In the run up to the All Ireland Football final we take a look at how each of the three main sponsors have activated their relationship throughout the summer with one of the highlights of the sporting year.
We start today with Eircom, who extended their partnership at the start of this season and took the opportunity to refresh and revitalise their engagement with fans.
To find out how they set about that challenge we caught up with Eircom Group Sponsorship Manager John Anslow.
“This year we wanted to really focus on the connection between fans and players.”
“The Your Shout initiative enabled us to give fans a direct channel through which they could support their team and make a difference.”
Social
“Social media has brought fans closer to the players and there is no doubt that the players themselves are very aware of when the support from the stands is building in the days before and after a game rather than just the 70 minutes between the whistles.”
“We considered carefully from the outset how this could be maintained as positive support rather than a forum for giving out but it never arose.”
“The shouts have been very supportive, echoing when players have really put in a strong performance on the pitch and not only when the TV cameras have been focused on them. It has meant a lot to the players.”
Switched on
“We backed this up with weekly quizzes and the Win Lose Draw forecasting game which has produced some very switched on fans of the Championship.”
Eircom has not done badly itself in its selection of ambassadors around this year’s engagement. From the start of the year they picked one from each province and two of those, Colm Cooper from Kerry and Karl Lacey from Donegal are right in the thick of the build up for Sunday.
“Over recent years we have packaged the support under the ‘Experience More’ banner but this year we brought it back to being closer to the Eircom main site, continued Anslow.
“We used players in our above the line advertising and TV stings that represented the full range of the GAA. From Leitrim and Louth rather just from Dublin and Mayo. We focused on the work that goes in behind the scenes in order to be great when it matters most. It was more about the hours and hours of practice rather than the one glory point in front of a packed Croke Park.”
Resonated
“The new approach has clearly resonated and a week out from the All Ireland Final we have already blown through over 250,000 individual engagements with fans.”
“That’s a good result for us as a business and for the GAA as a means of locking in the relationship that those who watch have with those who play.”
“We have also repeated the fan pic initiative we had with Irish technology company Huggity.”
“This meant taking a 360 degree hi res photo of the crowd at both semi finals and the final and giving fans the chance to tag themselves in social media and win prizes including tickets to the Final.”
Engagement
“13,000 fans have already found themselves in the crowd at the semi finals and the engagement with football fans is higher than it is in any other sport. This shows the pride the fans have in being there on the big occasions with their teams.”
“This year we have also run a Facebook competition allowing two young fans to lead their team out of the tunnel and carry their county flag.”
“It’s another way of building the connection that exists in every club and every parish between fans and players.”
“The biggest day is yet to arrive but it’s been another good year of tieing the Eircom brand to what matters for football fans and leveraging that good will into achieving the business targets we set ourselves.”
Join us over the next two days as we catch up with Supervalu and GAAGo.
