From F1 to Manchester United: How marketing drives success in the worlds most elite teams - Ellie Norman

0:28Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Uncensored CMO. on the success of her marketing. Ellie is a wonderful, wonderful person and has got some really great experience to share with us in this episode. We talk from everything from the cost of sponsoring a shirt through to the power of silence. And also in this episode, find out why I'm wearing the Southampton third kit. All will be revealed in this episode. Ellie Norman, welcome to the show. John, fantastic to be here and even better that we both get to celebrate together. I know, it's amazing. And I think, well, first of all, congratulations on winning the second most valuable game of the weekend.

1:00Yours is first. Indeed, just for anyone out there that doesn't know, the most expensive, no, the most valuable game in football, the Championship Playoff Final determines who gets to get in the Premier League and all the riches that unfolds as a result of that. My team, Southampton. Anyone watching, by the way, this, I'm wearing the Southampton third kit. Now, there's actually a bit of a story to this because Southampton were playing Leeds and they couldn't wear their first kit because it has white on it and apparently you're not allowed to have any any of the colors not allowed to match so we had to go to our third kit because our second kit was uh was too similar to theirs as well well i thought we should celebrate and recognize and i know you were saying earlier that the the only drink acceptable early in the morning is champagne so we've gone to no expense better here we've got a bottle of moe but i thought we should uh open this just so why not um the other uh unusual stat uh for listeners as well is very very when i first started my podcast being a Southampton fan I was desperate to get someone from Southampton onto the podcast so I got David Thomas who commercial director for Southampton and we recorded it at St Mary's of course you know as you do and it's the only time in Saints history where we were actually top of the Premier League the weekend that I recorded it so I love the fact that the second time I do a football podcast is the only time we've been promoted through the playoffs and championship so I need to plan more football podcasts see I'm now going to really look out for when it's the third time and what will that represent exactly there we go well premier league awaits so uh here we go congratulations um on the fa cup win there we go congratulations near the mic apologies to all the burst eardrums everyone listening there i wasn't sure whether you were going to do a lando norris champagne opening have you seen that i haven't but what the proper f1 yeah he's like on the table or on the podium and then that might be pushing it with the spray this morning i see yes it may be a bit early for that but um congratulations well done there we go here's to our both of our successes oh that's good it's a bit of a habit actually because um just released a second podcast with my colleague orlando wood and we've got this drinks trolley section where we go and try something new but he's got much finer taste than i have but uh there we go pivoting from uh football to cooking i'd love to find out how you got into marketing and you've got a lovely story uh inspired by a famous chef well yeah so i i think goes without saying i love eating so um nothing pleases me more than actually collecting cooking books and it's not that unusual to find me reading a cooking book in bed thinking right what am I going to make this weekend but on this particular occasion we are going back sometime as I was 20 22 so I've been at Honda for a little while thinking about what's next and actually I was doing a two-week tour around Europe with Peter Cowie when he was oyster catchers with Suki reviewing all the digital agencies for Honda.

4:11But PC says to me, Ellie, Jeffers, Jeff Dodds, has said there's a role coming up at Virgin Media and he thinks you should apply. So I was like, what is it? So I thought, I always carry with me, like, am I going to get through a big CVC? I don't have a degree, you know, like, especially then it was like degree educators. So I was like, right, I'm going to do some stalking. I'm going to find out and really think through the best way to get my CV in front of Jeff. So back then went through Google, finding everything out, got to the point where I was like, right, Jeff loves cooking. Also did like magic tricks.

4:55So one of my chefs that I love his books is Heston Blumenthal. So I went and I bought the Heston Blumenthal book. and within the recipe book was an Alice in Wonderland inspired sort of recipe. So actually I put my CV in there and I wrote my sort of letter and essentially asked Jeff to stop time like in the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, stop time in order to kind of read my CV. And so I'd like to think that that little bit of creativity meant that my CV stood out enough in order to get an interview for Virgin Media. I think it did, didn't it? Because you got the job, right? I think that's absolutely genius.

