The SingTel grand prix title sponsorship – National Service or brand building?

By Les Tan

The Singapore Grand Prix that finished two weekends ago was the biggest story in town. You’d have noticed too that SingTel was the title sponsor of the event.

How much did they pay?

SingTel have consistently declined to reveal how much they paid. A local Singapore newspaper estimated it at between US$10-12 million (SGD14.7-14.6m). If that figure is correct, that would be the largest title sponsorship for any sports event in Singapore history. It dwarfs the SGD2.1m that Standard Chartered has committed to the Singapore Marathon and even the US$5m that Barclays are committing to the 2008 Singapore Open golf event.

So what good reason is there to spend that much on a title sponsorship?

Global Awareness
SingTel Group CEO Chua Sock Koong was quoted as saying “The world is watching and this is a great event upon which to position the SingTel brand on an international level…”

14 out of the 18 races in this year’s calendar have title sponsors but you would be hard pressed to know that just from reading the F1 news stories or watching the tv. None of the major news agencies write “Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix”, the “ING Belgian Grand Prix” or the “Santander British Grand Prix”. It’s just “the Bahrain Grand Prix”, “the Belgian Grand Prix”, “the British Grand Prix”.

The BBC website refers to the Singapore race consistently as the “Singapore GP” or the “Singapore Grand Prix”. Only the local newspapers write “SingTel Singapore Grand Prix”. That is best explained by the fact that SingTel spends millions in advertising with them. One call from the SingTel marketing department to the sales office of the local papers cures anyone of amnesia.

Track side branding that SingTel received would have been broadcast to an F1 audience reported to be in the range of 400 to 500 million. The value of that media exposure is a figure worth looking at, because it would go some way to justify the sponsorship spend.

Local Brand Awareness and an Emotional Connection
Brand awareness of SingTel must surely be 95% or higher with all telephone lines on this island at one time completely provided by SingTel. Will the title sponsorship bring SingTel qualitative rewards instead?

A comment by then Singtel Director of Brand Experience, Sherie Ng, in late 2007 seems to indicate that. “We feel that this is an excellent branding platform for SingTel to create the emotional connection to our global customer base.”

Whether customers here in Singapore have a stronger emotional connection to the SingTel brand because of the F1 sponsorship can only be judged with the passing of time. Unless a company is a sports brand, like adidas, Nike or New Balance, the immediate benefits of sports title sponsorships are not obvious and sometimes even dubious.

A case in point is Osim, the title sponsor of the Singapore International Triathlon for the last six years. While local triathletes have come to calling the event the “Osim Tri” as an easy shorthand, the products of the company, on the surface of it, are dedicated to keeping you indoors instead of encouraging you outdoors to train for a triathlon.

The OSIM uRobic is a case in point. The product, akin to riding a mechanical bull like John Travolta did in the 1980 movie Urban Cowboy, has the following promotional copy:

“Losing weight around the waist and tummy has just gotten easier. With the OSIM uRobic, trimming that extra inch is now a breeze. This innovative exercise is designed to target your tummy and waist to give you a slimmer waistline.”

Ask any triathlete about losing weight and they’ll tell you to stop wasting time sitting on a vibrating chair and just run.

It is not obvious to most casual sports fans currently that SingTel has any strong connection with sports although according to the SingTel website, they support sailing and they are listed as a partner on the Football Association of Singapore website.

While some customers may be getting football score updates via their SingTel mobile phone subscription, that relationship is more a transactional one. An emotional connection is a lot harder to make.

Expecting an emotional bond with their customers after just one event may be asking too much but since the Singapore Grand Prix is slated for a five-year run, SingTel will have an opportunity to make a meaningful connection over that period.

National Service
In the end, perhaps corporate national service underpins why SingTel is the title sponsor. There are few Singaporean companies that would be able to put up a sponsorship amount of US$10-12m yearly for five straight years. Few, if any, foreign companies would sponsor a Singapore sports event at that high investment level because of our small domestic market.

Nothing wrong with National Service, of course. Without National Service personnel, we would not have the annual National Day Parade. As SingTel said, the title sponsorship will go some way in “reinforcing Singapore’s image as an exciting global city.”

Now that’s doing your National Service.

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