Mar 31 2011
The Last One
I have been looking through other students blogs looking for a topic of interest to link my final blog post to. I have been picky, as I have become interested in writing this post every week and finally found one that I could happily write about. I was reading Wyatt Hamilton‘s blog and the effectiveness of moving billboards. He spoke about European hockey players uniform’s littered with adverts. Our professional athletes in North America rarely have any sort of advertisement on their uniforms, and I agree with Wyatt that our “style” is much better.
But this trend goes much further than hockey. Race cars tend to be the perfect place for companies to paint their logos and attract customers. Automatically, we north American’s think of Nascar. Not only do these cars have advertisements, but cars are actually painted in title sponsor livery. Like for these for examples.
You think a die hard Kurt Busch (M&M car) is going to be eating Smarties? I doubt it. Obviously, there are more sponsors but these title companies gain the memory recognition. Kurt Busch=M&M’s.
I think the major sport where athletes are used as billboards is soccer. The most watched and played sport in the world. Companies would love to get their logo on any Premiership or any team quite frankly. Brand names will be shown over and over again. Fan’s who buy apparel will have that logo on their chest, hung on the wall, in the closet etc etc. It will always be in their line of vision. Especially when it is bigger than the actual team’s logo on the jersey. Look at Man U and Chelsea, two of the biggest teams in the world. The Title sponsor is front and center on the jersey about 10 times the size of the small team’s chest on left shoulder.
I don’t remember which team is which, but I remember that Samsung and Aon are companies I should look at.
It is true that corporate sponsorship or sports had become an easy platform for companies to get their brand seen. The chances are that if you are a Chelsea fan, you will remember that their main sponsor is Samsung and you will automatically be drawn to purchase their products next time you need to purchase a TV or surround sound system.
I personally think that the classic jerseys with no sponsors are way cooler! I think Barcelona set a good example by having no corporate sponsor on their jersey (until recently when they adopted Unicef, although this is merely giving a charity some shirt space).