For some time now, sports marketing has ceased to be an addition to the media plan, but has become one of the axes that organize communication. of brands in Latin America. Gustavo Quiroga, founder of the communications agency that bears his surname, explained this in a dialogue with LA NACION
For the executive, the trend is clear: With fragmented audiences, multiplying platforms and less time to build brand identity, companies are looking to rely on territories that are already generating conversation, community and their own values. and of all, sport is the one that offers the greatest engagement and amplification capacity. The key is to demonstrate real impact: visibility, reach, frequency, media bounce and ultimately sales, he said.
Analyzing the investment landscape in the country, he explained: “Earlier, about 85% of budgets went to traditional media, today it is about 40% and rising. The rest goes to digital channels and sports marketing.”
Data from the agency shows that the leadership in open television corresponds to the health, personal care and cosmetics sector, with advertisers such as Genomma, Elea, L’Oréal, Bagó and Unilever consolidating their dominance in the medium. In contrast, they point out that the retail sector is positioned as the main investor in pay TV, radio and web portals, driven by large chains such as Carrefour, Cencosud, Coto and Mercado Libre, the latter having a strong presence in the digital sector. Meanwhile, they point out that in social networks, technology and entertainment companies with brands such as Netflix, Samsung, Motorola and Amazon play the leading role.
The agency’s history explains part of this view. The company was founded in December 2001 in the midst of Argentina’s economic collapse and began offering comprehensive communications solutions at a local level. and the ability to apply consistent metrics across different markets soon led to expansion. Today, Quiroga Media Group operates in the region with 12 branches and employs around 150 skilled workers. “We are a Latin American company, something that is neither commonplace nor easy,” he emphasized.
-How would you define the place that sports marketing occupies in the communication services ecosystem?
-The sports system has more and more weight in the general ecosystem. When I was a child, brands had time to build their identity and create value. It was a very nice time: table wines, for example, had stories. Crespi ran a campaign using ankle boots to announce the arrival of a baby. while Thermidor made another in which he told of an uncle who came from France. However, today brands need quick results. And given this urgency, they begin to adopt values from other activities, and the most important of these – due to the high level of engagement it generates – is sport. They also do this with other content, such as shows or music.
-How does this value association arise?
-First they did it through personalities, but then they realized that they could have problems: some were in compromising situations and that affected the brand. Nowadays, associations with teams or sports are more likely to be sought, as these are broader contexts. However, rugby in Argentina, for example, suffered a setback due to a specific case that deeply affected public opinion. Sport conveys many positive values to brands and there are clear examples: Mercado Libre based all of its communications throughout Latin America on sports values, particularly Formula 1 and football. The sport strengthens and, when the brand is present in several countries, allows to build values in all countries. This is a phenomenon that we first observed, then participated in and are now integrated into.
-How does this integration occur with other platforms such as television, radio and social media?
-Sport complements us, but also has some limitations. That’s why we say it’s part of a strategy: the sport provides the branding and the other systems provide the call to action. Nowadays it is very fashionable to measure sales results, so we cannot leave everything to sponsorship: this sponsorship must have a strategic rationality. We try to measure this engagement as well as the additional reach and frequency to complement it with the media ecosystem. Today we have what we call communication systems: when I started working there were six media, today we have an ecosystem of 13, divided into more than 60 types of communication. It’s about complementing the sport with calls to action and describing the benefits and features of the product or service.
– What do brands look for when launching sports marketing campaigns?
-Originally it was almost about corporate social responsibility: helping a club, a neighborhood, an activity. Today, that intention remains, but all brands strive for a return on investment. Companies do not have time to develop values or the “taste” of the marketing manager. Today it is completely strategic.
-How do you specifically measure the return on investment from communication?
-The heart of the system is the measurement of sport reinforcement. We measure everything: the names of the stadiums, the presence on t-shirts – which varies depending on whether it is on the torso, sleeves or pants – the cleats due to agreements with sports brands, the clothing, the static fences, the printing on the field and every visual presence that reaches the public. We also analyze what appears on people’s clothing in stadiums and what the media later reproduces in their clips, notes or posts. We also measure posterior gain: what the media creates by re-showing images of the games. Often a brand appears stronger in this “bounce” than in the original broadcast. It all adds up: broadcast audience + amplification audience. To organize this information, we developed Compass, our own tool that harmonizes all market sources and allows us to compare apples to apples. Compass gives us a transversal KPI that integrates everything a brand does: visibility, reach, frequency and cost per touchpoint.
-How does this measurement translate to sales analysis?
-The second level is the attribution model. If the customer is selling online, we can match what is seen in a game with what is happening on the website minutes or days later. This is how we determine which impulses had the greatest impact: whether sponsorship, TV contributions, digital formats or a combination of these. That’s the key to optimization: increase what works and reduce what doesn’t. We even compare how each sport, tournament and type of exposure works. Being in Formula 1 is not the same as being in a local club or an emerging or Paralympic sport. Everyone has different values, different target groups and different bounce levels.
-Which place is that? marketing Sport in the brands’ budget?
-In the past, around 85% of budgets were allocated to traditional media, today it is around 40% and the trend is rising. The rest is focused on digital channels and sports marketing. Another area that is growing more slowly is sustainability, but this is often combined with sports and community activities.
-Could you share success stories?
-One example is Pax Assistance, a travel assistance company that is about to celebrate its fourth birthday and has positioned itself with sport as a mainstay between traditional media and sponsorship. It had to compete in a very busy and not huge segment. At some point in the middle of the World Cup they had been removed from two important sports signals. We recommended that they sponsor the channel that was broadcasting the World Cup, and they thought they were not up to the task: they ended up sponsoring the national team and having a presence all over Qatar. We use attribution models to measure website traffic and demonstrate an incredible return on investment. This is one of our most successful cases because without being a budget leader, they have achieved a very strong market positioning. Another relevant case is DirecTV. After selling the company in Latin America and under the leadership of the Werthein Group, we worked on a strategy that integrates the sports ecosystem with the rest of the media. What we aimed for – and this turned out to be crucial – was to focus the sponsorship on teams that normally take part in international football cups, such as the Libertadores and the Sudamericana. This allows for regional visibility: A team we sponsored in Argentina also appeared on broadcasts in Colombia, Uruguay, Chile or any other market where DirecTV had a presence. This strategy made it possible to optimize budgets, leverage the exposure that these teams had already generated throughout the year and supplement that exposure with traditional campaigns, achieving a highly efficient reach and frequency model.
-How has advertising evolved in recent years with so much change?
-When I started, this was a scarcity business, so our core was to negotiate, be first and pay less. On Sundays we had to fight over a particular page of the newspaper. On the contrary, the business today is much more complex, both for the advertiser and for us. It is a business characterized by extreme abundance: the variety of moments and platforms tends to be infinite and it has become a curatorial task. Attention is another challenge. However, I believe that not all advertising needs attention: a lot of it works subliminally. There are messages that need to be conscious – calls to action – and others that work without direct attention, such as a t-shirt sponsorship.
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