It’s only a sticker, but….

Sure the ‘Shell Racing New Zealand’ decals I took several photos of at the George Begg Classic Speedfest at Invercargill’s Teretonga Park early this year are ‘only a bunch of stickers.’

In saying that, if these ultra-simple (four colour, Shell logo and steering wheel) decals means as much to other motorsport enthusiasts ‘of a certain age’ as they do to me, they must have repaid their design and printing costs several million times over.

How so? Let me explain.

Sponsorship is arguably one of the best – and definitely most cost-effective – tools available to sales and marketing managers. It has been for years as well, though it remains one of the least understood.

Billions of dollars are spent (invested is the term beloved by those who sell it because when you ‘invest’ in something you expect a return) each and every year  by companies on ‘sponsorships’ yet little is ever spent on working out a return.

One of the reasons (here in New Zealand anyway) is because sponsorship is sadly one of the last bastions of what I will charitably call the ‘blag.’ You know, when ‘the boss’ spends his company’s ‘budget’ on a sport or other community activity he (or she) has a personal – rather than professional – involvement in, and therefore passion for.

Never mind if – as I saw for myself many a year ago now – Senior Men’s (that’s old fellas 70+) Life Saving has little or no appeal to anyone other than the participants themselves, that’s where a decent chuck of some ‘telecommunication’ sponsorship money which was being spent with a car racing team I was involved with, went after a change in personnel in the marketing department.

Never mind that I produced huge screeds of press ‘clippings’ as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars of extra TV minutes thanks to our charismatic young driver and his antics both on and (yes, occasionally) off-track.

At the end of the season the new marketing manager dispatched  a minion from Wellington to what we all in the team thought was going to be a triumphant ‘bigger, better budget for next season’ meeting at the company’s then ‘branch office’ in Auckland (oh how things have changed, eh?) to tell us that she felt that Senior Surf Life Saving was a better ‘fit’ for their brand!

To say we were gob-smacked (blind-sided would be a better word) was an understatement. But years later I found out that the new marketing manager saw the company’s marketing budget as her own to spend as she and only she saw fit…… the chief beneficiaries in her time, apparently, downtown Wellington-based institutions like the NZ Ballet, the National orchestra and local theatre….where she and her fellow ‘luvvies’ could enjoy the show from the best (free!!) seats in the house.

And, if you’re wondering why the Shell Oil Company (as it then was) suddenly seemed to change tack from spending money on motor racing to Cricket through the late 1970s and into the 1980s, I found out one morning when I was a student at Uni in Dunedin as I forlornly checked the Otago Daily Times newspaper’s sports pages for any sort of story that didn’t involve someone kicking an (oval) ball or hitting a (hard round one) with a stick.

Instead I read with morbid fascination an obituary of some local Boy’s school Old Boy who, having apparently found no success on the field himself had risen through the ranks of the marketing department of Shell in Wellington, and – when he finally got his fat, stubby little fingers on the company’s marketing budget had proceeded to splurge it – not on the local motor racing scene where there was still a direct link between the product (fuel and oil) and the ‘market’ his budget was supposedly ear-marked to attract – but to the sport he had a personal passion for.

What made the whole sad, sorry situation worse (and no I’m talking here of the sordid Peter Plumley-Walker/dominatrix affair which occurred at a similar time) was the fact that his actions were considered normal and not only above-board, but also worthy of reporting in a story in a national newspaper’s sports rather than its court pages!

And I could go on and on and on.

I’ve sat in on meetings, for instance, with so-called ‘marketing specialists’ who have confused circuit-racing with speedway. I have also – and I kid you not – had a high-ranking female marketing executive tell me, and to be totally fair on her, she said it as an aside as she walked me to the lift after our meeting, that’s he would ‘take your prop home and show my husband, because he knows a lot about cars….’

And rugby, apparently, because that’s where he suggested she would be better spending her marketing budget, she told me ‘straight-faced’ when we next met.

This was before, too, the huge regional spends now being hoovered up by what I see the beleaguered rugby reporter on the NZ Herald newspaper still insists on referring (erroneously) to as our ‘national game.’

A recent report produced, I believe, by Sport NZ, suggests that rugby is in fact, in freefall, as numbers collapse because kids these days prefer Basketball (Boys) and Netball (Girls).

Like any Kiwi I will still watch an All Blacks test but even the promise of a free seat in a corporate stand wouldn’t get me to Eden Park for a ‘Blues game, or for that matter, Mt Smart to watch the Warriors to play league.

While I’ll admit I’m probably not your typical Kiwi sports fan, you have to wonder about some of the frankly glaring mismatches you see (or should I say, used to see) in terms of sponsorship and sports, however.

