AIG Tower to AIA Central

Not hugely sponsorship oriented, more brand oriented, but I do love the fact that AIA in HK (their regional headquarters) have rebranded their beautiful harbourfront tower from AIG Tower to AIA Central... nothing like distancing yourself from the PR disasters surrounding AIG

And a nice play on words given the building is in Central, HK's business centre...

Asian White Elephants...

Sad to see the Bird's Nest stadium in Beijing turn into a yet another post-Olympics "white elephant" (www.n-s.cn/en). Efforts are now being made to monetise and fill the USD423m venue but to date there's only been, literally, a handful of events who have come close to filling the 80,000 seater stadium - a season of the opera Turandot, last December's Race of Champions and the Supercoppa Italiana, the traditional curtain opener for the Italian football season. Meanwhile its costing the Beijing government USD9m to maintain each year...

There are other aging pachyderms out there - The Bukit Jalil National Stadium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Stadium,_Bukit_Jalil) in Kuala Lumpur was originally built for the 1998 Commonwealth Games. It has 87,411 largely unused seats... and yes ok, it hosts some major events like Manchester United's 2009 tour stopover, the 2007 AFC Asian Cup matches... and S.H.E.'s Malaysian concert in March 2010 (woohoo)... but it's pretty quiet otherwise

Lippo City (http://www.lippovillage.com/) outside Jakarta has just been built with a golf course and a Tier 2 motorsports track... And they have no committed sports events to my knowledge (A1 Grand Prix was in discussions with them... which probably says everything about the likely success of the sports facilities there)

And yet not all are being squandered. The Seoul Olympic stadium (http://stadium.seoul.go.kr/stadium_eng/0201_1.html) built in 1988 at least has a resident football team - Seoul United FC - albeit they're in the "3rd division" of Korean football!

And on the horizon, the Singapore Sportshub (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_Sports_Hub is one facility that should be maximised...if you overlook the delay which already stands at 3 years (due for completion now in 2014 not the planned 2011). Should give them enough time to plan how to fill the stadium. Being a smart a&se aside, the presiding Singapore Sports Council should fill its calendar as it's the focus of the whole nation's now vibrant sports scene... not a once-in-a-century sports event like the Olympics (albeit the most important sports event in the world)

So back to the poor old Bird's Nest... what does the future hold for the architectural icon? Maybe they'll boil it down to make more of that soup...

Hong Kong phooey

I've been hearing some worrying comments about Hong Kong and how they are going about their governance of the sponsorship industry

I'm not going to name and shame but let's just say that several rights owners and brands have expressed deep regrets about the lack of acumen and vision among the HK government ranks when it comes to the possibilities that sponsorship can bring to HK, especially when it comes to events of international status

In the worst cases, the grudge runs to commercial organisations not knowing why they gave over sponsorship fees to the government acting as a rights owner, while they receive negligible rights and limited client servicing in return!! I.e. HK is committing sponsorship suicide... how can you not invest back to your business community?? The next time the government turns to the private sector for sponsorship funds, they're going to say "Well you underdelivered (putting it politely) last time so why should I do it all again?

And when you compare HK with a socio-economic peer in Asia - Singapore - statistically, Singapore saw almost x3 the amount of sponsorship activity to Hong Kong in 2008 (source: http://www.asiasponsorshipnews.com/) but Hong Kong has almost x1.5 the population. If sponsorship expenditure was indexed to population, Singapore sees USD21 per capita while Hong Kong only sees USD5 ... so why isn't sponsorship in Hong Kong following suit? For me it could again be a reflection of a suppressed industry

So I appeal to HK to get some international practitioners in their teams to capitalise on the possibilities of sponsorship and to win back the confidence of the commercial community. The East Asian Games which takes place in HK this November has the slogan "Be the Legend"... time to listen to that slogan and live up to the promise...

Nokia hardly connecting anything, let alone people?!