5:37You did one better than me, actually, because when I was at university, I decided, weirdly, I studied finance and economics. And in my last year, I decided I did a year out in banking and didn't really like it and thought, what do I want to do? And I decided two things, right? One is I love cars, right? So I was an absolute car nut. So I thought I have to work for a car company. The second thing is, I wanted to work in a role that changed the future, didn't record the past. That was my simple logic. I asked people, what's the role in a company where you decide what happens next? I figured out it was marketing.

6:08I only applied for three jobs, Renault, Ford, and Mercedes. and um for mercedes like they just launched a new e-class and so i went this is probably back in the i'm going to show my age now i went i went and photocopied the print ad and then and then i basically over the top put sort of i changed the copy to talk about me rather than the car i went to great lengths and i was so happy with it and then sent a bit like you i sent in an ad for the class which actually talked about me did i hear back not a peep so there you go i think your cookbook was a better idea definitely i love when people get in touch and there is ingenuity shown and there's this real kind of entrepreneurial spirit um and it's often for me like meeting people and just finding out what their side hustles are or what they're passionate about and just seeing what they've done because that there is so much that i think you can teach people particularly if you've got like just a mindset you want to learn and you're kind of curious um but i love finding out about what genuinely makes people tick and actually what are they up to and it's a good point because you can become a producing become a director you can become a copywriter like so much you can demonstrate your skills like through social media in a way that you know when we were much younger you probably couldn't yeah so yeah much more uh much more opportunity you talked about virgin media now um i want to ask you about the second biggest deal you did after sponsoring southampton there um but you worked with usain bowl didn't you which i just thought was well i'm fascinated what that was like but but talk about the campaign and and how that works first of all what an incredible man and um it's funny after after working with him at virgin media our sort of paths have crossed so he would come to quite a few of the formula one grand prix's that was always amazing to kind of see him and then he's a massive manchester united fan as well He is.

8:06And doesn't he play in the, you know, the soccer game every year? So, in fact, it was Jeff who, when Jeff was at Virgin Media, brought on Usain Bolt as brand ambassador and sort of Mo Farah as well. And again, super, super simple. If you're trying to talk about the speed of your broadband, which is essentially invisible, what better way to do it than to have a brand ambassador in Usain Bolt, the fastest man in the world? You know, aside from what he achieved as an athlete, actually his values and his level of humor, so down to earth, really kind of humble guy, just wanted to have a great time, just was perfectly aligned into a lot of the sort of virgin values.

8:57So actually he and Richard Branson also had such a great rapport, but it was, you know, being that much younger, it was so cool being able to go out to Kingston in Jamaica and just immerse yourself in culture. and sort of Usain was always from the very very beginning super clear essentially you come to me because this is my way of giving back to my community and really making sure that we can put sort of Jamaica in the map so actually every single production was in Jamaica and it really over over all those years it just felt like you had this family unit but it was fantastic really really brilliant and we started off sort of uh running all the ads for testing when you were brain juicer so we're going back a few years but right the way through of like evolving the role that usain would play into the last um tv ad i did which was the 9.58 second ad which i is actually the ad i'm most proud of from my time at virgin media explain that a bit more then about the 9.5 so this would have been 2016 17 must have been last olympics and we essentially sort of told the story of uh just usain and um how he got to that sort of world record and it broke it down into little chapters of his life and it was at its i suppose at its purest a brand ad but the I forget what score we would have had when we tested it, but it just had such a wonderfully long payback that really sort of extended out over the six months.

10:43But it felt that that was Virgin Media and us at a more sophisticated storytelling sort of brand lens. And it still gives me now when you kind of rewatch something, still kind of gives me goosebumps to actually see that and be like. it was just so brilliant to be sort of part of that was with um keris bright who was cmo at the time at virgin media yeah i love that i mean it's so many good uh tips in there as well you're using a celebrity for what they're famous for which actually is rarer than you think you know because a lot of people just go oh here's a celebrity here's my product you know buy it now um but and you and he's telling a story and people are fascinated by the story behind how someone got there you know the backstory and growing up and the training that goes into fascinating isn't it and you know where Usain grew up he it was very much in a really in the country of sort of Jamaica you can sort of now look at so much where you know someone looked at him said well you're not a traditional kind of sprinter you know your limbs are too long or you know he had a bit of a curvature of the spine or you know his neck wasn't strong enough or something and so we just told this story of even just him as a kid just kind of running through the sugarcane fields on his kind of way to school and just really sort of all that training to build his muscle the strength um it was literally the best experience now i can only conclude you must like speed because let's go from the fastest man on the planet to the fastest cars on the planet because your next move going up a gear is to Formula One.

