created globally.
In this instance we feel we’ve done a great job with a campaign that celebrates both our FAI and Euros sponsorships.
SfB: We’ve seen the ticket promotion and the idea of making it for the fans. How is that being executed across Ireland and indeed other countries?
CC: We want to make football better for the fans and for us the best way of doing that is making sure we use our unique access as sponsors of the tournament to give fans the thing they crave the most- tickets.
So we’re sending over 1,500 Irish fans over to the tournament to join the green army.
It’s the biggest ticket give-away that we’ve ever done in Ireland and possibly the biggest ticket give away to any international tournament that any brand has ever done in Ireland so it’s very exciting for us and for Irish fans.
We’ve had Marcel Desailly and Emmanuel Petit over during the build up and their status in the game and place within our marketing has generated a lot of positive engagement.
SfB: What are you doing in social and mainstream media through the tournament to build your association with Irish football?
CC: For us it’s all about finding the correct the balance between traditional and on-line media to ensure we reach as many fans as possible.
Traditional invariably gives us the required scale necessary to be a big beer brand and make sure that fans see our message.
While social does some of the scale job it’s real benefit for us is allowing to connect much more deeply with Irish consumers and to do so in a culturally relevant way.
SfB: What are you focusing on with on and off trade to make sure Carlsberg is front and centre during the tournament?
CC: The on and off trade channels are absolutely key for us as there’s no point having fans see and like our communications if they don’t see Carlsberg at the moment of truthc- the point of purchase.
So for us it’s all about making sure we’re visible to consumers in both the on and off trade.
SfB: Are you managing the campaign live in order to react as events happen?
CC: It’s vital we’re culturally relevant in terms of content and timing.
That of course does pose some challenges in terms of putting the appropriate organisational structures in place to enable us to not only be truly reactive but also to be truly there for the fans throughout the tournament.
We need to provide the most relevant content in a timely manner. We feel this is absolutely necessary and fortunately we’ve got a great record in this area so were confident we’ll cut-through with fans in key moments during the tournament – particularly the Irish games.
Over in England Carlsberg has been rebranding a number of pubs into the Three Lions for the duration of England’s stay in the tournament. They also produced content in the run up which recalled iconic moments from the European Championships of old, including this moment of magic from Ronnie Whelan…
Join us tomorrow to see how Spar have been engaging their shoppers with the Team of Gary Breens and more…
