Is ASB's sponsorship of the tennis worth the money?

ASB Classic director Karl Budge, Serena Williams and ASB Bank sponsorship manager Jonathan Rea plant an ASB Sustainaball at the ASB Classic. Photo / Supplied

Tennis doesn't even rank among the top 10 sports by participation in New Zealand. Hockey, touch rugby and futsal all come in ahead of the racquet-based sport, and Census data from 2018 showed that interest was on the slide.

So this poses the question: Is ASB getting value for the money it forks out every year to have its name pasted in front of a tennis event?

The issue of naming rights has long been the subject of marketing debate, with detractors saying it offers little commercial value to brands.

In a 2007 academic paper published in the Journal of Sports Economics, professors Eva Marikova of Moravian College and Michael Leeds of Temple University concluded there was "little evidence that the purchase of naming rights had a statistically significant impact on the value of the companies that bought them, even less evidence that the impact was positive, and no evidence at all that there was a permanent, positive impact".

The report didn't mince words, saying: "Our main finding is that naming rights offer no economic value - in the form of abnormal returns - to the firms that buy them."

The problem with any studies in the marketing space, however, is that it's incredibly difficult to isolate the contributory impact of one aspect of a company's communications.

ASB sponsorship manager Jonathan Rea says sponsorship can't simply be reduced to a name tagged on the outside of a stadium.

"It's no longer about signing up, putting a name in front and walking away," he says.

"What's more important is the support and the leverage that you build around that sponsorship."

Rea says that sponsoring a sporting event is about more than just tagging a name onto a stadium. Photo / File

As an example, ASB has this year developed a clever product called the Sustainaball – a biodegradable tennis ball, which carries a native New Zealand seedling.

While a normal tennis ball can take hundreds of years to break down, the ASB Sustainaball has been designed to break down in fewer than 10 years. Once the ball degrades, the hope is that the seedling will grow into a tree.

These tennis balls might be promoted around the ASB Classic, but they actually have little to do with tennis. They have, in fact, been developed off the back of the insight that Kiwis tend to lose stacks of tennis balls to backyard cricket and catch every year.

Rea says this type of marketing initiative takes ASB's brand awareness beyond the roughly 70,000 event attendees to people who might not even be interested in tennis at all.

"Not every Kiwi is a tennis fan, but every Kiwi is a fan of the tennis ball. We wanted to take something that links us to the main sponsorship of the ASB Classic but can be understood in many ways."

Rea argues that the creativity behind this kind of thinking gives ASB the opportunity to have broader conversations with New Zealanders – and this can have a direct impact on the brand.

"It's about having an idea that can transfer outside of the arena," he says.

Alongside the tennis balls and the in-stadium activities, ASB has also developed a quirky video campaign developed by its ad agency With Collective that strives to tell the story behind the innovative balls.

"We look at it from the perspective that the sponsorship affects our brand and the brand affects our sponsorship. It's all one big silo, there's nothing in isolation. It all builds up to a bigger brand story."

Rea wouldn't be drawn into commenting on the amount of money ASB spends on sponsoring the event, saying only that the company makes a big investment across a number of sports and community events, including New Zealand Rugby and the Auckland marathon.

The immediacy and excitement of live sport does certainly have appeal, but this strength can also be a weakness for brands.

The unpredictability of sporting events and the personalities who participate mean that brands could have their names dragged into controversies that they have no intention of being associated with.

"The beauty of sport is that you never know what you're going to get," says Rea. "And that unpredictability is what makes people so engaged in sports and it's what makes us want to get involved in these sponsorships. It's about the rich diversity [of experience] that we can get."

A shared halo

Marketing and public relations consultant Paul Gunn says it's difficult to estimate how much ASB pays for its sponsorship but that it wouldn't come cheap.

He says the organisers are able to sell the sponsorship at a premium, firstly because of the prestige of the event and secondly because there aren't many such high-profile opportunities in New Zealand.

"There are few regular events in Auckland and the Classic has the advantage because it happens every year. This means people can plan for it," Gunn says.

Gunn also says the prestigious nature of the event ensures that it attracts upmarket brands, such as Jaguar, Heineken and Moët that are happy to live in the combined glow.

"Branding is also about the company that you keep and this is some pretty good company for all those brands," says Gunn.