12:21How did that come around? You're good. Speed. I adore speed. Anything to give me that shot of adrenaline, like all over cars, motorbikes, everything. I think I've been so lucky in my life so far of how I've gone from like roll to roll to roll. and formula one came about from my time at honda so if we sort of roll back i was at honda from like 2005 to 2012 and i had the great fortune to work with wyden and kennedy but the role at formula one came about because actually um the guy that recruited me at f1 is a an american chap called Sean Bratches. He'd been in sports for years and years and years, 25 years in ESPN, and he worked with Wyden and Kendi in New York.

13:14Now, Sean and Chase Carey, he was the CEO of Formula One, literally land in the UK. Liberty Media has bought Formula One from Bernie, and they are sitting in a temporary office and so Sean went and met with Neil who was the CEO of Widenkendi UK at the time and we're like oh my god we've just bought this sports it's like nuts crazy we need someone to set up marketing for us do you know anyone and I was clearly delighted that actually Neil shared my name with Sean so my mobile rings and I'm you know when it's like a number you don't recognize you're like, hmm, should I answer that? It'll be like, oh, you've had a car accident.

14:02And you're like, no. You know, I did answer it, thankfully. And it's like an American guy on the other end of the phone. It's like, hmm, I've been given your name and da-da-da. Anyway, so we had this conversation. I was like, this is really interesting. I went and met Sean for a coffee and that was my interview. It was having a coffee, he took the mickey out of my hair. I think I built up the confidence a little bit to kind of be like, there's some serious sideburns and eyebrows, if anyone has seen Sean. But we got on really, really well. And when he then kind of rang back, they did that sort of interview process with sort of various candidates.

14:42But he rang back and he was like, where are you at? And I was like, I don't actually know what he means. And I was like, well, physically, I'm at my desk. But mentally, anyway, I got the job offer. And my thought process was, what's worse that can happen? Is it going to make me pregnant? No. Is it going to kill me? No. So let's jump into it with both feet and start a new chapter, new adventure. Wow. I mean, what a big stage as well, to be honest. I mean, Formula One put on incredible shows every week. I think the interesting thing I want to ask about Formula One is, like, if if i wouldn't say i'm going to a premier league match this week this weekend right but i would say i'm going to the f1 yeah it's something about the brand that represents the sport intertwines in a way that other sort of you know bodies that oversee the whole thing don't don't quite get yeah it's so special and uh being able to almost put together like a genuine passion for sort of speed and kind of racing, having had some automotive experience, plus kind of virgin media with the sort of media and entertainment.

15:54Because I think sports, sports, you know, is about identity and belonging, but it's entertainment. It's like we give joy to people and it's such a privilege to be in that sort of sports environment. But for me, sort of Formula One did cut different because it represents the entire sports and um it's only really now in hindsight and maybe kind of reflecting that I look back and I'm like wow you made that decision that sort of gut instinct of this just feels right and I'll like jump into something um and yet you have such immense responsibility and you've got all these hundreds of millions of fans around the world and you have this responsibility with something that has existed since like 1950 and will continue to exist for sort of far longer than I will and you know I've had one or two millimeters on that sort of timeline like five years that's it so a great privilege massive responsibility but the brand the brand is everything and now when I think back in terms of actually how we almost distilled the problem or the challenge to solve and then really thought about okay how we're going to do that how do we revitalize a brand getting to rebranding the sport now I'm like oh gosh that was massive but i don't know whether at the time we knew it was really big did lots and lots of research and bits and pieces but i think now that you step out of it and you look and you see that you're like wow we did that now you mentioned entertainment which is part of the story here isn't it because you know you took a took a sport and grew it by hundreds of millions in terms of audience.

