The Big Interview – Nissan

Andreas Sigl, Director, Global Brand & Sponsorship Strategy at Nissan Motor Corporation, talks to sportindustry.biz about taking over from Ford as a UEFA Champions League partner, and being part of Manchester City through the global City Group.

Nissan took over from Ford as a UEFA Champions League partner earlier this season, what are your aims, long-term?

If you get involved in a platform like the UEFA Champions League, you have got to think long term, beyond current four years of the contract. Secondly, we know where we want to go, we want to go after properties we think are the right thing for us as a global brand. To do this, and do this well, we are happy to be patient but determined in going after them.

In this case, it all came together brilliantly. It was a quick turn around – this first term, for the 2014/15 campaign, it’s all about getting our act together and learning what the right things are as quickly as we can. We’ll then have to shift gears to bring our own innovation and excitement to the competition. We like to do things differently.

Would you say you’re at that stage now? Or is the first season about testing the water with new ideas?

I think we are doing good work. We jumped in deep end so there’s a lot of excitement from our markets, dealers and regions and everyone wants to get involved. I’ll be honest, I don’t think we have figured it all out but we never promised to come in and turn everything upside down from the off.  

The first year it’s about walking before you run and establishing your goals. By the time the final comes around, we will be more mature – we have done a lot of good stuff – we certainly aren’t sleeping. We are here for the long term!

You mentioned about being patient and waiting for the right deal – in terms of global entities out there, how big is the Champions League?

I think that shows commitment on our side. Instead of doing 20 small deals or maybe ten mid-size deals, we would rather work across a small, select portfolio and do them right. You can see this from the UCL or the Rio Olympic Games, we try to do a few huge, global things to unify across the company.

There’s a worldwide audience watching, it’s huge, but that’s a nice thing! If you pick the right platform you can see how much you can do with what you have. Take the City Football Academy – the potential for that to go through from young talent all the way to the world’s biggest stage is massive.

Personally, you previously worked with Infiniti on their Red Bull Formula One partnership, how does that compare to working on the UCL?

There’s certainly comparisons, in terms of exposure there’s not many bigger platforms than either of those examples (F1 or Champions League). There are new challenges, and we still have a lot to learn but either way, both are super professional and in the showbiz business – whether they want to be or not!  

They are also at the top of elite sport performance, but are so different as well.

You are involved in City Football Group and the women’s side particularly?

The women’s game is at a remarkable level of athletic performance – people are starting to follow but I still think it’s underappreciated. Look at the numbers watching and the money players receive compared to the men’s game – but things are starting to pick up. We wouldn’t just support women for the sake of it, we believe that there is fantastic sport and performance and, being blunt, they purchase cars!

We are on the jersey, but we want to do more than just have Nissan on a shirt, we have had meetings before and they appreciate us supporting the awareness of the women’s game. It’s one area where we hope to provide more value and do more.

As for the City Football Group as a whole, it’s fantastic to be involved. The connections available in Melbourne, New York, Japan and Manchester – plus our involvement with the Africa Cup of Nations – it’s a remarkably global football portfolio.

The group is a unique model of football, can you see it being more common practice?

It’s very interesting and we’ll have to see the results in a few years. It’s clearly a long term commitment and a big investment. You can calculate in terms of pure talent sourcing – instead of buying talent you can source your own, but no one will see any positive results from that for almost an entire generation. Of course even then, you still have no guarantee you’ll find diamonds in the rough, and even if you do, 99% of those players will not make it, so you have to look at what they are walking away with – you have to educate the young players and give them certain values.

The Group certainly deserve credit for going so deep. Is that the future of a private investor or club? We will have to see – could be a combination of that and federation development from bodies like FIFA and UEFA. We’ll have to wait and see!

You’re into your second AFCON tournament, obviously there has been difficulties in the continent in recent months, but the competition is going ahead now – how difficult has that been dealing with the uncertainty?

It’s difficult, obviously with a situation like Ebola you have to take it very seriously and all parties are involved all the way up to the World Health Organisation and you have to trust them to make the right call. First and foremost, people need to be safe – players, guests, viewers etc. – that’s the priority.

The host nation has been moved a number of times and that does make things difficult, but we think that as a partner it would not be right to just step away when it gets rough! We want to stick with it and support it and watch where it is going.

Finally, what makes Nissan an innovative brand?

If you look at us, how we operate, build our cars, we value challenges and we really want to challenge conventions. When we went into racing and started an academy for gamers – we say you don’t have to be a race driver to be a superstar, you can be a gamer and we can turn you into a driver, and now we have ex-gamers in genuine real life races! It’s the same way we have declared many years ago that we will be leaders in electric cars – now we make those too.

It seems far away but now we say we want to be leaders in autonomous driving, so now we push the boundaries in that area of innovation, that’s the next step.

But we want to do in other spaces, in our partnerships we want to bring the same kind of approach and not accept things are they are. We want to do intricate things like goal of the week, it’s the most exciting thing, so the fans have the right to vote! It’s difficult to access sport as a fan or player, we want to break down these barriers, not because we are Robin Hood, but we think ultimately something good will come out of it. We shall see.