Ale makes play for sport

Through their multi-million pound sponsorships, lager brands have long been associated with sport. Now the ale brewers are looking for a piece of the action. Noli Dinkovski reports

When Greene King took on the status of England rugby's official beer in October last year in a four-year deal worth upwards of £5m, the brewer got a little more than it bargained for.

English expectations going into the 2007 World Cup in France this autumn were at an all-time low, but as the competition progressed the home nation began to improve steadily. Subsequent victories against Australia and France took England all the way to the final and, despite eventually losing to South Africa, their heroic displays helped pack pubs the length and breadth of the country.

The Rugby World Cup coincided with Greene King IPA's return to television advertising after a four-year break, and the brand invested in its biggest ever on-trade promotional campaign, distributing promotional kits to more than 6,000 pubs.

"Rugby and real ale have always been mutually beneficial," says Greene King marketing director Fiona Hope. "We identified rugby fans as an audience that had a significantly higher inclination to drink ale than non-rugby fans and, indeed, fans of other sports."

Traditionally, major sport sponsorships have been the domain of predominantly global lager brands, but in the last couple of years a shift has taken place. Ale brewers such as Greene King, Marston's and Fuller's have begun to muscle their way onto this prestigious playing field. But what are their motivations and how far can they go?

Major backing

According to a recent report by International Marketing Reports, the drinks sector contributes 9% of all UK sports sponsorship - £75.5m of the country's total spend of £839m. The Driving Business Through Sport 2007 report also shows that lager brands are continuing to pour money into sport - Heineken's £25m backing of Champions League football and Carlsberg's £8m sponsorship of Liverpool FC are cited as two such examples.

Team sports are the biggest recipients of alcohol sponsorship. The report says that cricket and rugby union receive 10% of all sponsorship income from the sector, while the contribution to football is 7%. By contrast, motor sport receives just 4% and tennis 3% from alcohol brands.

"This suggests that alcohol brands are clearly keen to associate themselves with sports that bring people together," says report author Simon Rines.

The sociability aspect of team sports is where companies such as Greene King and Marston's have placed their emphasis. English cricket has been the focus of Marston's attention for a good number of years, having developed partnerships with a number of first-class county sides.

More recently Marston's has

upped the ante by sponsoring the England cricket team through its Pedigree brand in a three-year, multi-million-pound deal. "Sport sponsorships provide a great platform to bring a brand to life, providing a creative

theme that is highly relevant to our target market," says Marston's marketing director Peter Jackson. "More ale brands are getting involved as they can see the benefit of establishing a tangible link between the nation's traditional drink and traditional sports."

And the Burton-upon-Trent brewer hasn't stopped there. This year it also took on broadcast sponsorship of the recent Cricket World Cup and Twenty/20 tournaments, further connecting the Pedigree brand's identity with cricket.

Despite the comparative fortunes of English teams in sport this year (while the rugby side surpassed expectations, the cricket team failed to make an impression in either tournament), analysts believe this has no great

significance on the effectiveness of the sponsorship deal.

"A team would have to perform extremely badly for anything to rub off onto the sponsor," says William Fenton, editor of The World Sponsorship Monitor, a publication produced by research agency Sports Marketing Surveys. "Sports competitions are different to other events in that the outcome can never be known. That's why people associate with them no matter the end result - sport's unpredictability and excitement matter."

As you would imagine, the effectiveness of sponsorships is uppermost in the minds of all brands. Marston's says that through sponsorship, its levels of prompted and unprompted consumer awareness with ale drinkers have risen by more than 20% in the last 12 months.

Brands alter their strategies in response to consumer feedback as sponsorships develop during their life cycles. Having a long-held association with rugby itself, Guinness uses feedback from the support it provides licensees as a way of measuring how well a sponsorship is performing.

"This is a relatively easy way to measure the impact and success of a sponsorship and plan for the next activity," says brand sponsorship manager Lee Bailey. "Over the life of a long-term sponsorship, it is only natural that the objectives evolve and that the way you monitor these also evolves."

John Smith's says that consumer awareness of its sponsorship of the Grand National jumped from 27% in its first two years, to 58% in this, its third year.

Adding brand value

As sponsors of the Aintree race until 2010, John Smith's pumps £5m into UK horse racing annually, and according to a spokesperson for brewer Scottish & Newcastle, it's all well worthwhile: "Racing sponsorship allows us to have innovative trade and consumer promotions and is worth millions of pounds to the brand in terms of the TV, radio and press exposure that it secures."

Fuller's has been equally active in the sports sponsorship area. At the start of the year London Pride became the official beer of the Flora London Marathon, following a six-figure, three-year deal. And last month, the ale struck a similar deal with the HSBC World Matchplay Championship golf tournament.

Fuller's brands marketing manager David Spencer says they "expect to reinforce" the already high levels of consumer awareness through sponsorships, and in fact what he is more concerned about is driving an affinity for the brand.

"For us it's also as much about marketing to the trade as it is to the consumer in general," says Spencer. "Short-term benefits of sponsorships come in the form of hospitality and entertaining, promotional tie-ins, opportunities to run competitions and incentives, and creating a platform for advertising and PR."

Of course, the majority of independent ale brewers do not have the clout to put their brands behind some of the nation's most well-known sporting occasions. Instead, many concentrate on supporting teams or events on a more local level.

But that doesn't mean it's any less bene-ficial - having a tie-up with a local team or smaller event will only enhance the regional identity of the brewer.

Punch Taverns marketing director Geoff Brown takes the argument further. He says that the most successful ale brands over the last decade are the ones that have started with a solid local base and built outwards slowly.

"I would say a brewer like Everards is a good example," says Brown. "It's become very strong and well recognised from its Leicestershire locality by promoting itself 10 miles further down the road each time, as opposed to 100 miles."

Brown believes that it's all about an appreciation of the limitations of the brand - even the likes of Greene King and Marston's have sponsorships that are appropriate to their target market. "Rather than trying to take on the massive top-level sponsorships, ale brewers are finding clever and niche sponsorships at levels suitable to them," he says.

To get any value out of a major sponsorship, the brand has to have reached a critical mass. Classic marketing theory says that if you don't have an established brand, trying to go down the sponsorship route is extremely risky - the consumer will wonder exactly what product you are trying to sell.

Having become a brand of sufficient size and recognising that there are opportunities with