18:01But entertainment played a big role, didn't it? I mean, particularly the thing that I certainly associate it with cutting through into broader culture was the partnership with Netflix on Drive to Survive and how that transformed people's interest in the sport. I mean, anyone who knows any F1 geeks, they're really into the data and the pre-qualifying and the technical changes and the driver statistics. I mean, there's an immense amount, isn't there? But for most people outside of that kind of bubble, it's the stories behind the scenes, isn't it? It's what goes on after the race and before the race.

18:33So how did that kind of partnership with Netflix transform the audience? I mean, isn't storytelling like everything? With Formula One, as I said, there was all this research up front and loads of semiotics to really sort of understand a lot of those associations, like where it had kind of come from. How did that actually sit across the world? And then that got us to like, there is this incredible sport, but like fewer and fewer people are following it. The sort of challenge that I framed in my mind was this sport is showing up as like an elitist billionaires boys club. Not entirely true, but you know, like a large part of people's perceptions of it and it's not accessible or attainable to me.

19:25The smartest people, for sure, within Formula One from an engineering point of view. But you put engineers with engineers and there's more engineering. And actually, you know what, over time, perhaps that had taken some of the storytelling away and the sort of the humanity of the sport and the kind of grit of the sport and the rawness. and so actually what people love is stories and having heroes and villains and kind of peaks and troughs and so when we were sort of saying okay if this is where we are and this is our challenge to solve actually what are some of those tactics going to be and you know Netflix came about and a proposal was sent alongside some sort of other streaming platforms and we just sat around the table you know honestly no more than like six of us and we're like okay what do we do and North America was a key market target market really important Netflix what are they named for like best long-form storytellers huge membership base in North America and it literally went from sort of there now having a very small marketing budget there is no way that we could have achieved the same as kind of Netflix and I always recall one of the sort of biggest challenges from these sort of marketing point of view so there were a number of other challenges that sort of people were solving um with Netflix whether it's contracts and the sort of legal approvals etc etc but from my point of view on the marketing side it was like if we are going to tell the best stories actually it's really important we don't have editorial control and it's so hard for a brand because you want to protect your brand but you know what if we're really going to grow it and we are going to engage an audience we're not going to be the best people to tell that story and so actually stepping back and being there to almost kind of guide but to place our trust in Netflix and the production company um box to box and two brilliant uh guys there uh James Guy Reese and Paul Martin and I think it was such a big thing for them that they respected it so much and it's like we're not doing this as a one-off we want this to kind of grow we want it to be successful but that was my biggest thing of like give them the editorial control because they're going to be the best at telling that long-form story whereas we'll want to like oh take that down a bit or like oh can we build that up a bit a lot of people often ask me i you know join you interview people they've got big budgets they can afford to buy media they can do some big things and actually what i what i've noticed in the role i do now for example at system one is the most powerful way to get to people is actually using other people's media you know and actually creating partnerships and creating content sharing your content with other people and letting them use it has been for us has been amazing yeah just you reach a whole different audience and you like you say it can be hard because you can kind of like you you you have to put your ip in someone else's hands you do and it was one of my i think it's my biggest learning so never having worked in sports marketing before going to sort of f1 i'd had a budget like a healthy budget at honda had a healthy budget at virgin media and you're used to working in a sort of model which is a lot of paid media and you're kind of in control of that you really want to generate earned media but actually it's tough or you got to sort of pay to do partnerships and actually your owned media is pretty small you come to sports and the model is entirely flipped so you have these incredible brands.

