Football Partnerships

AC Milan midfielder David Beckham has ended his ten-year association with soft drink giant Pepsi.

The 33-year-old announced today that the deal, worth a reputed £2 million a year, will be discontinued at the end of the player’s current contract.

Beckham, who will play for Milan until the recommencement of the MLS season in March with LA Galaxy, told the press: “I have nothing but good memories of my association with Pepsi.

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By Alex Kotler

Mission: Meet, Learn… Wake Up!
There was no acknowledgement of the 5:00am vibration from my mobile phone’s alarm. It must have danced unrecognized on the bedside table without an audience. Rather, it was the searing sun bursting through the partially pulled curtains that pried my eyelids open. Expletive, bloody expletive. The light alone told me that I’d woken later than I’d wanted; the question was just how late I was. 8:00am. Disaster averted. I’d cost myself only an early start and an opportunity to stay current on the travel blog - a far easier pill to swallow than if I’d missed a panel or a meeting.

From yoga to the shower, I gambled that I could repeat yesterday’s success with my Windsor and hurried out, suit jacket in hand and tie loose around the neck. I entered the SCC, pausing briefly to greet the Sandton City Centre girls and rode the elevator down to Exhibition Hall 2 for the workshop on Making the most of your stadium’s assets in the IFCS. Closed doors. Time check. 9:34. Late. Reminder to self: Put in for a wake-up call tomorrow morning. Or, catch a taxi instead of walking. Noted.

Much to my salvation, one of the items that came with the Soccerex SWAG (a new acronym that I just learned for the Stuff We All Get) was an earpiece to listen in to discussions remotely from within the premises of the SCC. Relieved, I found a seat upon a couch in the FIFA 2010 atrium, just beside the IFCS with a view of the live video broadcast. Strong.The beauty of this setup was that I could effectively lounge and still be tuned into the presentation. Peter van Gend, President of Major Events at Siemens was moderating a panel that included John Barrow, Senior Principal at HOK sport architecture and Jon Coxeter-Smith, a Partner at Davis Langdon.

Takeaways from: Making the most of your stadium’s assets
Two geographical focal points of the discussion were South Africa and London, each locations of upcoming events in 2010 and 2012, respectively. With both, planners must consider a stadium’s life cycle and ensure the sustainability of activity in it after the peak period of attendance. With London in particular, the plan is to construct an 80,000-person stadium that can then be reduced to a 20,000-seat capacity. After all, Madonna can only play the venue now and again but not every night.

In summary, success is measured by the proper execution of the life cycle planning, which must be robust and long term. The stadium must be of the proper size, both for the event itself and subsequent events. Building a stadium too large equates to a burden of unnecessary cost, while one that is too small amounts to lost revenue. Technology may aid in the reduction of life cycle costs, but it can only succeed if implemented in concert with proper management of the venue.

From this workshop, I proceeded back up to the Soccerex Studio for - as a branding specialist - the panel that I most wanted to attend: Brand Beckham. Entering the amphitheater, I passed some heavy hitters in the front row, notably David Dein. I sat in the fourth row, center, momentarily debating introducing myself.

Digression
Earlier in the morning I checked my email, and read an one from my cousin. He told me, in that way that we talk, that he was at the gym finishing a fitness workout. As he was about to complete his routine, a scene from Rocky IV came on the television - the one where Rocky single-fistedly ends the Cold War. He got so pumped up that he continued to train for 25 minutes. He closed the message by wishing me the same level of motivation in my day that Rocky brought to his. Strong. On that note I approached David Dein.

I closed in with confidence, apologizing for interrupting his conversation, shaking his hand, and expressing how much I enjoyed his presentation. He thanked me and told me that the man sitting next to him was Paul Barber, Executive Director of Tottenham Hotspur, and that I probably wanted to introduce myself to him too. It was mildly embarrassing, but memorable. He then asked my opinion on his position on technology, in which I responded by telling him that I enjoy the game with fallibility and imperfection but that I appreciated his opinion. I thanked them both and wished them an enjoyable rest of the conference. Nice one, Rocky.

