The saying goes “winning isn’t everything.” But in the world of sports sponsorships and branding, it’s a little more than something. Oracle can vouch for that, as their sponsored American team sailed to a dramatic comeback victory in the latest America’s Cup.
Oracle a big winner in America’s Cup
Winning always puts brands and sponsors in the spotlight, which is right where they want to be. America’s Cup is no different, especially for Larry Ellison’s brand Oracle. Rob Prazmark, CEO of 21 Marketing, explains:
“Oracle is really code for Ellison. Ellison uses sailing and his America’s Cup victories to further Oracle’s business relationships.”
The Oracle brand was the number one trending topic on Twitter on Wednesday. If that doesn’t say enough, Ammiel Kamon – Kontera’s vice president of marketing – says that during the Cup, people were seeing the Oracle brand 16 times more than usual. He explains that people were seeing the brand’s name in searches, on Twitter, and in publications. “It’s like getting a year’s worth of marketing in one month,” he said.
Oracle also knows how to time things well. The brand’s big tech fest, Oracle OpenWorld 2013, concluded Thursday in San Francisco. Fortunately, the timing really aligned well with the America’s Cup victory. Oracle enticed folks to attend the race with commemorative T-shirts that were promised to the first 1,000 attendees. The brand really drove home the “campaign” by allowing attendees to have their picture taken with the Cup. Oracle Chief Marketing Officer Judith Sim told USA TODAY:
“Winning this, and its effect on the brand name, is priceless. There is no measurement I can put on this.”
Again, the billionaire Larry Ellison also experienced some personal brand growth from the win as well. Luckily for everyone with stock in Oracle, Ellison choses to reinvest that brand growth in his company. This is a classic example of how one can grow a brand by utilizing the sports spectrum.
About Oracle
Oracle is shifting the complexity from IT, moving it out of the enterprise by engineering hardware and software to work together—in the cloud and in the data center. By eliminating complexity and simplifying IT, Oracle enables its customers—400,000 of them in more than 145 countries around the world—to accelerate innovation and create added value for their customers.
Photo credit – telegraph.co.uk