23:19I think you could genuinely go to any part of the world and if you said to someone, name a football club, Manchester United, and then obviously Southampton. Yeah. But that awareness with sports is right, right, right, right at the very top. And yet actually, when you look at these sort of financials and that's why I'm fascinated by the business of sports, it's like an SME. um and therefore actually the model is entirely flipped so you tend to have really big owned like Manchester United owned is huge people want to do a lot of stuff with you and so actually so much is about earned and it is the smallest paid sort of media budget and so actually the entire way that you approach it is well it's just a world apart from like that commercial rigour in virgin media and understanding media mix modeling and then the variables in sport you know truthfully we don't work with econometrics or media mix modeling but we will take so many different signals but everything is always in around sort of owned and you're earned yeah uh sentiment performance on pitch players i mean it's you've also got probably i don't know 30 40 50 influencers yeah on your payroll who have themselves got their own brands and their own followings that you know reaches a lot of people as well it's quite yeah and and the different the different characteristics player to player where is their fan base wherever they played before they will attract slightly different audiences or I know different demographics it's it's fascinating and yet you know certainly in football it's all of those individuals make up a team and for Manchester United you know no one player is ever bigger than the team but the role that each player plays is incredibly important and actually growing in importance with younger fans coming into into football well going back to Beckham documentary on Netflix that's a good proof of no player is bigger than the club isn't it because that moment where he decides he has to leave and he didn't even have a contract Real Madrid at that point you know it just yeah it shows you doesn't it but it's a glow it's a global brand isn't it it's why i think people forget this that most of the fans don't live in manchester it's an unusual statistic isn't there about the amount of people that yeah i mean it is it always plays my mind there are 1.1 billion fans and followers unbelievable that's incredible 254 million followers on social so i mean the team are phenomenal 22 platforms like 53 sort of channels what I really love is last year Will and I went to Namibia on holiday super super remote and we were kind of in the north of Namibia just as you kind of get up on the skeleton close not that far from like the Angola border and you're kind of with your guide and stuff and you know what do you do I work in football where Manchester United ah Manchester United like it's like wherever you are in the world there is a Manchester United fan yeah amazing that is incredible isn't it but take me back to when you started the job right because I mean you're working in F1 right pretty big right and then your next move is Manchester United you know arguably the most famous football club I did look up whether it was the most valuable it depends on where you go with the sort but Forbes have got Real Madrid and Manchester United at a very similar six and a half billion in terms of value um what were your expectations like taking on such a big role with a big club with all the heritage and emotion that comes with that what was that like everyone I spoke to and I you know I say this because there are so many fans of football uh but football was never a sport that I grew up with at home so from the age of seven I um I grew up with my mum and my stepdad my stepdad's a kiwi and so actually it was rugby not football when we would go and spend like weekends with my dad um he takes to the pub for our packet of crisps and a bottle of coke and obviously f1 was always on so football never played a part in in sort of my life growing up and so i started talking to sort of people about oh yeah this royal Manchester United and eyes wide open.

28:07And certainly for me, I always want to turn up somewhere and be super respectful. So lots of reading, watching kind of videos, films, trying to really understand that sort of history and heritage. And that's when it really started to dawn on me just how quite special the club is and how much legacy there is. And so I'm always kind of mindful of knowing what I know but kind of knowing that there's so much I don't know and so actually you know fortunate there are loads of people within the club who are fans of football and fans of the club but what I do try to sort of bring is a level of objectivity and perhaps a a style where we can perhaps kind of push into challenge on that status quo whilst not forgetting the importance of the sort of history and the legacy and actually I think when you find that kind of sweet spot the essence of what has made something special doesn't change but actually how you bring that to life will obviously need to sort of change and be relevant for today 2024 versus kind of like 1878 so the enormity of it I think grew the closer I got to actually starting and you know back to what I was saying um a very small tiny piece of an incredible club with this history and legacy so it's like treat it with respect I mean And try to know what your objectives would be because you talked about 1.1 billion followers and fans, right?

29:59Is it to grow the fan base? Is it to monetize the club and make it more profitable? What would your goal be? I mean, commercially, the club is massively successful. When I sort of joined the club in 2022, it wasn't that long after the sort of European Super League. And so there was a big disconnect between the fan base and the sort of club. And I think unless you are part of the club, it had the perception or maybe still does have the perception with some people that it is a corporate commercial machine and doesn't care about its fans. And that sort of couldn't be further from the truth. But the role that was created was pretty much looking at all of the external levers or kind of touch points of where do we have an engagement with sort of fans?

