Category: positioning
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Is sport entertainment, or something more?
This is an article I wrote for the excellent Unofficial Partner blog. In a recent newsletter, Unofficial Partner asked the question ‘What’s the difference between sport and entertainment?’ and this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while amidst all the industry chat about how sport needs to become more of an entertainment proposition,…
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TGL makes its (slightly overdue) debut
The new TGL golf league made its debut last night on ESPN. If you’re not aware, it’s an indoor team golf format (created by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy) played in a purpose built arena with players hitting shots into a truly massive screen. It’s an attempt to open up golf to a wider sports/entertainment…
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Does sport take positioning for granted?
I bang on about positioning quite a lot, and that’s because it’s one of the most fundamental aspects of strategy for any brand or business. In most sectors, this is readily accepted and embraced, but in sport it often seems to be overlooked, or at least taken for granted. Why is this? I think it’s…
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Disrupting the status quo in sport
I’m always fascinated by attempts to create something new and disruptive within sport. So much of the structure of modern sport still harks back to how things were set up 100 or 150 years ago, in a completely different world. There’s a lot of “we do it this way because this is the way it’s…
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Do football clubs need to think harder about their brands?
This is a piece I recently wrote for the Unofficial Partner blog ___________ I started writing this blog a few weeks ago, and was inspired to come back to it by Napoli’s recently launched ‘brand manifesto’ which I saw on Linkedin the other day (h/t Grant Russell for sharing it). Napoli has revamped its identity,…
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What are Test matches for?
What is sport if there’s no meaningful competitive context? I came across this image on Twitter this morning and I found it quite startling. Not because England are at the bottom of the table, but because if you had asked me to guess where they would be ranked, I’d have had very little idea and…
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Hisense makes no sense
Spain v. France last night was a really good game, but there have been a few stinkers at Euro 2024. The other night I was watching Portugal and France play out a very tedious 0-0 draw (yes, England have also been quite tough to watch) and the on-field action was so poor I started focusing…
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The importance of positioning for a challenger brand
How can challenger brands in sport use smart positioning to take on the established leaders in the category? There’s a lot to be said for being a challenger brand. When your brand isn’t the number one or two in the market, it can give you some freedom to do things differently and be a bit…
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What is the Olympics for?
There are 100 days until the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. So much is made, every four years, of the power of the Olympics to bring the world together, showcase the best of humanity, etc…so I decided to take a look at how the IOC articulates its vision, mission and values, and ultimately how the Olympic…
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The positioning dilemma for rugby union?
I was just listening to an interesting discussion on (men’s) rugby union on the Sports Agents podcast, which largely came down to a question of how the professional game should be positioned and marketed. There was quite a lot of focus on what rugby union needs to do to engage more of the ‘Gen Z’…
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Umbro: Only Football
Umbro being in the news today prompted me to think back to the brand campaign I was involved with back in the early 2000s when I was the brand’s marketing manager. With Umbro at that time battling against the vastly bigger budgets of Nike and adidas, our strategy was to underline a positioning of being…
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This isn’t just golf…
Can you feel it? It’s that time of the year.A new chapter is about to be written.And things are starting to change.Jerseys get traded in for jackets.Download become upgrades.And fans feel like patrons.The past and the future play out right in front of us.And the whole world starts seeing green.Because April…is right around the corner.And…