Marketing and the Premier League: Part Two – Rebecca Hopkins

August 26, 2014

Having recently looked at the Premier League-themed marketing campaigns which rolled out this month, two more multi-nationals have now come to the fore with their football activations.

First, Barclays has launched a new TV ad, highlighting the links between grassroots and professional football. The creative, titled, ‘Championing the True Spirit of the Game’, focuses on the traits shared by the two ability levels, including fan passion, player attitudes and coaches’ insight. The 60-second spot, produced to capitalize on anticipation surrounding the Premier League’s new season, debuted during the opening matches last weekend. Barclays, in addition to giving eight thousand tickets to local communities, launched a promotion giving fans the chance to win tickets throughout the rest of the football year. This continues Barclays’ “Thank You” campaign, which began last year, making its league involvement more beneficial to fans. It’s the first major marketing drive from the bank since the 2012 LIBOR scandal caused it to rethink its communications along more value-driven lines.

Next YouTube, although not focused exclusively on the Premier League, is looking to drive increased ad revenue at the start of the new football season by helping clubs and sponsors to develop better video-on-demand content. The platform is currently guiding well-supported teams, including Manchester City and Bayern Munich, as to how to turn trending material into shareable collateral. Clubs and sponsors, armed with new communications strategies, will be encouraged to plan content that can be distributed quickly, via YouTube and its sister entity, Google+. Proposed material for this includes reactive posts and new player signings, with the resulting fan engagement data being analyzed and presented to potential advertisers in order to demonstrate the value of reactive videos.

This strategy forms part of YouTube’s wider initiative to attract advertising brands to the platform. Football is powerful content for the channel as the recent World Cup demonstrated; sixty four million hours of football-related footage was watched on the platform globally. Since videos remain on YouTube until actively removed, it allows brands to target audiences over a much longer period of time compared with traditional advertising.

The new football season is only a week old, yet the level of attention it has garnered in its early stages highlights how valued it is by marketers. Now sports agencies await the next inevitable batch of Premier League brand campaigns with bated breath.


Rebecca Hopkins is Managing Director of ENS Ltd, a London-based sports agency tasked with promoting and protecting brands in sport. They specialise in sports PR, crisis management and online public relations.

Rebecca’s isportconnect-profile-widget

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