30:51So whether that's via communications and media relations, whether that's through content, whether it's through brand and creative, whether it's through kind of marketing, whether it's through fan engagement, of put those disciplines together in sort of one function so that actually we can really sort of focus on listening to fans, building a relationship with fans, whether essentially no matter where they're on the world. So whether that's your core fan in Manchester or whether it's our supporters clubs all over the world. One question I got on fans is, and actually Adam in our WhatsApp group chat was asking me this as well.

31:32How old is someone typically when they decide in the club? So if I go back to where I grew up, I live somewhere sort of between St. Hampton and Portsmouth, right? So you kind of had to make a choice at an early age, you know, you red and white or you blue. It was just something that, I don't know, and I was probably 10, 11 was kind of conversation you'd have at school about which team you supported sort of thing. But do you have any data on when people typically choose their club? Yeah, there is data and there's quite a bit of sort of research. Now, if you look on a sort of global world stage, it's below the age of like 14.

32:07But if you take the UK, it's between the ages of kind of five and 10. And, you know, for some fans, it will come down through generations because of kind of where you live or, you know, what a parent, grandparent supports. But more and more, we're seeing fans come in through new ways. So individual players, they may follow on social media, gaming. So which team have they selected or player have they selected to kind of play with? And it's interesting that certainly at that young age, you will find that they have more than one team. So it could be it's a Premier League club. It could be that it's a European team.

32:50But it tends to be now more and more through an individual player and definitely more ways at which they come in aside from sort of family. Yeah, that's very interesting. I mean, one of your most famous players, Marcus Rashford, of course, very, very high profile. And a couple of days ago, you took the decision to come off social media. So I just want to be intrigued. What kind of role is social media and the pressure that that creates? Yeah. Both players and fans and some of the vitriol that, you know, comes out. That's a big deal, particularly at a young age. I mean, relatively young, you know, young age to have to cope with all that.

33:24Yeah. I think the pressure's really huge. And I think we see it just through society, actually. there are kind of platforms which you sort of hear do much more to create a sort of joyful experience but actually for many people I think being on the receiving end you know how many kind of papers are there around anxiety increasing or sort of depression I think it's really really tough and I don't think it matters whether you're a sort of an athlete you're still a human being that like still exists for you and so it doesn't surprise me that actually the intensity of constantly being in the spotlight under scrutiny doesn't surprise me that when the players have the opportunity to have sort of a couple of weeks break you just want to switch off for everything and literally reset and sort of recharge as a club we're in the media and reference every five seconds online so it i mean it cuts to a level that i certainly was not prepared for uh and going through my kind of interview process i always remember joel glazer also one of the family owners talking about the level of scrutiny it's like yeah yeah you know formula one it's a global sport but you come to this and it like nothing compares and so we do quite a bit of work actually with the team and players just to make sure that as a club we're taking responsibility because there is so much abuse online.

35:04Any tips on how to deal with that? Because I think this is something universally we're facing. It's probably one of the big questions by generation, isn't it? How do we, you know, now we're growing up with social media and its effects and we're seeing it, you know, we're seeing the damage it can do for good and can do good as well, of course. Any tips on how, you know, as a brand owner or as a marketer, you kind of, face that challenge i think there's definitely no single silver bullet so to speak what we sort of tend to do is when a player gets signed to the club and each season we will sort of spend time talking through helping players to kind of manage their accounts some of them do have a sort of teams that will help them really understanding and working actually with software We work with a company called Respondology in terms of actually removing abuse, being able to kind of report it.