I don't know what's happening at the good ship Nokia but they seem to have gone invisible in most comms channels, and especially sponsorship. To name but a few:

1. Barclays Singapore Open - 3 year deal worth c. USD600k not renewed.
2. Nokia Football Crazy - 4 years as title sponsor worth c USD6m not renewed
3. Broadcast sponsor across BPL on ESPN Star Sports - 4 years worth c USD8m not renewed
4. European Tour golfer Nick Dougherty - 4 years worth c USD800k not renewed
5. ICC World Twenty20 Championships - on-ground rights deal worth c. USD500k not renewed (Broadcast sponsorship was renewed however)
(Source: ForeCast, Asia's only sponsorship database. Go to http://www.asiasponsorshipnews.com/ for access to ForeCast)

Maybe they're taking advantage of Moto's 'fall-off-the-cliff' to save some pennies trying to combat the competition in the economic downturn. But surely that's precisely the time to maintain/scale up the ad spend to really dominate the comms landscape

In fairness, they have renewed their sponsorship of the Bangladesh National Football Team..... ranked 165 in the world (by FIFA).... Interesting strategy

Come on Nokia. Connect with me please!!!

Singapore F1 signage curiosities

Sorry been a bit quiet recently... usual excuses

But did anyone notice that RBS signage shifting during the Singapore F1 Grand Prix at Turn 10 (aka "Singapore Sling")? On Saturday, it was on the inside of the bend (Singapore Cricket Club side. See pic from Saturday)...

... then by Sunday, someone at RBS must have complained (which is odd in itself given they're pulling out of F1 at the end of the season) and F1 went against their own policy of "one brand per bend" by hefting the RBS signage to the outside of the bend above the Bridgestone signage (seen on right of pic above). I wonder what happened there?!?!

On another note, it was great to see SingTel reverse their colour palette for the 2009 race. In 2008, their white background flared under the lights such that the red logo was lost. This year it was white on red.. a much better contrast. Good to see they took my advice from the audit I did for them after the 2008 race ;-)

NOW COME ON JENSON. The Brits have got to do well at something this year (oh, apart from The Ashes that is....!)

Photo credits: Formula 1... or was it someone on Flickr. Thanks to whichever/both

Liverpool in Malaysia? No thank you

Well the Liverpool FC Tour of Asia is underway but a relatively unknown piece of info is that they can't tour Malaysia due to Carlsberg’s sponsorship... i.e. an alcohol sponsor in a Muslim country… a taboo in the eyes of Islamic law, and a no-no for Malaysian advertising regulations. The National Fatwa Council in Malaysia is a very strong government body and has previously put the kybosh on a number of sponsored events that have threatened the integrity of the country’s Islamic faith.

So the Tour becomes almost useless for Carlsberg Malaysia; extremely ironic given Carlsberg has a massive brewery in Malaysia and a strong market share… i.e. despite significant capital investment in Malaysia (before a possible internal cross-charge to pay for the GBP7.2m per year rights fee?) they are denied the ability to seek ROI from the Tour

Maybe it would be a reprieve if Carlsberg did drop the sponsorship… and concentrate on a platform that can be activated harder in dark markets (where alcohol advertising is banned)

Did Roddick turn his hat backwards on purpose???

Oooh I love a good conspiracy theory ;-) Check out the pictures above

Nobody likes to be associated with losing. So I wonder if Andy Roddick was given the order by his management/sponsor Lacoste to reverse his cap during the closing ceremony of Wimbledon (Pic 1). Seems strange that he'd just played 5 (well actually 7.5!) sets with it facing forwards (Pic 2) - Lacoste logo front & centre - and then hey presto it gets shoved to the back during a time when the brand would get some huge airtime!!

The flipside is that Roger Federer plays the whole game without a watch (Pic 3) and then WHOOPS on slips a shiny Rolex for the prize presentation, glinting in the Wimbledon sunlight, below some suspiciously short sleeves (also seen on Federer Snr's and wife Mirka's wrist). A solid instruction from IMG no doubt... and why not ;-)

[Ed: My thanks to Getty Images whose pics I wantonly borrowed]