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AIA and Tottenham Hotspur

9Case Study 1AIA and Tottenham Hotspur

CAMPAIGN SUMMARYTottenham Hotspur announced AIA, Asia’s largest independent, publicly-listed life insurance group, as its Official Shirt Partner in July 2014.

Before the five-year deal, AIA identified the English Premier League club as an ideal partner with which to communicate and engage with key audiences across 18 Asia-Pacific markets; including 29m individual policy-holders, more than 16m members of group insurance schemes, as well as the group’s base of insurance agents and employees.

In the early stages of the partnership, AIA focused on introducing the club to stakeholders across its markets through a pan-regional education and engagement programme. Each market was encouraged to use AIA’s association with Tottenham Hotspur to strategically support its own local objectives in line with the core partnership objectives. Meanwhile, the club identified that AIA could support its own objectives for fanbase growth in Asia. In addition, both organisations established a mutual objective to support the development of grassroots football in the region.

PROJECT DETAILS

Sponsorship title:AIA, Official Shirt Partner, Tottenham Hotspur

Duration of sponsorship: July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2019

Case study submitted by: Tottenham Hotspur

Sponsor’s industry sector: Life insurance

Rights-holder: Tottenham Hotspur

Agency: Fast Track


PLANNINGAhead of becoming a partner of Tottenham Hotspur, AIA went through a rigorous process to find a suitable sporting partner that met its selection criteria. The brand took several considerations into account, including:

•Location of the prospective partner

•Language of the prospective partner

•Marketing budget of each of its markets and their ability to activate a partnership

•The level of interest in sport of each market

•The brand/business objectives of each market and how aligned they were with a partnership in sport

•Size of each stakeholder group for each of its markets.

The main synergy outlined across each of AIA’s 18 diverse markets was the popularity of football, particularly the Premier League. With this in mind, Tottenham Hotspur, based in London and with an Asia-Pacific fanbase of over 170m, was identified as an ideal partner with which to reinforce the AIA brand position, increase brand preference, generate new business and promote AIA’s commitment to healthy living, while engaging with customers and local communities.

Once the partnership was agreed, a centralised toolkit was created to educate key internal stakeholders on how to use the partnership effectively to meet AIA’s objectives. As this is AIA’s first centrally-supported partnership, there were potential challenges involved given the decentralised structure of the business in each market. These challenges were minimised through the formation of a working group that incorporated key personnel from each market, led by head office.

A series of co-ordinated activities was planned and delivered across each AIA market to launch the partnership

ObjectivesAIA

•To help the company communicate the strength, breadth and depth of the AIA brand to consumers around the Asia-Pacific region.

•To engage with customers, agents and partners in order to help drive new business and sales.

•To reinforce the vital role that active participation in sport plays in helping people lead longer, healthier, better lives.

Tottenham Hotspur

•Grow awareness of the club in Asia and engage further the existing fanbase.

Mutual

•Increase sports participation, encourage healthy lifestyles, help develop footbal and engage communities around Asia to make a positive impact that extends beyond the playing field.

•Activity to date has resulted in the delivery of nearly 250 football-related activations for a range of audiences in 15 of AIA’s key markets. A considerable amount of activity has also taken place in London as guests from AIA’s markets have visited the club for a range of exclusive experiences.


Malaysia Legends tour

•Tottenham Hotspur Legends Ledley King and Ossie Ardiles, alongside grassroots coaches from the club, spent a week in Malaysia conducting a programme of football-related activity with AIA.

•Engaging and inclusive initiatives across each of AIA Malaysia’s stakeholder groups were launched to maximise outcomes, including ‘coach the coaches’ activity with AIA Malaysia’s charity partner, Legends meet-and-greets with insurance sales agents, employee football training sessions with the coaches and media access to Legends.

•Opportunity for the club and AIA to further enhance relationships with key stakeholders in Malaysia ahead of the first team visiting Kuala Lumpur the following year.

AIA Cup in Malaysia and Australia

•Tottenham Hotspur and AIA worked together to create a high-profile first-team tour in two of AIA’s markets.

•A total of 59 activations took place around matches in both markets, including player visits to AIA offices and

and this was the beginning of a successful international programme of tailored activity.

ACTIVATIONOverview of activityPartnership launch and 'Giant Shirt Tour' across Asia

•To celebrate the launch of the partnership, over 10,000 AIA employees and agents were given replica Spurs shirts and exclusive co-branded merchandise.

•Co-ordinated activity took place in the majority of AIA offices across the Asia-Pacific region as the announcement was celebrated by integrating the club into office décor and branding.

•As part of the launch, AIA created two giant replica Spurs shirts spanning 8x9 metres that travelled to AIA offices in key markets, including Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and China.

•AIA employees, agents and Spurs fans adorned the shirts with messages of support for the team before they were presented to the Tottenham Hotspur first-team in London by specially selected AIA personnel.


team events at iconic locations such as the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur and Sydney Harbour Bridge.

•More than 200 hours of grassroots coaching were delivered by the club in both markets.

•The tour won three awards: the 'Marketing Excellence Award' in Malaysia and Australia’s 'Favourite Event' and 'Best Achievement in Marketing, Events and Sponsorship' at the Australian Event Awards.

