The Big Interview – Brother UK

James Lawton-Hill, head of marketing for Brother UK – the Official Technology Partner of Fulham FC – speaks to sportindustry.biz about the challenges of a B2B sponsorship in sport and plans for the second half of the season.

This summer you became an Official Sponsor of Fulham FC, could you tell us a little more about the strategy behind the partnership?

Brother runs a broad mix of above the line and below the line type activity. The year before we sponsored Channel 4’s business programmes which gave us great reach and access to a big audience but we were looking for a sponsorship that gave us a bit more depth in terms of activation. People often associated Brother with our sponsorship of Manchester City in the 1990’s, which we are trying to move on from, but when we were looking again at what we wanted from a new partnership the Barclays Premier League appealed to us due to its reach and longevity.  

We are currently undergoing a brand transformation to try and emphasise our new technology, like web conferencing and document management, so we try and tell that story where we can see technology in use. 

We partnered with Fulham because we are trying to break into the corporate market in the South East and we saw it as part of establishing a secondary base to the North West of England. The community values and heritage associated with Fulham fit into our brand ethos.

You signed the deal in the summer before the start of the new season. Fulham haven’t got off to the best start this year, how much of a knock-on effect does that have on a partnership?

Any sponsorship or brand manager would be lying if they said they didn’t want to see success in any kind of partnership but ultimately we set out to work with the club that has the same kind of ethos and brand attributes that we do and that hasn’t changed. It hasn’t affected our plans but hopefully with a new manager there could be an upturn! 

Would you say a team sponsorship for a B2B brand is slightly against the grain?

People say that but actually one of the biggest sponsorship deals in the world is Aon, a 95% B2B brand so you can’t really argue with that! There sponsorship of Manchester United is one of the benchmarks that we looked towards. What a sport sponsorship gives us, as well the standard brand awareness and LEDs is a level of hospitality that gives us a unique platform when selling our products.

We worked with Clifford French to get the deal done and we essentially started with a blank piece of paper. We were one of the first sponsors on their books to work with their foundation charity arm, so we are going to be running a community schools programme in the New Year. 

Speaking of the Community Schools Programme, is this something that is likely to be a big focus in the second half of the season?

The big plans are really focused around the schools programme and plenty more sales incentives as well as fan engagement. It’s about looking at all the different elements of our technology and how we can work with the club to improve performance both front of mind including fan engagement and at the back end including the business and how we can improve that side with the technology we can provide. 

Some of the areas that we are looking at are how the club uses print, the cost association, and how we can improve that. We also have mobile printers so we are looking at how they can be used in football and community programmes. The big thing we are focused on is web conferencing. This can help in areas such as the club’s scouting division with scouts all over the world feeding information back. We are also looking to introduce it at the player level so that international players can keep up with the Fulham physios  while they are away playing for their country. 

You have moved into cycling recently, is that something you are looking to continue?

Our Managing Director is a big advocate of cycling, he has his own blog and twitter page dedicated to it which helps when you have an advocate right from the very top. What we are looking for is to create a framework where we can pull all these sponsorships together and I think that idea of technology in sport can be a unifying theme. Cycling is a good fit because if you look at the demographics there is a big crossover between our user-bases. So the areas where we can tell a story about technology in sport or that hit our demographic are the ones where we are looking for opportunities.