Sponsorship Marketing
Sponsorship Marketing
Behind the scenes of
New Zealand's national team
Intro
Every country has a national sport. Canada fills its stadiums with ice hockey fans, Thailand cheers for Muay Thai fighters, and in Spain football enthusiasts chant sports anthems. When it comes to New Zealand, rugby is a common guess, however, the sport that brought New Zealand international fame is sailing.
My Role
Back in 2019, I got the chance to work with the best sailing team in the world. While I didn’t know much about sailing, I was thrilled to manage a sponsorship campaign between Brancott Estate and New Zealand’s national sailing team.
Thanks to my manager who trusted, me, a young marketer, I was heavily involved in sketching limited-edition merchandise material for the US market, drafting storyboard for “behind the scenes” video content and developing branded VIP experiences for national and international partners.
Best Part
What I enjoyed most about this campaign was the collaboration with Tried & True design agency. Their work on the limited-edition, a bespoke label honoring the sailing team, definitely brought a fresh breeze to our traditional packaging and made it stand out on the shelves across New Zealand retailers. The design was so captivating that even countries that had nothing to do with the sailing team, wanted to launch the limited-release in their markets.
Key Learnings
The most challenging part was managing the relationship with the marketing team in New Zealand where the product was launched. Working on behalf of global strategy team I had to make sure local execution followed global brand guidelines. The process reminded me of tango dance. You gotta know when to step forward and when to step back. It took time to understand each other’s needs and constraints but I learned that by showing initiative, providing options, and taking work off someone’s shoulders you can win trust from stakeholders that first might have been resistant.
