Ode to the billboard

Despite him not really knowing the product and not being able to read the letters of the brand name, the logo, by itself, is enough for him to know what he's seeing. That says a lot about the power of Coca-Cola's logo as a 'distinctive brand asset': distinguishing elements which lead us to recognise a brand. The red, in combination with the familiar white curl of the letters is enough to make toddlers think of cola.

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Brand logo: an anchor in the brain

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Our brains use brand logos as anchors which hold various associations in place. Those digital billboards at the side of the football pitch ensure that fans of the sport have an attachment to the brand logo. As long as we make the connection between a brand and our favourite sport often enough, we will (unconsciously) think of football when we're in the supermarket in the drinks aisle.

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"That's all very well, but I always buy whatever's on special offer", I hear you think. Not necessarily. Even though we'd like to believe that we weigh up each decision rationally, that isn't so. We tend to make decisions based on intuition, rather than going to the trouble of justifying choices. The hook making the link between football and Heineken, for instance, may just be the spur we need to reach for the six-pack of Heineken on the shelf, rather than for the competitor's product.

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So the advice for sponsors is simple: embed your brand (and/or logo) firmly in the sport, and fans of the sport will be tempted to go for your brand. Okay, but how do you do that? It's quite simple. Why do we immediately associate Duracell with a rabbit? And why is the reassuring 'pop' sound enough to remind us of a Grolsch swing-top bottle? Because associations of that kind are very often lodged in our minds. That's how it works with sport sponsoring, too: seeing a logo in relation to a particular sport often enough makes it easier for the brain to recall the (positive) association with sport.

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Logo visibility

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The boards covered in sponsor logos behind a player being interviewed after a game, the sponsor's branded drink bottles on the table at a press conference, Max Verstappen quickly putting on a cap with the sponsor's name emblazoned on it before speaking to a reporter, a tennis player who puts on a sponsored watch straight after the match. These are all points at which work is being done to build a stronger link between brand and sport.

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"But there's more to it than just making logos visible?", I often hear. That's true to a certain extent: logo visibility alone isn't necessarily enough to 'load' the sponsor's brand. That is to say: it doesn't change the impact or emotional inclination that the brand evokes among consumers. But a condition for the emotional connotation of the brand is, indeed, that the brain makes a link between the brand and the sport: to be able to ensure that football sponsorship results in positive attitudes towards Coca-Cola, we first have to think of football when we see Coca-Cola.

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Consistency is the key

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That so-called link in the brain cannot be created from one football match to the next. The most successful examples are brands that dare to couple their brand logo to a sponsorship in the long term and that do so highly consistently. Without making large-scale changes to the logo and colour scheme, and entering into long-term sponsorship contracts. Sponsor managers and marketers must always be aware that they have a long-term goal: little by little they are building that association in the consumer's brain.

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Successful sponsor billboards are the ones that are simple, clear and consistent. They show just a logo, in familiar and clear colours (these are the 'distinctive brand assets'). It is best to change them as little as possible and to resist the temptation to display all sorts of product types, sub-brands or other messages.

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ING is Oranje

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Let's go back to the match between the Netherlands (Oranje) and Norway; something else struck me about the digital billboards during that match. Not the tried and trusted Coca-Cola logo, but the advertising for ING which is, after all, the main sponsor of Oranje. The bank opted to use the digital LED billboards to promote the use of Apple Pay via the ING banking app (I thought this was quite a complex message, personally). In doing so, moreover, they were consistently showing the logo of another brand, that of Apple (now there's a distinctive brand asset...). Although there's nothing wrong with the association between ING and Oranje, these digital billboards don't contribute to that association.

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ING isn't the only sponsor that, when designing advertising for new digital LED billboards, prefers to share that one special offer or creative campaign message rather than that 'same old logo' yet again. In the short term there may be some logic to this reasoning but when you consider the greater purpose behind sponsoring, using digital billboards for this seems like a missed opportunity.

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'Sticking' logos at the side of a sports field is a great idea. It allows you to reach even the youngest of fans. But if you're going to do it, make sure you do it properly. Don't lose sight of your long-term goal. So next time, I’ll be able to enjoy the game as usual.