Man in Sure Men t-shirt with football overlooking cityscape

A 7-year-long partnership

Working together with Sky Sports News HQ

Paul Connell, Brand Manager, Sure Men, Unilever

Both Sure Men and Sky Sports News play a key role in men’s daily routines and work hard to understand men’s passion points and needs.

The Sky Sports News deal has enabled us to have a 365 days a year presence in front of our consumers, a high frequency which has allowed a series of extreme physical challenges, putting Sure Men’s promise of protection to the test. The result – increases in awareness, relevance, conviction, belief in Sure’s performance and more.

Paul Connell, Brand Manager, Sure Men, Unilever

Sure Men

A 7-year-long partnership with Sky Sports News HQ

Unilever was looking for a platform to showcase the Sure Men deodorant range and communicate its reputation for high performance and dependability to a young, active, male audience. The campaign needed to articulate the core brand message – “It won’t let you down” – in a distinctive way, to set the brand apart from its competitors and drive product sales.

Of viewers aware of the sponsorship

Unprompted brand recall

Increase in brand trust

Insight

Through audience analysis, Sky Media identified a profile match between Sure Men customers and viewers of Sky Sports News HQ (SSNHQ). The SSNHQ audience responded positively to qualitative research statements, including; I pay attention to the brand of toiletries I buy and I want to be considered well-groomed. In addition, it is typically a male audience who are regularly tuned into SSNHQ for their sports news updates, and therefore demonstrate a keen interest in sport.

As SSNHQ broadcasts throughout the day, the partnership would position Sure Men in front of its target demographic on a daily basis, unlocking the opportunity to communicate multiple brand messages as part of one on-going campaign.

Idea

With a captive audience identified in SSNHQ, Sure next wanted to identify the optimum time of day to speak to viewers. To identify this, Sky Media drilled into TV data to understand which segments across the day engaged most effectively with the target demographic. The early morning shows ‘Good Morning Sports Fans’ and ‘The Morning Report’, as well as ‘Football Tonight’ stood out as the most popular segments for the target audience. These three programmes formed the basis of the sponsorship campaign.

Activation

Over the seven year sponsorship, Sky’s creative team worked in partnership with Unilever to produce different creative executions including Mountain climbing, Football freestylers, Snowboarding, Formula 1 and Parkour. The creative was implemented across the year in line with the sporting calendar, encompassing the overarching theme demonstrating that Sure Men provided the best performance and support across all exhilarating and pressurised sporting challenges.

The sponsorship credits played out on SSNHQ during ‘Good Morning Sports Fans’, ‘The Morning Report’ and ‘Football Tonight’. In addition, the same creative formed video pre-rolls around the daily Sky Sports News HQ Report and were further implemented across display ads on skysports.com including billboards, leaderboards and MPUs.

Most recently in 2016, Sure Men leveraged its partnership with the Williams Formula 1 Team to promote a limited edition ‘Williams F1’ deodorant range. Skysports.com promoted a competition giving one lucky fan the chance to be the Williams ‘Pit Crew Apprentice’ at the Italian Grand Prix.

Sky Media and Unilever collaborated with Sky’s promotions team to deliver an on-pack promotion offering Sure Men customers a Sky subscription package at a discounted rate. This activity, along with the online competition, extended the reach of the campaign and positively reinforced the partnership.

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Results

The SSNHQ sponsorship achieved impressive cut-through for Sure, and its success explains the longevity of the partnership.

Awareness

Over 66% of viewers were aware of the sponsorship. This is +39% higher than the Sky average
During the partnership, the audiences’ brand awareness increased and the sponsorship kept Sure Men top of mind amongst viewers. Over 50% unprompted brand recall amongst SSNHQ viewers

Brand Perception

In 2015, the top spontaneous take-outs from the creatives were “for sports/active people” and “keeps you fresh” – echoing the key efficacy measures for the campaign
Association with SSNHQ as a trusted source of sports news created a halo effect on the Sure Men brand. Over the past three years, Sure as “a brand I trust” increased by 25% amongst viewers

Client Quote

“Both Sure Men and Sky Sports News play a key role in a man’s daily routine and work hard to understand his passion points and needs. The Sky Sports News deal has enabled us to have a 365 days a year presence in front of our consumers, a high frequency which has allowed a series of extreme physical challenges, putting Sure Men’s promise of protection to the test. The result – increases in awareness, relevance, conviction, belief in Sure’s performance and more.”

Paul Connell, Brand Manager, Sure Men, Unilever

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