Speedo is one of the world's most successful sports brands and the number one swimming brand in the world.

Guru in a Bottle CEO Ardi Kolah was approached by Celia Muir, worldwide head of sports marketing and sponsorship for Speedo to research and create a training toolkit and supporting training programme for all global markets where Speedo had a presence through swimming and related sports sponsorship.

The Toolkit was supported by a global training programme and is now part of Speedo’s best practice in sports marketing - built on over 80 years’ experience in what it has achieved in sports sponsorship and how it looks to achieve a return on investment in every case.

The Toolkit and training had to appeal to a very diverse number of individuals who had different levels of knowledge, expertise and experience in using the Speedo brand within a sponsorship context.

Speedo is one of the most successful brands in the world in using sponsorship to drive its business so it was important that the Toolkit codified this best practice and shared this across all its markets. "In creating this Toolkit, we set out very carefully to define our core sponsorship principles and apply these across all our markets. The Toolkit is intended for use by our worldwide marketing and sponsorship teams and focuses on universal principles of sports marketing and sponsorship which are then adapted and applied for local conditions. If we can achieve this working with our colleagues in Business Development, we’d have measurably improved the performance of our sponsorship investment and made a positive impact on the bottom line," explains Muir.

The Toolkit and training programme was launched internally by Muir at the S1/2009 Global Conference in Vilamoura, Portugal.

Key Toolkit and Training objectives

• How can we cut through the noise and beat intense competition that we face in our market segment?
• How do we use sponsorship as part of the brand value proposition and use it to do business on our customers’ terms?
• How does sponsorship help us take an ‘outside in’ rather than ‘inside out’ perspective? In other words, we need to take the point of view of our audience and customer segments first before we start to consider our internal point of view.
• How do we articulate what we deliver (rather than a shopping list of what we offer) in an emotional and rational way that’s totally compelling, memorable and ultimately influences behaviour of target customer segments?
• How do we use sponsorship to help build relationships that our customer segments actually want to belong to?
• And what does it take to engage with audience and customer segments more deeply and turn them into our brand ambassadors so that we may profitably serve their needs and requirements well into the future?

Training design

Several months of research and interviews with different members of the sponsorship and business development teams was conducted prior to creating the global sponsorship toolkit and training programme.

Outcomes from the Toolkit and Training programme

The launch of the new Toolkit to all markets was extremely successful and has now been adopted by Speedo globally. Over the last 24 months, Speedo has seen tangible outcomes emerge from the adoption of this Toolkit and training methodology across all its markets. Although actual financial data cannot be given for confidentiality reasons, Muir has said that there have been tangible improvements across all markets in the following areas:

• Improvements in customer purchase frequency and/or increase share of wallet
• Sales targets achieved/exceeded
• Positive commercial impacts from B2B relationships
• Demonstrable results from changes in opinion formers’ perspectives on the Speedo brand
• Increased employee productivity, reduced churn rate
• Specific improvements in brand equity measures, community engagement, CSR and other reputational measures
• Attitudinal changes in perceptions to Speedo brand.

To discuss how we can work with you in empowering your team performance in sales, marketing, communication and presentation call us today on 0207 580 2819 or complete our feedback form

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