BMO unveils a new community-oriented soccer sponsorship program.
When it comes to marketing to Canadians, you have to wonder if hockey is becoming the equivalent of Toots Shor's old Manhattan restaurant and lounge, of which Yogi Berra was said to complain, "It's too crowded, nobody goes there any more." Exhibit A? Tim Hortons and Canadian Tire and Scotiabank and Esso and Reebok and PepsiCo and - well, you get the idea. Aren't there so many companies crowding the ice that their individual messages get lost?
Not if you look at the experience of Kraft Canada. This Saturday night, the company will unveil the winner of its sixth annual Hockeyville promotion, a nationwide popularity contest which awards a small community $100,000 in hockey arena upgrades and $25,000 to four runners-up. In the second-last round of voting, which whittled the list of hopefuls from 10 down to five between March 8 and 19, the contest's broadcaster CBC logged more than 2.2 million votes.
But what, you may wonder, does a consumer packaged goods company have to do with hockey? Jack Hewitt, the vice-president of marketing services at Kraft Canada, acknowledges it's an unlikely fit.
"Our target is female head of households," he said. But, "we did some research on where families spend most of their time, and 91 per cent of households across the country ended up going to their local community centre, and it usually was the arena, and it was centered around hockey, figure skating, public skating, ringette, sledge hockey. It's ingrained in the fabric of Canadians, going to that local community centre."
Kraft's results suggest there's a bottomless reserve of goodwill among Canadians for marketers who know how to play the hockey card smartly. The company measures 10 so-called "core values," which they claim have all seen increases since the beginning of Hockeyville. The number of respondents who agree with the statement, "Kraft has great community spirit," is up 93 per cent over the past two years; those who believe Kraft "actively cares and supports my community," increased 152 per cent; and those who agree that Kraft "shares similar values with me," was up 36 per cent.
Most importantly, Kraft claims its baseline sales during the eight-week Hockeyville promotion are up 6 per cent.
But if hockey is swaddled in the Canadian flag, Bank of Montreal believes another sport deserves a bigger place in the sun. "Soccer is the main sport that Canadians are playing," claims Sandy Bourne, the bank's vice-president of sponsorships. "Thirty-three per cent of [young]Canadians participate in soccer. That's twice the number of [young]Canadians who participate in hockey. We want to dispel those myths."
On Friday, BMO will introduce a four-month cross-country Hockeyville-like promotion for soccer-playing kids aged 7-12, known as BMO Team of the Week, dangling a grand prize of a $125,000 field refurbishment and a trip to see the Toronto FC or Vancouver Whitecaps. (Details are at BMOsoccer.com.) Fifteen teams will compete, trying to whip up support and online votes for the big prize. The program, created in-house, has been in the works for about two years.
BMO has been in the soccer game for about six years now, since it signed on as the naming sponsor of Toronto's BMO Field, which led to a deal for the team's jersey rights (renewed last summer, shortly before the end of the World Cup). It currently supports about 10,000 players and 70 clubs, in each of the 10 provinces.
"We really started to look at the growth of soccer in this country, and the linkages between the Canadians who are playing soccer and our BMO customer base, and recognizing that soccer certainly touches a lot of our customers, just like it touches a lot of Canadians," Ms. Bourne says.
It is not, as some have suggested, a play for the business of new Canadians: Ms. Bourne says the bank does not track the effect of soccer sponsorships within specific ethic communities.
Still, for a large bank with an image centred on Bay Street (with deep roots in Montreal's business community), the outreach efforts help soften the corporate face across the country. "It provides us with a lot of community-level involvement, so we're looking at: 'Okay, how many of these teams do we have in communities? How much an interface do we have with our branches in the community through soccer?'" Ms. Bourne adds.
The Team of the Week initiative is, "definitely to make it known that across this country we are involved in grassroots soccer. We want to show that we have bank branches in most communities across this country, and we want to show that BMO is a part of your community."
It's a significant investment. While BMO would not provide dollar values, Ms. Bourne said 20 per cent of corporate marketing efforts go toward soccer-related activities, representing 43 per cent of the entire sponsorships budget.
Success of sponsorships is harder to measure for financial institutions than for companies like Kraft, but BMO says that the number of respondents to a tracking study who said the bank's relationship with soccer would prompt them to consider doing business with it increased between early 2009 and late 2010 by a little over 40 per cent. It found a similar increase in the number of Canadians who would recommend the bank to friends because of its soccer sponsorship.
Ms. Bourne recalls that, as she drove around Toronto with a Czech flag on her car (her partner is Czech), people would frequently stop her to talk soccer. "What I love is the camaraderie," she says. "It's almost like we're part of this special community. It really is the beautiful game."
"It's those elements that led us to believe we've got something really positive here, and something that we can grow," she adds. Best of all? At least for the time being, the soccer pitch is a lot less crowded than the hockey rink.
Simon Houpt