How to win a Cannes Lion, pt2; Wimbledon's underrated futurism; The traditions trap; Who's Afraid of Naomi Osaka; Goldman Sachs, NFL and D2C; Cotton and Pepper; Fun with filter bubbles
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Here are just some of the new Unofficial Partner podcasts we have lined up for the next few weeks.
Sport without Cookies
The forgotten FAAMG: Microsoft’s sport play
Private Equity v The Players
esport economics
How to win a Cannes Lions in sport
Tomorrow’s podcast is with Ben Hartmann, chair of judges and Octagon’s chief client officer, based in Australia.
So we spent an hour picking apart the process. Ben shared the judges five point criteria For those seeking to catch the eye of next year’s judges, it’s a list worth pausing on.
Is it Cannes-worthy? Does the campaign come with a level of craft and sophistication that merits an award, does it challenge the conventions of the what’s normally done in its category?
Can only sport deliver this idea? The sport category is an oddity. The other awards at Cannes go to specific mediums - PR, ad creative, media, outdoor etc - whereas sport is the medium for the storytelling.
Ben Hartmann: It had to be not just the canvas for the idea, but the paint as well.
Does it add value to the fans experience of sport? And does the brand play a relevant role? Fans are not just customers, they are different, how does the work reflect this fact?
Does the insight behind the creative show a nuanced understanding of the fan?
Does it re-imagine the traditional and expected role of sport in the world?
So, now you know how to do it…
Questions arising:
There were 700 entries, which the panel took down to this list.
Football dominates. Around 50% of the shortlisted work was around football and another 25% from the US Major Leagues. Big canvases. ‘Smaller sports’ are very under represented. Brands like football because it delivers scale of reach and a common language with which to communicate. The UK, Europe, US are over represented. Brazil and LATAM is the next great creative hub. Next year will be about Olympic work.
Cannes is a filter bubble. The marketing industry is a social and political monoculture. Agency people in London have more in common with agency people in Rio or Singapore than they do the majority of people in Britain. They would regard themselves as liberal but are actually deeply conservative to the ideas of their tribe. This is a big problem if the output is ideas that need to reach a mass audience. The utopia of diversity is a workforce that reflects society and it goes without saying that we’re not there yet.
Go deeper: Sports marketing and the Brexit divide, my email exchange with Pranav Soneji of LiveWire Sports: ‘real diversity is sitting next to someone you hate’.
Does sponsorship inspire or limit creativity? It’s noticeable that the big creative ideas still tend to come from outside the sports marketing agency sector.
Most purpose driven campaigns are boring. It’s not enough to preach. ‘Purpose has to go beyond awareness driving and move towards action,’ says Hartmann. Most brands don’t want to take that step because it’s hard, requiring them to move beyond big messages and into the detail of complex policy initiatives.
See also: What Cannes says about sport in last week’s newsletter.
Enforced scarcity and the traditions trap
From this week’s Wimbledon podcast with Alex Willis and Shelley MacIntyre, brand director in charge of Sipsmith, the Championships’ new gin partner.
The conversation went to the value of tradition: What’s worth keeping, what’s worth sacrificing under the banner of innovation.
Like all great sports events, it would be easy to ruin Wimbledon, to extend its brand beyond its fortnightly confines, creating phoney year long narratives, the dreaded ‘Road To…’ format or other ‘tentpole moments' giving ‘greater value to partners’.
Wimbledon’s commercial value benefits enormously from a sort of enforced scarcity. And I was reminded of ECB CEO Tom Harrison’s quote on the difficulty of building scarcity value around test cricket (UP Pod 161).
Whenever there's been a gap in the cricket calendar, somebody fills it with something.
Alex Willis said something wise about not seeing the past and the future as a trade off, in which one or the other is punished.
I like that. And I like the way they evolve the idea of Wimbledon, so it feels modern and has all the digital niceties we expect of a major sporting moment but retains the quirks. That takes strategy, and I like that we don’t see the joins.
Wimbledon sponsorship is not about tennis. Sport is the context. I could be wrong, but I don’t get the impression that Sipsmith are about to go on a tennis rights rampage. (See previous newsletter: Beware the siren call of tennis).
Linkage
Ron Sirak wrote a good piece on Pride Month, in particular reference to women’s golf.
There was a time — not all that long ago — when the idea of coming out was unthinkable for players on the LPGA Tour. The concern was to protect sponsors, endorsement partners, personal partners, parents and the Tour itself.Â
Did Michael Payne just suggest news media should pay to cover the Olympics?
Personal Best
Sports biz people list their favourite things.
This week: Brad Rees, CEO at fan engagement analysts Mediacells
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