Premier Sponsor of European Handball launches world’s first Interactive Advertising Campaign

JACK & JONES launched the world’s first interactive advertising last weekend, at the VELUX European Handball Champions League. Partnering with Kwangl.com, the men’s fashion brand gave away 800euros worth of vouchers to participants, in return for a Tweeted hashtag.

Sports fans watching the matches this weekend were encouraged to pre-register at Kwangl.com.  During the match they could tweet a hashtag, that was revealed on the JACK & JONES LCD perimeter advertising, for the chance to win a prize.  Over the course of the weekend, eight winners were revealed and each won a €100 voucher.

JACK & JONES has been a sponsor of Europe’s top men’s handball’s competitions since 2009-10, and is one of two premium sponsors of the Champions League, the other being Japanese electronics giant Sharp, below title sponsor Velux, the Danish building products group.  The fashion brand will still activate its sponsorship via social media campaigns, promotions in stores and on-site fan activities while the mopping crews at Champions League games will continue to sport its logo.

J&J

The EHF has been trialling the use of Kwangl, which has also run similar competitions for MODO Hockey, the Swedish Premier League ice hockey team, as part of efforts to ensure greater engagement between sports fans and advertisers.  Kwangl claims that its software will enable sports organisations to offer better value to their sponsors by giving them a platform to connect with viewers during games and assess the success of their campaigns.

“We felt over the last few years that in the sports market there was more budget being spent on mobile and digital advertising but during the actual match there was nothing to allow people to interact with what was on television.  With this system you can engage with fans as they are watching the game, sending out activation codes and rewards.” – Matt Edgley, MD of Kwangl.

Overall, it’s a good idea – directly pushing users towards the brand in an interactive way means the consumer is exposed to the brand, and engaging with it, in an inadvertent way.  It could possibly have been executed more effectively, however.

A strong in-game image (not grabbed from TV) would have made this clearer.  The pre-registering on Kwangl.com adds in a barrier to entry that is likely to have significantly reduced the entry numbers.  This is always the decision that needs to be made, low barrier to entry but little/no data collection or collect key data but accept lower entry numbers.  For this activation, CRM is obviously high on the agenda and the ability of Kwangl to deliver up to 50,000 prizes a minute was also another factor.

Also, instead of the tweeting of a hashtag to enter, an alternative mechanic that could have proved a bit more effective would be a password that was revealed in-game to be tweeted in conjunction with a hashtag.  This would allow a hashtag to be promoted pre-game to generate conversation around the activation, and instruct users how to participate during the game.

Regardless, interactive advertising is an open idea to all brands with access to dual-screening viewers.  Social media makes this possible in an instant, and it’s almost a surprise to see that other brands haven’t experimented with this already.

Do you think that interactive advertising could become a mainstay in brand promotion?  Which other brands could directly benefit? Does it bring fans closer to sport or not?

jack jones

 

 

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Tom Kelk
Tom Kelk 25 posts

Tom Kelk is a tech/sport blogger and Account Manager at communications agency, Pitch. You can find him on Twitter (@TomKelk), LinkedIn and his blog (tomkelk.blogspot.com)

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