Aegon enjoys rapid returns from £25m match with British Tennis

Published on Saturday 19 December 2009 18:23

LIFE insurer Aegon has made faster progress than expected in its drive to become a household name on the back of its multi-million-pound sponsorship of British Tennis.

Aegon UK, which has its headquarters in Edinburgh, signed a five-year deal at the start of 2009 to become "lead partner" of British Tennis. This includes sponsoring high-profile tennis events such as the annual Queen's Club tournament, and support at "grass-roots" level.

Aegon decided to commit to a deal worth about 25 million with the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) despite many other financial services firms cutting marketing budgets during the recession.

Steve Clode, who joined Aegon as director of marketing and customer strategy from Nationwide in 2007, said his intention was to create "first impressions" of the Aegon brand this year, then gradually build trust with consumers.

"We've laid out what we hope to achieve during each year of our sponsorship. At the end of this year, we're pretty much where we wanted to be by the end of 2010," he said.

Separately, Clode grabbed the opportunity to attach the firm's name to the Masters Tennis tournament at the Royal Albert Hall in December after BlackRock's sponsorship deal ended.

Clode is drawing on his experience of sports marketing gained at Nationwide through its sponsorship of English football, at league and national level, to raise Aegon's profile in the UK, where it has yet to establish its brand.

He said: "Aegon has been a business-to-business model and that's one of the things Otto (Thoresen, Aegon chief executive] has been keen to address."

Clode added that in a "post-Retail Distribution Review" world, the brand will be more important as life, pensions and investment firms look for a range of sales channels and decrease their reliance on independent financial advisers who will no longer be able to accept commission payments.

Aegon tracks the impact sponsorship is having on brand recognition. Clode said: "Am I pleased with progress? I'm grinning like a Cheshire cat."

"Spontaneous" or "unprompted" awareness of the brand in December last year among the UK adult population was only 1 per cent; by this summer it was 6 per cent. "Prompted" awareness has jumped from just under 10 per cent to 16 per cent.

Teamwork and luck played their part. Clode said:

"We were hugely fortunate Andy Murray won Queen's in June. It helped British Tennis and helped us."

Although Queen's had been associated with Stella Artois for 30 years, Murray's victory – making him the first Scot to win the tournament – made headlines. He referred to Aegon's support in post-match interviews while the whole venue was clothed in Aegon's corporate blue.

The approach seems to be paying off. If you ask the 30 per cent of the UK population who are "tennis enthusiasts" which brands they associate with the sport, Aegon now comes second only to Robinsons, with Stella in third place. "I can't believe we've become No 2 so quickly," said Clode.

At the Masters at the Royal Albert Hall this month even the court was Aegon blue. Clode said: "Seeing a venue like the Albert Hall dressed in your colours is just brilliant. It's great that the employees can see this type of manifestation of the brand. It makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up."

Tennis sponsorship has also helped the public pronounce Aegon – a Dutch name – properly (it's Ay-gon), as it is heard on TV being said by tennis players such as Murray, Pat Rafter and Stefan Edberg.

Clode said: "Tennis players by and large are charming. The highlight for me at the Masters was how accessible the players were. They're happy to have their photos taken with our guests. There's no edge to them.

"In the contract we had at Nationwide with the English FA, there were a certain number of player appearances, but you might have a chief executive waiting for a high-profile player to pitch up, and next thing you get a call saying they're going to be an hour and a half late."

However, Clode does not want to go down the route of sponsoring individual players as he believes that runs the risk of scandals breaking beyond the firm's control – a pertinent point given the controversy surrounding golfer Tiger Woods.

He said: "That's one of the reasons why you have to be really careful about individual player endorsement. They can present your brand really well, or can behave in a way that can create all sorts of trouble. It's much better to be associated with a sport or governing body."

Management consulting firm Accenture has already dropped Woods, but Clode thinks a knee-jerk reaction is wrong. "I've learnt that you're better off letting the world turn a few times before making a decision. You can damage that player forever and they might be the best player in the world. It's not for financial services organisations or sponsors to make moral judgments. As soon as they start doing that they're straying beyond the role of a sponsor," he said.

Clode is also keen to emphasise there's more to Aegon's backing of British Tennis than high-profile tournaments.

He said: "We're not just a big brand that comes in and slaps its name on a shirt.

"We want to be associated with talent and talent management. That comes from not just investing in large events, but helping kids to pick up a racquet."

With the LTA, Aegon has gone out to 2,700 primary schools, which now have tennis kits. Through its parks programme it will refurbish or develop 250 community tennis areas across the UK. Through Aegon FutureStars, about 400 of the most talented young players get financial support.

Clode said: "Hopefully, one of the legacies of Aegon in British tennis will be the number of youngsters coming through."