The Big Interview: Chris O’donoghue

Mongoose Sports and Entertainment chief executive Chris O’Donoghue speaks to sportindustry.biz about the new sponsorship agency, its origin and goals.

Tell us about this new agency?

Mongoose is a joint venture with The Mission Marketing Group plc (the mission), focussing on both sports and entertainment marketing. As an agency, we are creatively focussed and commercially aware with the ultimate goal of creating integrated campaigns to make businesses grow.  We do this by using our expertise to outwit, out think and outplay the competition. 

What is your past experience in sponsorship?

I’ve been working in the sector for just under 15 years, first with Quintus Group, which is where we ran the Masters Tennis at the Royal Albert Hall and the BNP Paribas Tennis Classic at The Hurlingham Club. That business was acquired by IMG in 2007.

At that point, I went on to become global sponsorship director at the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), where I was responsible for managing, at the time, the biggest sponsor in tennis, Sony. I managed that sponsorship globally as well as all new business for the Tour.

In 2010, I moved to become managing director at WSM Communications and worked with brands from Heineken to Rolex to Aberdeen Asset Management, doing commercial sponsorship deals and building sponsorship programmes from the outset, activating them through all sorts of creative paths, be it digital, social or more straightforward activation and traditional PR.

What sectors are you planning to focus on?

Alongside me are my business partners, Philippa Stewart and Laura Pollard, who each have outstanding backgrounds in sponsorship and sports marketing. Philippa has a vast amount of experience working with brands in the financial and insurance sectors, and has worked with clients including HSBC, Aberdeen Asset Management and Brit Insurance.

We also aim to work with larger consumer brands and Laura will focus on this, having created Vodafone’s fashion sponsorship programme from scratch and worked with global brands such as Lavazza, Pepsi and MasterCard.

What direction do you see yourselves moving in? Any dream clients?

Dream clients, as of today, would be to help the mission agency clients grow into the sponsorship and/or entertainment arenas. There are 12 agencies, including Mongoose now, in the mission, with some fantastic clients on the roster. We aim to extend our services to all of these brands whether it be with a global sponsorship platform or a regional entertainment programme.

Where do you see Mongoose in the next five years?

We want to keep it focussed as a sports and entertainment sponsorship and events business but in five years we want to be truly global, servicing global brands sponsorship activation needs. At the moment we have offices in London and Singapore and we can extend this reach through the mission, which has 23 offices across the UK, Asia and San Francisco. 

How do you plan to realise this goal?

As I mentioned, through the mission there is already a huge client base to service. As well as this, between the three of us and our chairman John Beddington, the creator of The Masters Tennis at the Royal Albert Hall and formally the Executive Vice President of Tennis Canada, we have over 75 years of experience which comes with an outstanding network of contacts. 

What exactly are the benefits of being part of The Mission Group?

The Mission Marketing Group has got some of the best creative agencies in the country so that helps with everything we do. Creativity is part of our DNA. As well as this, Speed Communications recently joined the mission and we have a fantastic relationship with them and will be working very closely with their sports division.

But most importantly, the thing about the mission, unlike other groups to my knowledge, is that it runs a very decentralised programme. One of the key phrases is “entrepreneurs with scale” so each of the agencies runs itself but if one of them needs further resources, help or another skill set, then they bring in the other agencies where relevant.

And finally, why the name Mongoose?

Two reasons for Mongoose. One, people will remember it. You’re not going to forget Mongoose!

Secondly and more importantly, the traits of a mongoose are attributes we felt we could and should link to our business: agile, ferocious, quick, nimble and tenacious. Out of those attributes, we’ve built a tagline, which is “to outwit, out think and outplay”. We feel it fits quite nicely.

The Mongoose Sport and Entertainment website can be found here