Studs Up

I wrote a bit ago about some rather senior folks at Aon getting in touch to talk about their role as new sponsor of Manchester United. With their official start date coming up fast, I got on the phone with Hans van Heukelum, VP of Global Marketing and one of the leads on the United partnership team, to talk a little more.

I didn’t really have much interest the United side of things, but more the chance to pick the brain of these sponsors who – for most of us – are simply just a name on the shirt of our team. Are there benefits beyond the shirt? Are there responsibilities to the community? Does the team itself have any reciprocal responsibilities to the corporation? I’m sure things change from club to club and deal to deal.

I was surprised at how much of a two way street it really was. Hans told me about their “Skills and Drills” initiative where Aon has and will continue to set up football camps all around the world for their regional offices to invite clients and their families to attend. Manchester United coaches are on hand to teach skills, leadership, teamwork and various other things that act as an analogy for the workplace. You’d expect Aon to have to help out in the Manchester community, but United will also be helping energize Aon’s existing community and charity efforts. At first I was a little surprised at how much United would have to be helping Aon, but I guess when you sign the most lucrative sponsorship deal in football history there are plenty of extras that get rolled in.

I used to work in advertising and we’d always try to find events or parties to bring clients to, sometimes it would go well and other time we’d end up at a local bar downing shots of cheap tequila. So for Aon to be able to leverage Manchester United to help impress clients is going to be a huge deal. It doesn’t matter whether they like football or not, everyone knows United and the fact that they’re kind of a big deal. Remember all those times people talk about United just doing things to help their global brand? This deal doesn’t happen without those efforts.

It was also interesting to hear just how excited people seemed to be around the Aon office. They have a running initiative where regional offices sign a ball and take photos before sending it on to another office. Apparently employees have been pulling out old United kits for their photographs and really getting behind it, I doubt the folks at most club sponsor’s office care at all that they’re aligned with that particular team but again United’s reach is larger than most but Aon are also making more of an effort to leverage this deal to drive other initiatives and corporate culture improvements around their office.

Then again, with the deal so new there’s bound to be excitement from individuals as well as from the top-down in the corporation. So I’ll definitely be checking in with these guys 6 months in to see how things are shaping up then, but it’s cool to see an insurance company of all things properly getting into the football spirit.