When it comes to sports sponsorships, less is more for Porsche in North America. So its first collegiate deal, a pact with the Ivy League, which includes rights to the University of Pennsylvania teams, along with conference rights, bears watching. Porsche Vice President Jacob Harb explains how the Ivy deal, sold by JMI, is as much about employment and academic affinity as athletics.
Aspiration is our key consumer component. Customers tell us they bought their first Porsche after they feel like they’ve ‘made it’ in life.
Jacob Harb
Vice President, Porsche
On why the Ivy League deal: Like any good partnership, the discussions were fruitful from the beginning. The brand alignment is obvious. Porsche is the most premium sports car brand and the Ivy League institutions are a strong collection of premium academic names. We’re both storied brands, with a great combination of tradition and forward thinking. When we were brainstorming with the local (Philadelphia-area) dealers, academics was what they wanted, because of the connectivity with the community, not just from the school but as employers, and because it is a big college town and those college loyalties run deeper than pro [sports] in lots of cases.
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On how Porsche is different: The magnitude of our brand allows us access; we don’t really need to buy that. Our average price point is around $100,000. Around 30-40 percent of our cars are pre-sold before they even arrive at dealers, because people want to build their own dream car. Our demographics skew a little older — in the 50s — because of our price point and the household income of our consumers is more than $400,000. … Unlike a lot of [auto] manufacturers, our brand is unique enough and boutique enough that we can get activation at the dealer level. They know all their customers and getting qualified new leads is the ultimate check and balance for any of our sponsorships.
On the end game for Porsche: Brand fit is paramount. For any broader sports sponsorship, of course we get the branding exposure and media they provide, but we activate driving events and they deliver meaningful ROI to us and our dealers. … Experiencing our product is key. Every brand is looking for a way to uniquely engage with clients or potential clients; driving a Porsche on a track is a pretty cool way to accomplish that. So we’ll have 50 driving events at tracks in the Northeast over the summer. We build the database for that from our larger [sports sponsorship] activations.
On social media: Social media has become paramount for us and our dealers. It can really be the lead for them, in terms of pushing aspiration and connectivity, which are two of our focal points this year as far as marketing.
— Terry Lefton
