For once, Sisulu might have a point with Spurs idea

Some years back I interviewed a South African from an SA company that was sponsoring Tottenham Hotspur. My mate David O’Sullivan and I sat down with Raymond van Niekerk in an office in Investec’s London headquarters for a natter about sport and marketing.

Van Niekerk was Investec’s global marketing officer at the time and the financial services company had signed a two-year deal to be the team’s shirt sponsor in Cup competitions. It was the first time a split jersey sponsorship strategy had been rolled out by a Premier League team, with different names on the front of the league and cup competition shirts. The idea was said to come from club chair Daniel Levy.

Investec and Spurs did not reveal the value of the deal. The BBC reported it was in the region of £5m for two years, starting with the 2010/2011 season. The rand was then at R11.30 to the pound, putting the cost at just more than R56m.

Why back Spurs? They had qualified for the Champions League by finishing fourth in the Premier League the season before. They had quite the team, led by Gareth Bale and Luka Modric. William Gallas had joined from Arsenal, Peter Crouch wasn’t bad up front and SA’s Steven Pienaar would join in the winter transfer window.

It proved to be a good investment by Investec. Spurs breezed through the Champions league playoff round to qualify for a group they won, beating Inter home and away, with Bale completing a hat-trick for a dramatic 4-3 win in Milan. They beat AC Milan in the round of 16, with Crouch getting the winner in the away leg. Real Madrid proved to be a step too far in the quarterfinals.

The next season, they went on a FA Cup run that took them to the semifinals.

Van Niekerk said the deal worked because it put Investec front of mind for billions of football fans. The audience was enormous and the effects measurable in business and awareness. In countries where Investec did not have an office or a presence, for example, the icebreaker between company executives and others would usually be “Ah, you and Spurs.”

Which is what SA Tourism was thinking and hoping when it came up with its three-year, near R1bn partnership with Spurs, as revealed by the Daily Maverick on Tuesday night. It’ sa big story for two reasons: the amount of money and Lindiwe Sisulu, the tourism minister. The latter does not help herself in any way. Her behaviour as a governmental official and politician is brusque, to say the least; she lacks empathy, decency and understanding. She has traded off her family name for years, having been in government since 1994 without achieving very much of worth.

That said, there is a sense of pile-on in some of the reaction, taking the chance to kick another minister ostensibly out on a shopping spree and to put the boot well and truly into Sisulu. She’s an easy, unlikeable target. Fire away.

That is to ignore that a lot of the reasoning behind the deal is sound. For nine months of the year, “Visit SA”, or whatever logo they choose, will be seen by part of an annual audience of 4.7-billion in the Premiership alone, according to Sport+Markt. The Premiership is, according to Reuters, “broadcast to 800million homes in 188 countries with 90 broadcasters and more than 400 channels showing games, the Premier League and its clubs count almost a billion followers on social media”.

That is without European and cup competitions, backdrop signage, stadium advertising, preseason training camps, and so on. A former SA Tourism executive told me the exposure was worth several times the spend on the sponsorship. It would put SA front of mind globally, pique interest and have the country immersed in the tourism conversation.

Ignore the Sisulu factor for a spell. Is the money really too much? It would be R300m a year, 36% of SA Tourism’s marketing budget. The claim according to the Daily Maverick is that SA would receive R6bn in marketing value, which some have rejected out of hand. To put it in perspective, Unilever spends R2bn on SA advertising in a year. Fruit and Veg City spends just more than R340m and is 29th on the list. Guess advertising must work for them.

SA Tourism would not be spending R1bn on Spurs, but with them. It would be spending it on an idea and a strategy, it would be spending it on SA. It’s daring and perhaps a little risky, but as Investec found, it is a plan that can pay off.

FOR NINE MONTHS OF THE YEAR, ‘VISIT SA’, OR WHATEVER LOGO WILL BE SEEN BY PART OF AN AUDIENCE OF 4.7-BILLION IN THE PREMIERSHIP ALONE