Goal Studios reveals its plan to help brands get the most out of their football sponsorships
Neither creative or media agency, Perform Media’s specialist division Goal Studios has launched to advise brands how best to resonate with football fans who are increasingly numb to the sponsorship tactics of old.
Perform Media launches Goal Studios
The specialist digital agency is lifted by Perform’s global footprint, allowing it to track in real-time the changing nature of how some 125 million fans across its platforms are engaging with the sport. It’s these unique insights the business is hoping wins over advertisers looking to avoid the common failings of football sponsorship activations.
“The rights that clubs package up for sponsors often don’t deliver anything of real value for them,” says Hugh Sleight, director of football strategy at Goal Studios. “They’re still trapped slightly in a 1990’s view of sports sponsorship and football fans are pretty savvy about commercial relationships with the game these days.”
“We’re not here to replace agencies though, we’re here to work with them to show how they can do things better. We’re not trying to be a creative agency or a media agency. We’re about collaborating to deliver a better response for football fans.
Sleight says that activations like having players talking to camera might offer fans something of a unique insight but adds that those sorts of activations “don’t tell them anything about their club that they don’t already know”.
One of the most common misunderstandings which sponsors are guilty of is grouping together football fans under the broad category of sports fans. Goal Studios is looking to address that by identifying the unique stories within every club and then “find a way to connect the brand to that story in a compelling and authentic way".
Timing of activations is also something which Goal Studio’s is keen to pitch to brands, having identified huge missed opportunities across even Champions League sponsorships. Often brands are guilty of focusing too much on the later stages of the tournament and the final itself and as a result their campaigns aren’t ready come match day one which, apart from the final, is the single biggest match day in terms of audience interest.
“One of the areas that brands often don’t get it right is understanding the points at which to engage the audience. Normally there’s a reasonable amount of activity around the draw for football tournaments like the Champions League but that only last a split second so brand’s need to start their campaigns at the moment a team qualifies.
“The final itself becomes so crowded with sponsors so there’s a lost opportunity with so many teams from many countries not making it through to the final so those markets don’t have the same audience.”