The Spark Magazine (Jun 2018)

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The Spark | Ignite/Connect/Achieve www.thesparkng.com amount of football played with education and welfare support. The types of individuals you would find running a club or academy would be: • Founder – Chairman (Someone with the vision and drive) • CFO – Someone good with accounting (this is critical to the operations) • Director of Football (DOF) – Someone that has the strategic plan to execute the strategy of the club for a sustained period of time • Coaching: • Head coach + Assistant – First Team • Youth coaches – Youth teams • Fitness coach • Welfare coach • Head Scout – Someone responsible for identifying talents and making recommendations to the DOF / Head Coach / Youth Coaches • Medical: • Dr • Physio • Nutritionist • Facilities Manager • Kit Manager The good thing is you don’t need to have certifications to run a football club, but you will find most of club owners have a background in building their own businesses. There are roles within a club that of course requires certifications such as coaching, medical roles, welfare and others. Unfortunately in Nigeria, we don’t have a structured football body that provides enough information about ways of getting into football. To bypass this, you can learn a lot from someone else. I learnt about my industry mainly from studying Mark McCormack who was the founder of the IMG academy. There are a lot of mentors in sports and it really is about what you want to achieve. Talent Management Is Not Overrated To effectively manage resources and control the pride that comes with fame, young footballers need a very experienced Management team, not a one man shop. What a team provides a footballer with is structure and direction knowing that the life-span of a pro can be about 20 years, so it is always a question of what next. Your team takes the burden off you by providing services around financial Legal aid, PR & Comms management, commercial / endorsements. Before you know it, all that money you think you have made could be gone without a structure. This is something we pride ourselves on at Temple Management. 28 @thesparkng
www.thesparkng.com The Spark | Ignite/Connect/Achieve Scoring With World Cup Marketing The World Cup is here again, and the fever is as contagious as ever. Both football enthusiasts and those who hardly care, feel the buzz one way or another. When football lovers are not in front of a screen watching the live show, they spend spare minutes getting updated via digital media. For Nigeria in particular, the excitement has gone beyond qualifying for the games to stealing the fashion show with the Nike designed jerseys; showing the versatility of the world cup to attract more than just sports lovers. - By Toyin Henry-Ajayi Whether you run a big or small business, the world cup is a grand opportunity to engage your audience and promote your products and services. Considering FIFA’s marketing guidelines to protect the official partners and sponsors, businesses get to be creative with promotion tactics without risking a lawsuit with the organization. Here are a few tips that can help. Use Associated Images, Colors And Messaging You are not allowed to use the logo, the exact phrases or affiliated trademarks. You should not even have your logo on the match schedule. But nothing stops you from playing with the words, football themes or using the national colors creatively. In 2014, Apple deployed a User Generated Content campaign that collated their customer’s football related photos all taken on an iPhone. You may have also seen Banks use the patterns of the Nigerian jersey to create variations of their Debit cards. It’s about creating an association in the minds of your audience. Know Your Audience And Connect With The Prevalent Emotion A great example of a brand that does this well is Pepsi Nigeria. The ‘Naija all the way’ campaign has almost all Nigerians thinking that Pepsi has a deal with FIFA or the Nigerian Super Eagles. But even without this, the company has been able to connect their marketing efforts with the Nigerian spirit of determination, ambition, and possibilities. As a smaller company without the budget and clout, you also need to understand your audience and know what makes them tick. For example, if you are a brand with customers who aren’t exactly sports-inclined, how about marketing materials and content that focus on the side attractions of the world cup? For example, you can talk about the tourism side of the tournament, the fashion, travel, the grass to grace stories of the players, the music, etc. Get Spontaneous With ‘Moment Marketing’ Small brands that will win the World Cup marketing game are those that can deliver relevant, spontaneous and instant news with their audience. Can you make a quick meme that connects the major incidents in a game with something your product or service does? You can also engage your online audience in realtime conversations, especially during the peak games, like the Nigerian matches. You should limit the content you share during game times while targeting the 15 minutes of half-time when people will not be glued to the screen watching the game itself. Partnerships An example of this is the partnership between Banks and VISA. While this may seem far-fetched for a small business, the possibility is the same. Find out who the official country sponsors are in your country and find ways your business can partner with them. For VISA who ordinarily works with other commercial financial institutions, it makes sense for Banks to create campaigns that ride on the goodwill of VISA’s sponsorship. For restaurants and bars, striking a partnership with official drink partners of the World Cup or Super Eagles could be an advantage as you open your doors for customers to watch the match at your location. You may still be able to get something going before the end of the tournament, or you can start preparing for other global competitions. Notably, Stand Out In 2014, the World Cup viewership was staggering. Over 3.2 billion people watched the tournament and online, there were over 280 million Facebook interactions from 88 million people and over 32 million tweets during the final game alone. These numbers are enough reason to associate your brand with the World Cup, but you also don’t want your communication to get lost. Let your content be striking and relevant to your own target audience. Time your communication appropriately and stay updated with the latest information and happenings from Russia. Also, keep an eye out for what other brands are doing. The World Cup only comes every four years, make the best of the season. Enjoy the games. “ In 2014, the World Cup viewership was staggering. Over 3.2 billion people watched the tournament and online, there were over 280 million Facebook interactions from 88 million people and over 32 million tweets during the final game alone. “ @thesparkng 29
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The Spark Magazine (Jun 2018)

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