Takeaways from: Brand Beckham - Managing the biggest world brand in football
On this panel sat Jeremy Dale, Corporate VP of Global Marketing at Motorola, Bryan Robson, former Manchester United Legend, Lucas Radebe, former captain of Bafana Bafana, and Terry Byrne, David Beckham’s personal manager. The workshop began with Mr. Dale presenting Motorola’s position on their partnership with Brand Beckham, clarifying that Mr. Beckham is seen as a brand ambassador and not a sponsored athlete. Along with that, he offered - what I will reduce to - six criteria/guidelines for selecting brand ambassadors and how to utilize them, citing examples from his experience with Beckham.

• Expect the Unexpected: When Motorola signed Beckham, he was the England captain and a star at Real Madrid. Within a few months, he was dropped from the international squad and had been benched by his then club coach, Fabio Capello. Motorola stuck with Beckham, though, and his character and ethic earned him recalls to both sides.
• Must Haves: An ambassador must (a) have broad appeal, (b) attract attention, (c) align with brand identity, and (d) be articulate. Beckham satisfied these criteria, namely as Motorola saw itself and Beckham as equating to high performance, high style, high design and something else in my notes that I cannot now read.
• Only Work with Nice Guys: For this, Mr. Dale showed clips that humanized Beckham, and showed his willingness to re-route a flight en route to Australia from Europe to Beijing for a 6-hour press tour. The landing earned Motorola a huge boost in sales, proof that they had chosen well in their ambassador because (a) he helped them when they needed him and (b) he positively affected the bottom line.
• Do Interesting Things: Motorola shot Beckham with a snake around his neck for an advertisement. The image was cool, if not interesting.
• Family: From video clips of Beckham at Motorola’s midwestern US offices, he mentioned during two company-wide assemblies that he felt part of a family and thus was why he was proud to be onboard with Motorola.
• Maximize Use of Time: The trip to China, among other instances, supports this again. Beckham is busy, and Motorola does its best to squeeze what it can out of all of Beckham’s available time.


After the presentation, each of the panelists spoke more about Beckham, the man, than anything. The most salient details, though, came from Mr. Byrne, who told of a story of Beckham signing autographs in the middle of the night in Japan where fans gathered outside of his hotel and refused to leave until he came down. Supposedly, after one of his favorite childhood players refused him an autograph as a boy, he vowed to always sign every autograph. Apparently, the same thing happened the next night and he went down without complaint. Secondly, to his work ethic, every Tuesday and Thursday, Beckham takes 60 spot kicks: 20 from the left, 10 from center-left, 10 from center-right, and 20 from the right. Apply that kind of discipline to your career, and you’ll be more likely to score the winner under pressure. It’s all about practice and preparation.



I attended two more workshops, the latter one on Developing the game from inside and out - the importance of emerging markets. In this session, Ian Ayre, Commercial Director of Liverpool FC, Vishwajeet Kadam, Vice President of the Western Indian FA, Steve Bellis, Commercial Director of Lynx Group International, Steve McMahon, Director of Strategic Sports Investment, and Dr. Sridhar Maturi, Head of Sports Marketing at Satyam, weighed in on the topic. What remains in my mind is a vignette shared by Mr. McMahon, who also works as a color commentator for ESPN in Singapore.

Following a Champions League fixture in which the ESPN and BBC color teams were in neighboring booths, the two got together. McMahon chatted up his counterpart, Alan Hansen, while the two producers talked. Asking each other how the show went off, the English team replied by saying it was good and that they expected several millions viewers of the broadcast. The Asian team replied in kind, saying it was good and that they expected several hundred million viewers of the broadcast. And that is the impact of Asia.



That night was the Gala Dinner, which I made plans otherwise as I had not paid for a ticket to attend. Credit again to Misha Sher, who rang me personally to ask if I wanted to come. I thanked him, but seeing as I had made dinner reservations with some business partners, I declined. We did have drinks later on to close out the night-cum-morning. Thank goodness I put in for the wake-up call.

Football stars Ronaldo and Zinédine Zidane announced today that the sixth annual Match Against Poverty will take place in Fès, Morocco on 17 November. As Goodwill Ambassadors for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Ronaldo and Zidane will each captain an international team of world renowned footballers for this friendly game. The primary objective of the event is to mobilize the public in the fight against poverty and to promote the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which seek to halve world poverty by 2015.

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