We Can Find Passion in Other Sports – Tunji Adeyinka

The popularity of football in Nigeria cannot be overemphasized. Since 1985 when Nigeria’s U-17 team won the U-17 FIFA championship in China, football has enjoyed tremendous followership across boundaries. While most other sports are struggling to find sponsorship, football has had an overwhelming appeal for support from many brand owners who see it as a veritable medium to reach their target markets. Sadly, same cannot be said of other sports in Nigeria. Some of them can barely hold one event in a year due to lack of funds. But why is that happening? Connect Marketing Services makes an attempt to address the anomaly in their forthcoming seminar tagged Beyond Football. Tunji Adeyinka, MD of Connect Marketing, in this interview with Yetunde Ogundipe, throws more light on the seminar, insisting that brands in Nigeria can find new platforms beyond football. Excerpts:

You have a seminar coming up next month tagged Beyond Football. What category of people are you targeting for the seminar?
It is designed for marketing directors, brand owners, brand managers, sports federations, advert organisations, different organisations that have sponsorship purposes and for companies that are looking at using sponsorship within its environment as one of the tools in their marketing mix.
And who are the faculties you have invited?
One of them is a gentleman, Steve Makati. He is the CEO of Alem International, a company that has worked a lot with the Olympics. They have worked with International Olympic Committee (IOC) to assist in sports design for the Olympic Games. They have also worked with global corporate clients like BMW, Ford, Samsung, Visa and so on.
Mr Makati is experienced in breaking out new platform for sports. We are also looking at someone from DSTV Super Sport, though we are yet to confirm. We are looking at someone that can come and talk to us about what they are doing with basketball and football, as well as representatives from the federation. I will also be part of the professionals talking at the seminar.
In the sponsorship equation in Nigeria, football is more prominent, other sports barely get attention. As a sponsorship expert, what do you think is responsible for this?
The reason football has been more prominent is simple: a lot of Nigerians are more passionate about football and sponsorship actually is the tool that is attached to the passion of the people we are trying to reach. Football is loved by lot of people in Nigeria. However, what research has shown us, and most recently, what the BMI research has shown, is that different platforms have different benefits. They have different appeals to different segments of the market. This creates an opportunity for companies to look at those alternatives to achieve their objectives.
For those sports that are not enjoying prominence like football, how do we develop them to attract sponsorship?
There are different ways to do that. In some of the publications that will be in M2, you will see specifically some of the strategies that other sports have used in other countries. We believe that we can replicate them in this country. One of them is to identify the format that is most commercial within your sport. If for instance, the format is not a straight conventional classic format of the game, you can identify a certain format which is commercial, a format which is consumer friendly and a certain format which comes like a window into the platform. An example is strategy used to enhance basketball. If we look at street ball, street ball is derived from basketball. It is actually basketball, music and dance. It appeals to a lot of young people, and it has been used as a window to enhance the basketball platform.
What is the biggest challenge against sports sponsorship in Nigeria?
There are several challenges. But the one we’ve identified as the biggest challenge is that first, we have a lot of people who really do not understand sponsorship. People who believe that all they need is just to pay some money, and once they pay, then they have done all they need to do. A lot of people do not understand the professionalism that needs to be attached to sponsorship for it to yield the kind of benefit that they are looking for. A lot of companies are still wasting money on donations, and they call it sponsorship, because if you spend a lot on a sponsorship property, you do not spend enough money to leverage the property  based on the consumer in mind, but based on the core essence of your brand, we consider that a donation. “Thank you very much; you just wasted your money”. So the huge space for professionals in the sponsorship consulting base is to be able to advice companies. Also there are tools that we do not have in this environment; part of the things we will be presenting at the seminar is a profile tool that is called Passion Drivers.
Passion drivers is an Octagon Tool. It enables a sponsor to leverage a property in a different manner; a difference is amplified, a difference is tied specifically to the passion driving the consumption of that sport. Now, the underling assumption is that fans consume different sports and different activities in different ways and they have different reasons for loving those sports. So the logic is, the more you are able to understand the reasons for loving those sports, the more you are able to leverage.  That deep understanding is provided by Passion drivers. Passion drivers survey has been done all over the world, and just now, we are doing the one for Nigeria. Some of the results from the Passion drivers will be presented at the seminar.  Passion drivers will also enable companies to differentiate their objective for sponsoring a property from the beginning.
For sports that are not attracting much attention, how do you muster enough followership for it to attract sponsors?
All we need to do is to bring the people to get what the passion of the game is. We will empower some of the federations with knowledge and different strategies that can be used to enhance the appeal of the sport so that they can get wider audience that will make them become more successful.