Martin Devlin: The cleverest marketing campaign seen this year in NZ sport

COMMENT:

Support Women's Sport.

It's not a request, nor an argument, most definitely a statement
and now (also) quite probably the best and cleverest marketing campaign seen this year in NZ sport.

Having said that it's also not going to happen and would be ludicrous if it did.

Let's make this clear, the Basin Reserve will never become the SWS BR.

I don't actually believe that's the end game of this exercise anyway and if it originally was then battle already won, time to work on how else the money raised might now be better spent.

So congratulations to Sarah Cowley, Megan Compain and Chantelle Brunner, I utterly applaud your ingenuity.

The first question that came to mind when reading the initial story was "so who is this being aimed at"?

Is it sports fans, media, Kiwi men and women in general or those in a position to actually do something financially about it?

Because that's where it should be targeted, those multinational organisations with all the wedge and all the resources who just love earning tax breaks sponsoring sport - provided the profile and coverage is commensurate with cash spent of course!

And yes we all who love the banks, finance companies, liquor stores and insurance companies who become "official" "passionate" and "unconditional" supporters of our national rugby cricket netball and league teams.

And yes we're also not so stupid as to not know the reasons why their generosity mostly only ever extends to high profile teams that generate the biggest and mostest publicity and exposure.

Shouldn't these same companies be publicly challenged to perhaps do something similarly benevolent that'd help improve and support ALL levels of those particular sports?

The sponsorship deal to buy the Basin Reserve naming rights is said to be worth $100k a year.

At that rate it's about a quarter of the expenses budget grafted by disgraced ANZ CEO David Hisco. Take what he blew on his wine cellar and taxi chits and that amount alone would be more than the annual income of most lower profile sports here.

However, this story pans out as a brilliant exercise in PR regardless.

A very clever marketing gimmick that was never going to do anything but get people
talking about it, which in the end was the whole point anyway wasn't it?

Because surely the best way to spend on supporting any sport is to support the sport
as opposed to telling people to.