The NFL’s competitive season is over, so the selling season is fully underway. Filling the car and truck category, where
GMC is departing after a 14-year run, is the top offseason priority.
Renie Anderson, NFL senior vice president of sponsorship and partnership management, suggested at the Super Bowl that, for the first time, the NFL may split the lucrative auto category between luxury and more affordable vehicles.
“The commissioner challenged us to look at the category differently, so we’re thinking about things like safety and technology and what sorts of marketing ties we could create,” she said.
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GMC, ending a 14-year run with the NFL, got a truckload of exposure at the Super Bowl..
Photo by: TERRY LEFTON / STAFF |
Meanwhile, the seemingly endless rows of GMC Yukon SUVs parked in downtown Phoenix provided some of the best visibility for the NFL’s official auto we’ve seen in 24 Super Bowls.
Also this offseason, while we don’t expect to see autos parked on the sidelines any time soon, the NFL does have the rights to sell one additional deal with sideline branding. It has been fervently pursuing the timing category for some time, which certainly fits the “fabric of the game” standard that’s applied to those sideline marketing rights.
Pending renewals include 20-year league sponsor Visa, which we’re told is in the red zone to completion, along with Marriott. Mars’ confection deal, Bridgestone’s tire rights and Anheuser-Busch’s massive beer rights have another season to go, but we expect some movement on those as well.
As for new categories being pursued, that list includes mobile phone, energy, banking and health care. As for the suddenly lucrative daily fantasy category? That decision is in the hands of NFL ownership.
“Unless there’s a policy change, we’re not opening that at the league level,” Anderson said.
> CHANGING TIRES: Bridgestone is dropping the MLB league sponsorship it signed for its Firestone brand five years ago. The company’s vice president of consumer marketing, Phil Pacsi, said a change in marketing strategy led to the nonrenewal. “The run we had with Firestone and MLB was great, and baseball and Americana helped reinvigorate the brand,” he said, “but as we look to evolve the marketing, it wasn’t a fit.”
The principal asset among Firestone’s MLB activation was sponsoring in-stadium balloting for the annual MLB All-Star Game. Watering down those Firestone rights was the fact that many MLB teams have sponsorships with rival tire brands.
Looking to replace Firestone, we hear MLB is talking with Korea’s Hankook Tire. According to SportsBusiness Journal’s reseach database, RG Live, Hankook already has sponsorships with an astounding 17 MLB teams, including the New York Yankees.
Meanwhile, the Firestone brand is taking a left turn from sports to entertainment, looking at country music ties for its next foray into sponsorship marketing.
Lagardère is agency of record for Bridgestone.
> NO PAIN: Also failing to renew its national baseball rights is Bayer, which had been using MLB intellectual property and athletes to market its Bayer Advanced Aspirin formula since 2011 and its One-A-Day for men brand as the “official multivitamin of MLB” since 2008.
Bayer’s Alka-Seltzer brand was also tied to MLB, and Bayer had linked its One-A-Day men’s efforts to a prostate cancer prevention program.
Regardless of those programs’ efficacy, Bayer has been consumed with integrating its $14.2 billion purchase of Merck’s consumer health care brands, which it purchased in May 2013.
> COMINGS & GOINGS: The NFL’s group managing director of sponsorship and media, Naomi Kelts, who worked on the Visa account while at the NFL for the past 12 years, has left the league to join the Visa account team being built by IMG after the agency won a consolidation of Visa’s sports sponsorship business late last year. She’ll be vice president of brand strategy and marketing. IMG will hire more than 30 people as a result of that account win. … Former Upper Deck marketer Jon Schneider has opened a San Diego office for promo shop Enthusiast Media Group of Portland. … Patrick Pierce joins Etihad Airways as vice president of sponsorships and events, based in Abu Dhabi. He’s been with Chicago-based Aon for the past four years as director of global marketing and communications.
Terry Lefton can be reached at tlefton@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
