THIS WEEK: Nike ambushes sport limelight

Nike is successfully ambushing major sporting events such as Euro ’96

and the Olympics, and leading consumers to believe its sports brand is

an official sponsor.

Nike’s campaign during the Euro ’96 football tournament in June managed

to hi-jack the event - with almost one in four people believing the

sports brand was one of the major sponsors, according to new research.

Nike is taking a similar approach with the Olympics. It is not an

official sponsor but is spending pounds 1m on a TV campaign running

tactically around television coverage of the games.

Eleven companies, all major sponsors, each paid pounds 3.5m to use Euro

’96 as part of their marketing strategy.

Coca-Cola had the biggest impact on viewers, with more than half the

people surveyed by BMRB International remembering the brand. But Nike

achieved 23% recall by coming in the back door without paying the

sponsorship fee. It spent pounds 2m on poster and TV advertising.

Nike’s poster also hit headlines because it used several international

footballers - such as Eric Cantona - who did not even play for their

country during the tournament. It scored higher awareness than some of

the other main sponsors such as MasterCard (21%), JVC (16%) and Philips,

which had the lowest awareness level of the official sponsors, at 10%.

‘This was definitely the response we wanted. ‘We didn’t want to be

official sponsors but we wanted to make a lot of noise during the

competition and be central to the footballing debate,’ said Mike Perry,

group development director at Simons Palmer, agency for the Nike

campaign.

The research was carried out by BMRB and involved interviews with 2000

people.

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Awareness of Euro ‘96 sponsors

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                    %

Coca-Cola           56

McDonald’s          44

Snickers            35

Vauxhall Vectra     33

Umbro               28

Carlsberg           26

Mastercard          21

Fuji Film           21

JVC                 16

Canon               11

Philips             10

Source: BMRB International

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This article was first published on Marketing