While I (think) I can see why Ford sponsor the All Blacks (two leading global brands blah, blah, blah) I think keeping its former arch-rival, Holden out, probably had a lot to do with it.

Now with the Holden marque’s hock sudden pull-out of the car market here and across the Tasman I think Ford could quite easily negotiate a substantial discount the next time it sits around the table with NZ Rugby.

Then there was the utterly bizarre case of Suzuki NZ and what it was doing ‘sponsoring’ the Warriors between 2012 and 2019! Seriously! And I bet it wasn’t a unanimous decision around the Mazda NZ boardroom table when Mazda took over (you did realise that, didn’t you?) as official vehicle supplier last year.

A much better ‘fit’ is Suzuki’s long-term official vehicle deal with Tri (athlon) NZ as well as Netball NZ. Why no car company is behind NZ Basketball I don’t know. But you could, ask the same question of MotorSport NZ.

As someone – it might have been Lee Iacocca – once said in relation to the car industry and motor racing; ‘if there was a shaving competition and I made shavers I couldn’t afford not to be involved.’

Yet many’s the time I’ve been told by people wo have made ‘marketing’ their career (and supposed area of expertise) that they are better off spending their money elsewhere because if they – say – buy an ad in a ‘car’ magazine, they are wasting their money because they are effectively ‘talking to the converted.’

Never mind that an ad or indeed a sponsorship’s job is to convert a non-user to a user of your product or service.

We face a similar sort of ‘spare me!!” issue in the magazine I edit as my day or ‘proper’ job, NZ4WD.

So, let’s see, 4WDs eh? You probably think our biggest advertisers would be…. what?…. Land-Rover, Jeep and other car companies with tough, go-anywhere, do-anything 4×4 Utes and Land Cruisers and things, right?

Wrong?  While Toyota is a regular advertising it Hilux and Ford and Mitsubishi come in on occasions when one of their Utes is featured, I can’t remember the last time we ran a Land Rover or Jeep ad – despite much of the editorial content featuring Landies and Jeeps in their natural habitat.

Go figure!

Advertising, again to be fair, is a vastly different animal to marketing which in turn is hugely different – and therefore requires a unique approach – to sponsorship.

Incredibly, considering the amounts of money involved, very few Kiwi companies retain dedicated ‘sponsorship managers.’

Some – like Cadbury did when I pitched a driver and campaign to them once – frankly insult anyone who has ever taken the time and effort involved to prepare and print up a detailed sponsorship proposal, by directing me to ‘pop it in the post to our sponsorship and charities manager, dear!’

Others – and there are more of these sick, pathetic little puppies out there than I’m sure most of you imagine – enjoy playing games with you, watching you squirm as they lead you on, and on, and on before cruelly dashing your hopes when they tire of the exercise and suddenly stop taking your calls.

Through all this however, I still – absolutely – believe in.

1/ The absolute need to spend real money advertising your wares to your key audience or audiences, and

2/ The long-term value of sponsorship in delivering not only brand awareness but also a set of unique brand values.

Take McDonalds for instance. None of us needs to eat a Big Mac and side-dish of trademark heavily salted shoestring fries washed down with a sickly-sweet Coke or Fanta.

Everywhere you go though, there will be ads extolling the (dubious) virtues of such a ‘hunger-buster.’ Next time you see an ad for Maccas on TV, stop, watch it in its entirety and tell me that it didn’t get your saliva glands going. (I know, mine even started kicking in as I was writing this.)

So, don’t tell me that advertising (particularly the carpet-bombing campaigns favoured by the likes of McDs etc have become so adept at making) doesn’t work.

Also, I know for a fact that sponsorship works. I do because of my lifelong preference for Shell petrol which started before I was old enough to need to buy it.

Even today I still gravitate to Z stations, which I know is silly but there you go.

Shell was one of the first global fuel and oil companies to use sponsorship (In particular mutually beneficial product development partnerships with teams like Ferrari) and one of the pioneers of sponsorship-based marketing here.

Hence the distinctive Shell and steering wheel logo you would see on selected racing cars like those here. As a kid growing  up in Gore I knew exactly where the ‘Shell depot’ was, because I used to make regular ‘please-Mister-have-you-got-any-Shell-stickers?’ visits which would net a selection of those decals you used to have to soak in water; though – sadly – never an iconic logo and steering wheel one.

Which is why I made a point of taking the photo of the one on the side of the Begg & Allen Bedford which Bill Richardson Transport World man Scott O’Donnell had restored and parked beside his contemporary race car transporter at the George Begg Classic Speedfest.

Seeing it brought a host of memories flooding back. Sure it’s ‘only a sticker.’ But it’s amazing the influence it has had over me…and many others I’m sure besides….

If you’ve got a similar story how about sharing it – with a pic of the sticker of course – in the Comments section below.