35:57And then honestly, I think it's having just a really good people around you that do care for you and can also sort of just help you not to take sort of everything to heart. It's so hard to do, easy to say. But, you know, often the people that are criticizing you, they don't know you or, you know, they don't know. perhaps what you've got going on and so it is trying to just layer on a number of kind of things and then sort of equally how can we be helpful as a club aside from removing abuse of really elevating players so if they're having a difficult time they've had so many amazing times actually just let's remind people the role that they play and the contribution that they've made because i'll have really bad days as i'm sure you have bad days and i have some really good days like no one is perfect it's hard isn't it because the the the hurt of criticism or or abuse it cuts deeper than the joy of success doesn't it it always seems to last longer like that we get out of balance you know because we might have 99 bits of praise one bit of negative and that negative is the thing you take away and you forget about the nice fight and it was just hard so it's a psychological thing isn't it yeah um now i mentioned in the outset of course i'm proudly wearing the third kit the southampton the winning the winning kit but one thing that always intrigues me about you know about particularly football is how important the shirt is to sponsors as well and and i think majesty nice have got one of the biggest deals in in shirt sponsorship rumored to be around 60 million pounds a year that's an accurate rumor is that an accurate rumor yes well reported in in many different outlets a bit more but yes it's definitely the most valued how how do you value a shirt i mean it's kind of intriguing because i guess that that money you could spend on traditional media you could buy a lot of tv with that or a lot of digital performance advertising how do you value a shirt i mean what goes into that there is so much nuance there's a amazing lady uh victoria timpson that runs our sort of commercial part of the sort of business and there is so much that goes into it so um aside from the things that we would sort of all look to as marketeers of the AVEs, eyeballs, etc.

38:14There's obviously all of that around reach. But I think what is now cutting deeper and actually becoming more and more important to sort of commercial partners is the opportunity for first party data. But secondly, to that is also the level of trust that goes up. So when a brand is on the sort of Manchester United shirt that level of trust that our fans place on that brand and in addition to trust going up consideration and purchasing or actually it being sort of a preference and we see that across all of the sort of partners in addition to what you would expect to get from a reach point of view your hospitality the ability to sort of activate and then there's also product creation co-branding opportunities so there are so many different things to it but i think fundamentally what it does boil down to is your fan base loves you okay so you don't win every single match i wish but they show up they come back and they still carry that absolute engagement and the conviction that you are the team that can do this.

39:34And that translates and does carry across into these sort of partnerships. So much care is taken into, is it the right brand fit? What are the associations? What value does this give to our fans in addition to the commercial value at the end of the day? That makes a ton of sense, actually. It chimes really nicely with System 1. And Andrew Tindall, Guy Works System One, did a report with Fuse looking at the power of sponsorship. And what they did is looked at the impact of how people feel about sports sponsorship and sports advertising if you're a sport fan. And I'm no surprise because it just resonates what you said there.

40:13But the level of happiness went up. Interestingly, the intensity of happiness went up. The strength of happiness went up. It's more memorable. They remember the brand a lot more. And it's really quite powerful. It's quite personal, isn't it? It really is. Because people have such a love for sport and the team they follow. And that's really what the brand partnership is capitalizing. A hundred percent. In a big way. I always remember when I joined the club, you know, you want to, you really want to understand the fans. Just kind of meeting people, chatting and stuff. And it's life. So, you know, I don't know, John, if you think about how many houses have you lived in, how many different jobs have you had?

40:51Quite a few. have you ever changed your sports team your football club no yeah that's very true yeah and it's that you're like okay yeah wow think think about that through that lens and it then makes absolute sense when you talk about the intensity of happiness or that trust that association and how that really carries over into into your partners linking back to what you said about usain bot earlier actually because um there's some lovely guidance in this report that the team came up with which i love which is that the tips they were talking about is timing what the ports of timing where you tell your story that you know it's in the moment and also you know telling a story through the celebrity or you know all the players rather than sort of just having them there sort of thing became very important and they talk a lot about kind of right brain features you know like characters and dramas and and that kind of thing which i thought was very good um but the The other thing as well is how do you do sponsorship well?

41:47So if you're listening and you're an advertiser and you want to do a partnership with someone like Manchester United, how do you get the most out of that? Because it's quite a powerful, potent mix that you talk about in terms of bringing the fans and the brand together. How would you get the most out of it? What a brilliant question. I think if I was sitting on the other side, I would, first of all, have absolute clarity as to what is it you're trying to achieve. And then I would want to really co-create and collaborate with the sort of sponsor to define how that can show up and what is the right blend for you depending on the problem you're solving of.

