Common Wealth: The Game of Fame

Hello there,

“How was your long weekend?”

Honestly, I’m just tired of answering this question in every meeting since yesterday.

The weekend FOMO is real, ngl.

Keeping that aside, I shamelessly spent my weekend watching the last season of Peaky Blinders while having the last bite of Cadbury from the Rakhi souvenirs.

Fun fact: do you know what’s common between Peaky Blinders & Cadbury?

Birmingham! Their origin.😯

Besides these, what made Birmingham steal the limelight this year is the Commonwealth Games 2022!

India won 61 medals in total during CWG 2022.❤️️

But the matter of attention is the number of brands that joined forces with the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) to sponsor the athletes.😯

Now the question here is, what intrigued corporate India in sports?

Let’s dig a bit more:

🏅 The Marathon of Sponsorships

Sports today are not limited to cricket.

So is corporate India’s bandwidth to go the extra mile in order to win gold for brand awareness.

This was made prevalent by the fact that more than 10 companies signed up for CWG 2022 compared to 2 or 3 previous years.

In fact, these brands have partnered with IOA not only for Commonwealth Games but also for the upcoming Paris Olympic Games 2024 and Asian Games.

Moreover, the deal sizes of these sponsorships have also grown 4-5 times this year.

🏅What Brands dropped the ball at CWG 2022?

Let us look at the brands that were successful to take a wicket of sponsorship this year at CWC:

• Adani Sportsline was the principal sponsor. This is the second time that the Adani Group has come on board
• JSW Inspire signed as the principal and kitting sponsor
• Herbalife Official as the nutrition partner
• Manyawar on-boarded as the ceremonial kitting partner
• Adidas was roped in as a performance footwear partner

🏅 The rising revenue in sports endorsements

No doubt India & Indians have moved away from being stuck in Cricket, which is well known now.

Thanks to GroupM 2020’s India’s sports sponsorship space report that revealed some exciting facts:

• The percentage of overall endorsement money that went to emerging sports increased from 8 percent in 2020 to 13 percent last year.
• Moreover, endorsement revenue for non-cricket sports was reported to be Rs 84 crore last year. It was even more than the pre-covid level!
• There was a 79 percent increase in the athlete’s endorsements for the Olympic year 2021.

All of these facts simply state that brands are now counting on sports as a medium to market their products.

🏅 How does sports benefit brands?

Nike. Adidas. Coca Cola. Puma.  

If you look at these brands, they’ll in one thing in common :

Athlete Endorsements!

Apart from their entire brand identity, and public image some of the other benefits these brands leverage:

• Professional athletes are treated as influencers & idols and have a huge impact on the audience
• Athletes are a symbol of trust, the most common reason people will buy your product
• Endorsing athletes can directly impact & increase a brand’s sales
• Sports sponsorship can put your brand above the competitors

Lastly to all the brands that sponsored CWG this year, you got the ball rolling.

📚Story of the week: 5 Customer Journeys to improve Customer Retention & Loyalty

Every customer has their own journey with a brand. It’s important to understand how a customer interacts with your brand, what attracts them, what distracts them, and what keeps them with your brand for a lifetime.

This way, you and your team can work on ways to delight & influence your customer at every stage and at the same time increase your revenue.

Here are 5 examples of Customer Journeys that you can use to improve Customer Retention:

That’s all for today. Hope you enjoyed today’s edition.

See you next week,