The Big Interview: Nissan Europe

Martin Moll, General Manager, Marketing Communications, Nissan Europe, discusses the challenges of establishing a brand in sport sponsorship and plans for 2016…

You’ve been at Nissan for just over six months, how have you found your role as the brand continues to move its focus into the European sports market?

It’s a very fast paced business, irrespective of being automotive or not, there’s a real sense of urgency. There’s a real passion in terms of the mission, it’s really well communicated throughout the company; those are the things that stand out. It is fast paced in terms of where they want to take the brand and in terms of international investment.

It’s a real commitment to change the landscape of consumer opinion and engagement on a deeper level across the product range, as well as Nissan branding. Part of my function fits within not just the marketing, communications or advertising side, equally it covers the events. In terms of the UEFA Champions League, this is year two of a three-year plan and obviously that is something that can be continued. We are looking to really ramp it up this year compared to last year, which was a steep learning curve for us.

We want to reach as wide an audience as possible, sharing our personality, engaging with them in the form of sports, which in itself is a very exciting vehicle.

The UEFA Champions League deal saw you take over from Ford, who had a longstanding association with the competition. Is there a different feeling across the team in the second season?

I have a huge amount of respect for the Ford brand and what they did over their very long association with the competition. For us, we saw year one as a learning year, trying new things and completely immersing ourselves in the consumer world. We wanted to find a place in the community.

We are like a collaborator in amongst the community as opposed to a corporate passively pushing messages out. There is an inherent danger that if you don’t constantly challenge yourself and see it with fresh eyes you can flip into a mind-set that is, ‘we’ve got this thing going on over here, we need to push some assets out and that’s that done’.

Now season two is getting into the closing stages so the appeal widens and it goes to a wider circle of people who might not otherwise be as fully integrated into the sport of football. The games are huge now. It pulls people in, a bit like the Olympics in London, people that thought they would not go and see stuff ended up being stuck to the TV and not being able to leave. It’s the same sort of spirit in the football community. For us the difference for this year versus last is we understand the nature of the cost, amplification and engagement. We understand the things that do appear to have a natural response to consumers and those that don’t and we are clear about not getting into any messaging that feels corporate.

We’re excited about our campaign for Milan and we can’t wait to capture some of the engagement and excitement that is building towards the final. Having a mechanism this year to involve as many people as possible, with people who never thought they’d have the chance to be involved, is going to be fantastic. There are various different needs of that, some of which clearly can’t be physical because there is only a certain capacity. There are virtual ways you can do that and we are playing with quite a few different techniques through exploitation of media, especially social media amplification. It’s beyond football, it’s about the excitement of doing stuff where you feel included as part of a massive audience. That feels very exciting because at no point are we referencing the business end of what we do, it’s about the personality and experience of Nissan and giving people some engagement at the top level only.

Check out the best goals of the #UCL group stage. Watch all the goals & vote for your fave https://t.co/FlWuO7Wd7ghttps://t.co/2ivclj5sa5

— Nissan Europe (@NissanEurope) January 15, 2016

It’s been a huge couple of years for the brand in terms of sports sponsorship. We’ve mentioned UEFA, but then you’ve also teamed up with the ICC recently, as well as the likes of City Football Group, Rio Olympic 2016 and Africa Cup of Nations. Do you see the sponsorship portfolio continuing to expand?

Some of the products we have – such as the UEFA Champions League, even though it’s European – it’s got a global footprint. But there’s an important control point there, because there’s not an endless desire of just building scale in terms of our involvement in all different types of projects. The European market for us is a big enough area to focus on, some of the other things you’ve listed are quite specific, either global and have a dedicated team, such as Rio in Brazil and Team GB.

We’ve got to be careful, if you spend and don’t have a strong, consistent strategy, processes and structure to amplify it, then effectively you just become an expensive name on a bit of signage. Therein lies the problem for a lot of brands. If their brands or products don’t have anything directly relevant to that product, you have to find a bridge that shows you are part of the community for different reasons. That’s our obsession and our focus.

You mention it takes time, is the key therefore to stay involved in these properties in the long run? ICC is an eight year deal, and you recently expanded your UEFA deal for another three years, is it sticking with the portfolio you’ve got the key?

There’s no fixed template, we want to challenge and stretch, and ask how we can improve on what we did previously. Not necessarily just scale it up, we don’t want to go and make everything like a Liberace performance, it’s more about how we can get smarter, more interesting and more relevant to consumers. That may well be pockets of smaller scale things using the asset of the UEFA Champions League, rather than just scaling up and showcasing more on bigger budgets. We shall see.

The learning points are for us; are consumers getting it; are they enjoying our participation; and is there a two-way loop. I think that if we started to run dry of ideas or we thought it was maxed out then there would need to be a question asked.

Thanks to your votes, the inaugural winner of the #U19CWC @Nissan Play of the Tournament is Kamindu Mendis! pic.twitter.com/NqumKnXSvE

— ICC (@ICC) February 14, 2016