brand-e

It’s time to take a look at Sports Marketing 360, the interactive forum for sports marketing and sponsorships. The likes of Mark Osikoya, head of sponsorship, Coca Cola GB, Richard Heaselgrave, vp of business development, NBA – EMEA, and Sam Rush, international COO, Wasserman Media Group, will tackle a raft of themes, including:

Says Jamie Gavin*. Brands are waking up to the power of social media, as consumer use of social media platforms continues to grow at an astonishing rate.
According to comScore, of the 38 million people age 15 and over who went online in May 2010, nine out of 10 visited at least one social networking site, making it the most popular online activity in the UK. That represents a user base of 33 million people, and a year-on-year increase of 13%.

adidas, which supplied the victorious Spanish football team’s World Cup kit is congratulating itself on its three stripes tournament success. “Adidas is world champion,” a brand spokeswoman told AFP. “The outcome is absolutely positive.”
The  brand, also official partner of governing body FIFA, is expecting sales of €1.5 billion euros this year, with the Jubulani competition [...]

By Steve Mullins. Any consumer ranking of green brands in the UK would usually find Bodyshop at the top, thanks to the brand’s ‘ethical product halo’. But people simply aren’t interrogating enough, and there’s little deep knowledge of what many firms’ ethical components are, says Thinktank International, which is currently putting together a thinkpiece on ethical conversations and brands.
And the London-based market research firm believes the onus is on companies to get consumers understanding them in this area.

By Simon Fuller. England’s dismal display against Germany in the World Cup might have come as a shock to some, but another surprise might be just how little UK consumers knew about brand involvement in FIFA’s event heading into the competition.
Brand research outfit Echo conducted a study into public awareness of brand sponsorship around the tournament, with the result that many brands failed to score – out of eight of the tournament’s big backers, among them Sony, McDonald’s and Visa, only Coca-Cola was identified as a sponsor by more than half of respondents.

Brands are experimenting with freedom, says Millward Brown Optimor in its BrandZ Top 100 report. That’s because while social media affords unprecedented intimacy between brand and customer, such a relationship requires dialogue, honesty and respect.
“Some brands are uncomfortable in this new world where customers can post thoughtful Valentines or crude graffiti,” says MBO. “Yet cultivating a relationship based on the slow revelations of courtship seems quaint and unrealistic as customers promiscuously speed date from website to website.”

Generation Y loves brands, with some 65% of American women and 61% of men considering themselves brand conscious, according to The Gen Y Prestige Brand Ranking survey conducted by L2Thinktank.
And just 1% females and 3% of males aren’t into brands, which isn’t surprising for a demographic which has grown up in the age of branding and been the target of a barrage of marketing messages since birth, says L2Thinktank.

Apple’s brand value has appreciated by almost one third over the past year, according to the latest Millward Brown Optimor BrandZ Top 100 ranking. And that increase is testament to the cool computer company’s ability to transform itself from an electronics manufacturer into a brand that is central to people’s lives.
“Apple manages to celebrate creativity and self-expression while, anticipating consumers’ needs and wants and meeting those needs with solutions that are noteworthy for their ease of use and elegance of design,” says MBO.