What Coca-Cola’s Women’s Football World deal can teach sports sponsors about nailing partnerships

Women’s Football World has hit UK screens and been met with praise for shining a light on the presence and importance of the women’s game – and rightly so. This kind of broad exposure is long overdue for women’s soccer and female sport in general.

The programme, aired on UK free-to-air network Channel 4, is sponsored by Coca-Cola, which is the latest brand following the likes of Barclays and Nike to show its support for women’s soccer. On the outside it seems easy for a brand with deep pockets to execute a successful sports sponsorship. However, it’s not always that straightforward, and brands need to be careful not to compromise authenticity and credibility for cheap wins.

Working in the thick of it at Wasserman, these are my top tips for getting it right…

Make sure you have the right to play in the space

The best partnerships are based on true collaboration – one which feels authentic to both partners. Ultimately, this is why the Coca-Cola sponsorship of Women’s Football World works so well.

Coca-Cola’s credentials in sponsorship are well known, respected and by and large, excellently activated and communicated. It is a brand at ease in the sporting space, with a steady stream of clever and strategic sponsorships scattered across football and the sporting world beyond.

It is one of the seven official partners of the English soccer’s top-flight Premier League, and it sponsored the Fifa World Cup trophy tour. Coca-Cola also invests in grassroots, as it should. So its place in sponsoring new women’s focused content is well placed, authentic and it makes sense.

Be creative in your choice of partners

Yet making sure you have a right to play in a space doesn’t mean that you should be predictable or uninspiring in your choice of partners. Change is necessary for effective partnerships, as is thinking outside of the box when reviewing and considering opportunities.

DHL’s partnership with Formula One is a case in point. For DHL, it provides an opportunity to highlight its business raison d’etre when moving these global events around the world, providing a showcase for the accuracy and specialisms required to move Formula One’s infrastructure, not to mention the global network required to move something of this scale to all corners of the globe. DHL never had to say it – but the tie-up delivers its key message: if it can do it for the likes of Formula One, with all the level of intricacy and scale required, it can take care of your business needs.

Make sure your sponsorship is backed with a strong activation

The industry has been talking for years now about how logo placement alone isn’t going to cut it in a digital focused world, and this draconian approach to sponsorship activation is not going to drive engagement with the much-targeted millennial audience either. There’s nothing new in this wisdom and yet brands fall into this badging trap more frequently than I can count.

If you want to get the most out of a partnership with a sports property, it’s vital to leave money in the kitty to back up the sponsorship fee with activation investment. The two go hand in hand – killer activation is the element that will bring the partnership to life and engage fans in a relevant and authentic way. Be clever, be bold, but most importantly of all, stay true to your brand values and activate with authenticity. Oh, and avoid the absolute cardinal sin – not activating at all. Believe it or not, it does happen.

And finally a word for the properties and their approach to choosing their partners, if they can be so choosy at a time of heightened budget scrutiny. The quality of brand activation plans will be high on the list as properties determine who to hand their high value rights to, so brands better be prepared to activate properly if they want to get their hands on the gold standard sports rights.

Most properties are no longer just looking for a financial investment from their partners. They want sponsors that can help them reach new audiences, and crucially, create noise which will boost reach for both parties.

Ross Arnold

Women’s Football World has hit UK screens and been met with praise for shining a light on the presence and importance of the women’s game – and rightly so. This kind of broad exposure is long overdue for women’s soccer and female sport in general.

The programme, aired on UK free-to-air network Channel 4, is sponsored by Coca-Cola, which is the latest brand following the likes of Barclays and Nike to show its support for women’s soccer. On the outside it seems easy for a brand with deep pockets to execute a successful sports sponsorship. However, it’s not always that straightforward, and brands need to be careful not to compromise authenticity and credibility for cheap wins.

Working in the thick of it at Wasserman, these are my top tips for getting it right…

Make sure you have the right to play in the space

The best partnerships are based on true collaboration – one which feels authentic to both partners. Ultimately, this is why the Coca-Cola sponsorship of Women’s Football World works so well.

Coca-Cola’s credentials in sponsorship are well known, respected and by and large, excellently activated and communicated. It is a brand at ease in the sporting space, with a steady stream of clever and strategic sponsorships scattered across football and the sporting world beyond.

It is one of the seven official partners of the English soccer’s top-flight Premier League, and it sponsored the Fifa World Cup trophy tour. Coca-Cola also invests in grassroots, as it should. So its place in sponsoring new women’s focused content is well placed, authentic and it makes sense.

Be creative in your choice of partners

Yet making sure you have a right to play in a space doesn’t mean that you should be predictable or uninspiring in your choice of partners. Change is necessary for effective partnerships, as is thinking outside of the box when reviewing and considering opportunities.

DHL’s partnership with Formula One is a case in point. For DHL, it provides an opportunity to highlight its business raison d’etre when moving these global events around the world, providing a showcase for the accuracy and specialisms required to move Formula One’s infrastructure, not to mention the global network required to move something of this scale to all corners of the globe. DHL never had to say it – but the tie-up delivers its key message: if it can do it for the likes of Formula One, with all the level of intricacy and scale required, it can take care of your business needs.

Make sure your sponsorship is backed with a strong activation

The industry has been talking for years now about how logo placement alone isn’t going to cut it in a digital focused world, and this draconian approach to sponsorship activation is not going to drive engagement with the much-targeted millennial audience either. There’s nothing new in this wisdom and yet brands fall into this badging trap more frequently than I can count.

If you want to get the most out of a partnership with a sports property, it’s vital to leave money in the kitty to back up the sponsorship fee with activation investment. The two go hand in hand – killer activation is the element that will bring the partnership to life and engage fans in a relevant and authentic way. Be clever, be bold, but most importantly of all, stay true to your brand values and activate with authenticity. Oh, and avoid the absolute cardinal sin – not activating at all! Believe it or not, it does happen.

And finally a word for the properties and their approach to choosing their partners, if they can be so choosy at a time of heightened budget scrutiny. The quality of brand activation plans will be high on the list as properties determine who to hand their high value rights to, so brands better be prepared to activate properly if they want to get their hands on the gold standard sports rights.

Most properties are no longer just looking for a financial investment from their partners. They want sponsors that can help them reach new audiences, and crucially, create noise which will boost reach for both parties.