Bundesliga club Bayer Leverkusen is expanding its global footprint by riding the coattails of Mexican striker Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez to open up the Latin American and South American markets. The club is using the player's popularity in the regions as a building block for its internationalization strategy. "We are the second-most successful German club on an international level behind Bayern Munich for more than 10 years," said Jochen Rotthaus, director of marketing and communication at Bayer Leverkusen. "A club that has such an international presence has to use this presence. It’s a big asset." The club has been working on developing its int'l brand for several years now. Prior to the '14-15 season, it toured South Korea, and for the past two years hosted its winter training camp in Orlando, Fla. Leverkusen, which currently sits fourth in the league table, even launched a microsite ahead of the U.S. training camp, Rotthaus said on Monday during a presentation at SpoBiS conference in Dusseldorf, Germany. The site functioned as a social hub and provided fans with content related to the camp from Jan. 3-12. "We are thinking of keeping it up and running it along with our regular media site," he said. Leverkusen's decision to acquire Hernandez from ManU last August was purely a sporting decision, Rotthaus added, but the club is happy to benefit from his global appeal. "He’s a building block that fits nicely into Bayer 04 Leverkusen’s internationalization strategy," he said.
DEAD RINGER: The club launched its official Spanish-language Twitter account on Nov. 1 with an image of Hernandez dressed up for Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). The account accumulated more than 23,000 followers within the first 24 hours, and has close to 56,000 followers today. The long-term goal of Leverkusen's int'l efforts include the acquisition of new partners. On the merchandise front, Bayer has already seen an improvement from its first year in the States. "While we sold only a handful of jerseys last year, this year we sold more than 5,000 jerseys," Rotthaus said. The club knows building an int'l brand takes time, and it can't rely solely on Hernandez. "We want to take advantage of the boost Chicharito provides," he said. "[But] we have to make sure to establish our core brand Bayer 04 in our target markets."