42:29Is it reaching eyeballs or actually is it that we have this target audience and we want to achieve this with this target audience? Because I think if you're really clear about what are you bringing to the table and what are you trying to solve for, actually you will have a sponsorship kind of partnership team that's like, okay, we know our business. Here are some ideas, how are we going to create something together? Because it could be that being on the shirt is important. It could be you need some reach and therefore your digi boards are important. but it could be that this is our audience um and we've got this product but can we co-brand can we create a new product a new service together i mean you can do everything yeah and you can cut that a thousand different ways the thing i was saying i often watch sport as a marketer it's a bit weird isn't it because you enjoy sport but i'm often looking out for the for the sponsorship and the activation i think is clever and i think with shirt advertising it's showing off a bit it's like look i bought the shirt right the ones i love are where they show off the technology in clever ways and the one that caught my eye the other day was um i don't know if you've seen this bit mercedes in their formula one team uh whatsapp have put have branded the button that lewis presses when he talks to back to the back to base i mean freaking genius that is the most high pressure situation and you're focused on what the driver's about to say and you've got your branded button there i just thought that and it's the green of course the little kind of speaking simple love that i love that they've thought about the detail the moment that it's happening you know it's lewis doing how simple yeah but just context yeah yeah that's proper content marketing isn't it that's amazing like product placement in amazing ways yeah um i thought just to round up i'll talk a little bit about because you've got a number of kind of non-exec roles at marketing Society and I believe you just trained and qualified as a coach as well so congratulations on that.

44:27Thank you I have just got my exec coaching accreditation. Well done. I feel like I'm still in kindergarten but it's so rewarding I love it. That sounds amazing I'm intrigued to know what what maybe it's a bit too early in your journey on this but what what are people needing your help with is there a common theme that you're noticing out there that people are kind of asking you about or wanting your help with so where i start where i started sort of from and what took me into sort of coaching was a genuine genuine love and care for people and having just this picture in my mind of wanting to lift up people around me and that comes from having been the recipient of so many people through my career having done that for me and seen something in me that perhaps I hadn't seen in myself every single person is so different in terms of the sort of situation and I'm there to to listen and to ask the right question because everyone will have the answer inside of themselves but it is about unlocking whatever is inside of them to realize their full potential and that is so rewarding and for me it's that sort of opportunity to sort of pay it forward and to sort of give it back and it's equally why I get so much from the marketing society and being part of the sort of board there and, you know, volunteering to do mentoring with Marketing Society, mentoring for the Marketing Academy Scholars after sort of loving my fellowship experience in 2020 and sort of doing things like school of marketing with kind of Richie or the kind of marketing meetup.

46:27Wow, that's amazing. Who's the best boss you ever had? We're going to break this down. Yeah. And we're going to go... into incredible people through my chapters okay Scottish guy Ken Keir at Honda incredible guy because the only question he ever asked me when presenting work from Wydens was does it make you feel scared and that was the most powerful liberating question of really pushing the creativity in the craft to have the greatest impact that we possibly could I never worked with Jeff for that long at sort of Virgin Media but as a human being the empowerment and the energy and the passion.

47:12Keris who I then worked with for much longer in terms of just really challenging and stretching me on all that kind of creative rigor and I adored working with Sean and Chase in sort of um f1 just again 10 000 feet up this is our vision and let's just like run at it full pelt build and fly the plane at the same time wow you picked your boss as well by the sounds of it i've been so lucky but when i think about it i think everything they have in common is this absolute belief and this trust and this motivation that they put into whether it's myself or all of us as a team of we're in this together yeah so last question having having done lots of mentoring you qualified as a coach you're helping a lot of people be better what's the one thing that you would advise with all that good advice you've got what stands out as the biggest the one thing that'll make the biggest difference.

48:17Can never do one thing, John. I noticed in your answer to the best boss you had about 15. But anyway, we'll let you off on that one. I'm at half glass full. Or maybe make it personal. When you did the coaching, what was the biggest revelation for you that you learnt? The importance of silence. Because? So often as humans, you're never really, really listening. you're waiting to kind of fill the gap, but actually listening with kind of curiosity and intent and then being really comfortable with silence. Because, you know, all of our minds are still kind of working. That's a lovely place to end, I think, on that beautiful moment.

49:09Thank you. Ellie, thank you. Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored CMO. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show. So please do leave a review wherever you get your podcast. If you want to contact me, you can do. I'm over on x at Uncensored CMO or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.