'Football Dream' – China

•Tottenham Hotspur and AIA supported the search to find China’s next football star by participating in the second series of the popular reality television show ‘Football Dream’.

•Six club ambassadors spent seven weeks in five Chinese cities alongside Tottenham Hostpur Academy coaches, training and identifying talent from 8,000 participants, as well as attending AIA Football Carnivals.

International broadcast

•The club has worked with international broadcast partners to create greater visibility of AIA branding at the club's White Hart Lane stadium, delivering media value significantly higher than the benchmark in all 18 AIA markets.

•The club produces an exclusive broadcast package on a weekly basis for distribution as part of an international programming block to all of AIA’s tier one markets.

White Hart Lane welcomes AIA

•The club has hosted employees, sales agents and other key AIA stakeholders for matches at White Hart Lane from 16 of AIA’s 18 markets. Each visit was tailored depending on the audience and included Legend appearances, stadium tours, pitchside access and premium hospitality.

•Tottenham Hotspur also hosted over 100 AIA guests for hospitality at Wembley ahead of the Capital One Cup Final against Chelsea in March 2015.

AIA President Club

•Tottenham Hotspur hosted delegates from the AIA President Club, an annual convention for the company’s top-performing agents, held in London in 2015, at White Hart Lane for a high-profile Premier League match against Manchester City.

•A unique programme was designed and delivered around the match for 240 of AIA’s agents, including meeting players, Q&As with Legends, photo opportunities and more.

•The 2015 AIA President Club was the largest single partner hospitality event ever held at White Hart Lane.

China Youth Football Development Foundation (CYFDF)

•AIA and the club established the CYFDF to develop and promote grassroots football in rural China.

•High-profile initiatives have taken place to raise


awareness and funds for the project:

•Launch – Tottenham Hotspur Legend Steffen Freund and grassroots coaches spent a week in Shanghai to launch the programme and train 50 PE teachers from schools in rural China to develop their coaching skills.

•Great Wall of China Trek – Tottenham Hotspur Foundation staff and Steffen Freund took part in a 46km sponsored trek alongside AIA senior management to raise funds for the charity.

•Charity shirt – The Tottenham Hotspur first-team wore shirts branded with the charity logo for the Premier League match against Leicester City in March 2015. This replaced the AIA logo for one match and, following the fixture, the worn shirts were signed by the players and auctioned to raise funds for the charity.

•Two children from rural China travelled to London for the match. This was the first time they had travelled outside of their village and they were given the unique experience of taking part in a coaching session at the club’s training centre and led the team out as mascots at the match itself.

•Coaching clinics – Two Tottenham Hotspur academy coaches spent two weeks across five Chinese cities delivering more than 100 hours of coaching to a group of PE teachers from rural China.

Elite player development – Hong Kong and South Korea

•Facilitated by AIA, Tottenham Hotspur hosted national representative teams from two key markets – Hong Kong under-16s and South Korea under-12s – at the club’s training centre to prepare for major international tournaments.

•The club provided sports scientists, first-class training facilities, academy coaches and other expertise to prepare the sides for the Asia Championships and Danone Cup, respectively.

The great warm-up

•AIA conducted a Tottenham Hotspur-inspired fitness and vitality competition across its markets, which saw employees in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan and Thailand take part.

•In Hong Kong, the initiative broke a Guinness World Record for the most people doing step-ups simultaneously (nearly 2,000).

EVALUATIONThe results below demonstrate the strong return delivered for AIA and Tottenham Hotspur against the partnership objectives. A significant amount of activity has taken place with successful results in a broad range of areas. There have been a number of key learnings from the first 18 months of the partnership and these will be taken into account as the activity continues.

•149-per-cent increase in global media value for Official Shirt Partner from broadcast coverage.

• £1.8m media value, 400,000 Facebook reach and 680,000 Twitter impressions around Malaysia Legends Tour.

•Reach of 3.5m people for coverage of the AIA Football Carnival, a series of one-day festivals of football involving the club's coaching staff and ambassadors across a number of Chinese cities; £345,000 in media value.

•Cumulative match attendance of over 100,000 for AIA Cup matches in Malaysia and Australia, including over 5,000 AIA customers, partners and other stakeholders.

•26,500 AIA staff, agents and Spurs fans signed the giant replica shirts across five different markets.

•Over 35,000 replica Spurs shirts distributed by AIA to agents, employees and community recipients.

•Over 200,000 co-branded merchandise items distributed to employees and agents.

•Nearly 2,000 AIA guests hosted in London at Tottenham Hotspur games.

•More than £100,000 raised by AIA and Tottenham Hotspur for the CYFDF.

•£650,000 equivalent media value of CYFDF logo broadcast exposure at Leicester City fixture.

•Over 100 Chinese PE school teachers coached by Tottenham Hotspur in China.

•Well over 500 hours of grassroots coaching delivered by the club in AIA markets.

•3,800 primary school children in China involved in the coaching sessions.

•Club has seen a 112-per-cent increase in active followers in Asia and Oceania – from 80.5m in 2011 to 170.5m.

•48-per-cent increase in the club’s Chinese social media following – from 1.5m at the start of the partnership to 2.2m.

•15 official Tottenham Hotspur Supporters Clubs now exist in the Asia-Pacific region.

•Localised club Twitter handles for Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and India have been created since the partnership began.