Mark Brown: Wrapping Up Nfl’s UK Market
Ahead of the final NFL UK game this weekend between the Baltimore Ravens and the Tennessee Titans, we caught up with Mark Brown, Marketing Director for General Mills UK, who explained how Old El Paso plans to capture the hearts and stomachs of American football fans in the UK.
Can you summarise your career to date?
I’ve been marketing for 20 years now, always within the food space and FMCGs. I’ve working for some of country’s biggest brands, from Weetabix to Richmond and I’ve been at General Mills for about 12 years.
Sports have also always played a key role in my life. I’ve been a player of different sports and continue to coach now. This has given me a strong understanding of the power sport has and what it can deliver, which has meant partnerships with various sporting bodies often form part of my brand marketing strategy.
How did Old El Paso’s partnership with NFL UK come to fruition?
We’ve implemented sports partnerships across the General Mills portfolio for many years. We’ve found they repeatedly deliver value to us and help amplify our brands in three different ways. Firstly, when there is synergy between our missions, the partnership helps drive consumer connection and build brand association.
Secondly, they work well in terms of engaging our retail customers, because they allow us to create distinctive activations in store, which in turn builds relevancy for the shopper and for our grocery partners. Then finally, they have a great impact internally. Because most of our employee base are fans or appreciate the value of sports, it really helps them buy in to what we’re doing as a business.
When it came to partnerships for Old El Paso, it was important that all three of these boxes were ticked. The NFL and Old El Paso has an authentic shared mission to bring community together. Also, driving ritualisation is a core part of our growth vision Old El Paso. We want to make Old El Paso a top ten dinner in the UK and have recognised that many people come together to eat whilst watching sport. So encouraging friends and families to make Old El Paso their go-to NFL gameday meal has been an important leg of our strategy.
Is it easier to market Old El Paso to football fans in the UK because there aren’t ingrained food traditions or harder because it’s a small pool of fans in comparison to America?
I think the fan base is reasonably well-sized. It also gives us a good reach from a European perspective, because the London Games are broadcasted in other markets that Old El Paso work in. So, the scale of what we get is impressive – not Premier League(!) but it’s still quite a sizable scale.
We also find it beneficial working with the NFL, because we’ve got a shared mission. And because we both have this journey of growth, if you like, it allows us to build a better a better partnership as it progresses.
We do find them (NFL) as an organisation very collaborative and good partners, but the way we work with the NFL is no different to when we work with Team GB, who are one of the largest sporting organisations in the UK. It’s more down to an aligned culture and ethos, and then that shared mission and objective.
In my experience the best sporting partnerships are also those where the partner doesn’t solely care about the cheque but is keen for the partnership to be mutually beneficial, where both parties can learn and grow together.
What have fans seen during the NFL UK?
Our full activation plan centred around the idea of it’s ‘Crunch Time’ which ties into a focus on our snacking range. After all, nachos are the perfect game day food! We’ve activated in-stadia branding and a media partnership with Sky Sports where adverts with Sky Sports also run through the stadium.
We also ran competitions through the media too, for people to win tickets to NFL games, while also doing a lot of social activity around it with influencers.
How did you utilise the peak of interest as the NFL games in London only last three weeks?
It kind of comes back to those three areas that I mentioned. So of course, we invest behind the partnership, and then we’ll execute it in store as well. Our aim is to target as many consumers as possible and build relationships with our retail customers. We’ve taken customers down to the games to demonstrate the power of the partnership and activated internal competitions allowing staff to win NFL tickets. We have a lot of fun with it, and it’s a big one for us within our calendar generally.
How will you know if the partnership has been successful?
We measure it in three different ways. The first one is purely simple, we measure all the various media metrics engagements and the reach of our communications. We will then also measure in terms of what traction we get from our customers and retailers – for example, where we managed to get extra space in store. And then we run it through our econometric modelling, which provides the analysis to help us understand the return on investment.
What are your hopes for the NFL in general in the UK?
I hope that they can continue what they’re doing which is building the fan base. In the UK now, they’re really building a strong brand, and I think a strong product in the UK. So, I think they need to continue doing that and putting resources against that. For me, the exciting element is building it a little bit more from a grassroots perspective. I believe they just bought the London Irish training facility to start running an academy in South West London. That’s how they can start to get more young people involved – more British and European athletes – which will be undoubtedly good for the future of the sport.
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