Nissan aims for 'bigger & better' UEFA Champions League sponsorship
Nissan is set to debut its ‘Engineers of Excitement’ campaign platform at tonight’s UEFA Super Cup match, kicking off the brand’s lucrative four-year sponsorship of the Champions League with a 10 second teaser of what’s to come.
With innovation and excitement lying at the heart of Nissan’s Champions League programme, the activity –which stars new brand ambassadors Andrés Iniesta and Thiago Silva – aims to harness excitement both on and off the pitch.
Speaking to The Drum, Bastien Schupp, vice president, marketing, Nissan Europe, revealed the brand’s sponsorship of the Champions League was a “massive and a logistical challenge” that Nissan needed to embrace because “not many people have a bad opinion [of Nissan], but most are quite indifferent”.
“If you ask people ‘Do you know Nissan?’ 98 per cent will tell you yes, but when you ask them more specifically about the brand or what it stands for they struggle,” he said. “By using this massive platform we can explain what innovation and excitement mean as part of the Nissan brand.”
As ‘Engineers of Excitement’ for Nissan Iniesta and Silva will help the brand introduce new innovations to football fans, playing a leading role in the brand’s advertisments throughout the course of the 2014/15 season.
“We needed to find a way to link Nissan to football and we didn’t want to just advertise cars in the middle of the matches,” explained Schupp.
“We consider our engineers to actually engineer excitement and when we looked at some of the players in the Champions League we felt that they did the same. Some of the very technical players are just as technical as Nissan engineers generating excitement on the pitch.”
In addition to staring in a series of TV adverts, the players - who Schupp said were specially selected to appeal to both European and South American audiences - will also take part in a number of personal appearances, match day events, social media content and more.
The UEFA Champions League partnership joins Nissan’s growing portfolio of sporting sponsorships which include the Rio 2016 Olympic & Paralympic Games, Olympic Team Brazil, Team GB and ParalympicsGB, Africa Cup of Nations to name but a few.
Of Nissan’s partnership strategy, Schupp said: “We look for big properties that have a strong media value and we look for sports that are accessible as we don’t want to be seen as elite or very exclusive.
“Football is a territory we think fits well with our brand and this is by far the biggest sponsorship we’ve ever signed. We used to do quite small events but I think that contributed to the lack of recognition and confusion about Nissan, it’s an active choice to do less, but go bigger and better.”
Around tonight’s Super Cup match, where Spanish teams Real Madrid and Sevilla FC will face one another, Nissan has provided 600 free tickets for local youth sports groups as well as facilitating the trophy tour throughout Wales.
In addition to the ‘Engineers of Excitement’ activity for the Champions League Schupp hinted at “quite a big plan to do activation around the employees we have in Europe”.
Ketchum’s London office is handling the brand’s sponsorship of the UEFA Champions League and Super Cup following its appointment after a three-way pitch.