What’s your name and position within the organisation?
Olivia Collier, I am head of the GB office at creative agency, Verve.
Give us a brief overview of Verve as a company and your approach to sponsorship and partnerships specifically?
Verve houses a multi-disciplinary team of creatives, storytellers, techies and thinkers – as well as the producers, makers and doers who bring the ideas to life. With offices in London, Dublin and Amsterdam, Verve has been partnering with clients for almost 30 years to build iconic brands that make their mark.
In terms of sponsorship, we define ourselves as being a new breed of sponsorship agency, focusing on true fan engagement. We aim to extract the maximum possible asset value from a sponsorship or partnership by strategically and creatively activating across every channel, following a strategic and creative plan from the outset. A lot of the time, this happens much further upstream in the process. The days of approaching brands with a list and asking them to ‘sign here’ are falling by the wayside. Partners and rights holders often work together to create a bespoke property that drives maximum value for both parties – we’ll often be involved in these conversations, creatively contributing into the bespoke asset list; no more ‘one size fits all’. This allows everyone to build a more well-rounded picture of what the sponsorship means and to make sure that everyone is a winner when it comes to the results.
What makes Verve different? What is your USP and what keeps you competitive?
Our approach to sponsorship probably has more in common with the principles behind UX design – listen, analyse, design and test, iterate – than it does with traditional sponsorship agency model.
We begin every campaign with a deep dive into the brand purpose and insights into the audience behaviours and mindset. We’re always asking why are we there, what’s our purpose as a brand, how are we improving the fan experience and bringing real value to the sponsorship, who are we really talking to, how are we driving authentic conversations? It can be easy to engage die hard sports fans but how are we growing the audience to include a wider base who might not traditionally be associated with the sponsorship property.
Creative is only as good as its real-world execution so we’re always testing, being reactive when needed and evolving the sponsorship experience. Sometimes a small tweak to the production or the introduction of new technology can lead to significantly better ROI for our clients and a better experience for the audience. We’re always looking for those opportunities to evolve.
In essence, you could say we’ve taken the creative rigour we learned from our experiential agency roots and applied it to sponsorship.
Our clients enjoy the fresh ideas and gutsy thinking that Verve delivers and also the relationship of co-creation which we continuously foster year after year. Our goal is to nurture strong partnerships that move us forward together.
How do you measure the effectiveness of your sponsorship campaigns? What metrics do you use – and how has your approach to this evolved in recent years?
In the past, many brands measured how effective their sponsorship was by how well you could see their logo, which is a pretty simplistic measure of success. The way that brands interact with consumers has evolved immensely in recent years, meaning that there is now more focus on real and meaningful interactions with the consumer, both live and online.
To show how this new thinking is actioned in the real world, I’ll use the example of our work on the GUINNESS Six Nations sponsorship campaign. Here, we had four key activation pillars that we needed to target:
- I. Awareness of Brand & Sponsorship
- II. Digital Impressions and conversations with fans
- III. Volume sales
- Increase in sales nationally while sponsorship is live
By being involved from the very early stages, we were able to build out a holistic campaign plan that engaged and entertained the fan and the consumer across a number of touchpoints. This approach is still relatively new within the industry, and we find that it’s best to apply it in a bespoke manner, as each property is different with a totally different set of goals. Most importantly, the best way to keep your metrics fresh and your work relevant is to constantly stay curious, never stay still and always ask if there’s a more innovative way to get results.
How has sponsorship changed in your industry over the past few years. What has been driving these changes? Finally, do you see these changes as positive?
Like, I’ve said, the old model of logo brandishing has thankfully been put to rest, and we’re now working within a more interactive dynamic, one where people want to feel enriched, engaged and entertained. For the team in Verve, we’ve observed four main factors that are driving these changes:
- The growing digital presence within sponsorship has certainly changed things. People want to see and hear more about a brand online as well as experiencing the real thing at a stadium. They want the gory details, the behind the scenes and the inside scoop – and it’s our job to find new ways to satiate this detail hungry consumer.
- Again, fans want to connect with brands directly and feel a part of the sponsorship. Getting consumers to engage with a brand brings a deeper connection and also gives the brand a purpose and a clear reason for being there. There’s nothing worse than a brand who shows up like the uninvited guest and adds nothing to the event. Consumers now have no patience for hollow branding exercises.
- Measurement of sponsorship: there are now different metrics that stakeholders will bring to the sponsorship table when briefing in agencies, this allows brands to be more involved and allows them to guarantee that they’re fully understood. We proudly prioritise collaborative ways of working so everyone feels like a winner.
- Millennials and Gen Zs are savvy when it comes to brand activities, in particular sponsorships. Brands therefore need to be relevant when choosing where to appear, don’t show up where you don’t belong or you’ll stand out, and trust us, these guys don’t hold back.
What clients have you been working with recently and which of your recent campaigns do you think best reflect new and emerging trends in your business area?
Some of the brands we work for in the sponsorship arena include Guinness, Pimm’s, Coca-Cola, Aer Lingus, Vhi Healthcare, Just Eat & Electric Ireland.
We have worked on a slew of different campaigns for Guinness Rugby, including: the Summer/ Autumn Internationals, the World Cup the GUINNESS Six Nations & GUINNESS Pro 14. The biggest trend that we have seen, particularly within the beer sector, has been the overall enhancement of the fan experience. Our digital team are now experts at bringing that stadium experience into people’s homes through digital channels which help to open up whole new conversational pathways for brands.
Vhi have been a partner of ours since they took over the sponsorship of the Women’s Mini Marathon in Dublin in 2015. As the sponsorship has evolved, our activities around the Mini Marathon have grown year on year to engage with runners and spectators on a deeper level.
We harnessed the power of RFID tech using runners’ timing chip and created a Wall of Support for family and friends, this wall existed as a space for people to write or record a message that is then played as the runners pass by. This meant that we could create promotional content before the Mini Marathon that engaged with a wider audience outside of the official Mini Marathon participants. It’s also a nice example of how something tech based can be used to amplify the human experience. We have also helped Vhi to develop their Vhi parkrun sponsorship over recent years, engaging with participants at a local level.
The Vhi sponsorship nods to a trend that we’re seeing ever more of– a tiered approach, one that not only focuses on aligning with a particular cause, but one that actually follows through, supports and encourages at a grass roots level.
Brand spend on sponsorship has been increasing year on year, is this a trend that you see continuing and why?
Brands are waking up to the power of a truly creative partnership. As the model of dropping a logo onto a banner can no longer hold its own in the new frenetic world of digital and event activations, we’re seeing a new and daring sponsorship model emerge.
I think that each successful campaign creates a domino effect within the sponsorship industry as other brands want the same great results for themselves. We see sponsorship budgets increasing as long as the focus stays on engagement and working hard to ensure that it is a fruitful partnership for both the rights holder and the brand.
What predictions can you make about how it’s going to change in the coming years?
The sponsorship industry needs to continue to change things up a bit and that is something that we are seeing. Traditional sponsorship properties and partnerships are evolving – badging exercises don’t drive true value for brands or engagement for fans. Verve is delivering a new breed of sponsorship, one that delivers real, layered value, like the work we carried out across the Six Nations, Electric Ireland and Vhi Marathons.
In the coming years, we’ll continue to see sponsors aiming to deepen their interactions with audiences in bold new ways. Nowadays, we rely less on predesigned assets and more on bespoke sponsorship ideas which are much more engaging. The days of the one-size-fits-all model are behind us. We find that sponsors are much more involved in the entire process, eager to draw customers into their brand story and inviting them to get much more up close and personal with their brand.
How has the overall shift from traditional to digital platforms impacted on your campaign strategies?
Largely, this hasn’t been too much of a challenge as we’ve always looked to drive digital engagement through our campaigns, knowing the depth that it adds to the experience. As with many modern agencies, we aim to be as channel agnostic as possible; we don’t respond to a brief with a channel, but with an idea. Our in-house digital team are involved in each and every sponsorship activation that Verve produces. Their thinking exists at the core of the concept, not just as a supporting platform to help tick a box.
How do larger global trends such as sustainability affect how you work and how are you adapting your campaigns/ways of working to appeal to Gen Zs and demographics of the future?
Verve have been positioned at the vanguard of sustainable measures for a long time now, by being the only agency in Ireland to be ISO certified for 6 years. We have been walking the walk a lot longer than other agencies and saw the need for sustainability in the way that we conduct events and activations as being crucial to our industry.
What Gen Z and younger generations want more than anything is brand transparency and authenticity. We make sure that each sponsorship meets these rising expectations with an engaging creative concept at the core of each campaign. We’ve always stood by the belief that it’s cool to be kind, by respecting, supporting and doing right by our colleagues, suppliers, clients and the community – all while making some pretty cool work, of course!