OMD's fourth Creative Masterclass brings sports to the fore

Held on November 6 at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel Conference Center, the event was designed to inspire them with examples and learnings of how brands can use sports to find a strong connection with their target audience.

Now in its second year, the event, organized by OMD, the region's most awarded media agency network, and London-based C Squared, publishers of Cream Magazine, Media & Marketing and organizers of the Venice Festival of Media, focused on creativity in media through sports, given the popularity of sports and sporting events in the region.

The program covered trends, case studies, brand experiences, traditional media, emerging media formats, sponsorship and accountability.

Using the finest examples of creative media in sports, C Squared chief executive officer Charlie Crowe talked about the rise of "webisodes" and the deconstruction of traditional "broadcast advertising".

He emphasized the importance of 'value' in sponsorships and discussed what brands in the Middle East can learn from current global trends.

Media entrepreneur and media agency pioneer Chris Ingram gave an authoritative insight into the business of sport and how it relates to brands based on his own experience with both.

He discussed the complexities of running a sports club and the close parallels between sports and business.

Client experiences are often the highlight of such gatherings and both Unilever's European media director Richard Davies and Niki Schilling, founder of Puravida and former global women sports marketing strategy manager for Adidas, certainly shared valuable learnings.

Drawing from his experiences with fast moving consumer goods, Richard Davies talked about new, non-traditional ways of getting involved with sports sponsorships that don't always mean spending large sums of money.

Niki Schilling used her experience with Heineken and Adidas to illustrate the different strategic approaches to effective sponsorship. She emphasized the importance of setting clear, tangible goals as a sponsor in order to achieve success.

Digital agency AKQA client services director Simon Jefferson encouraged marketers to create engaging brand experiences, with a focus on the younger generation.

Using recent examples from Olympic sponsor McDonald's and Nike, he demonstrated how campaigns that engaged through experience and self expression made for dynamic, engaging and ultimately successful campaigns.

Ian Thompson, founder and director of Sponsorship Science, stressed the importance of measuring and evaluating return on investment when it comes to sponsorship.

He noted that for every $1m spent on sponsorship rights fees, less than $10,000 is spent on measurement and evaluation, clearly an area for improvement.

"Many of our clients are already familiar with the power of sports as a communications platform, as we have deployed several operations around football, cricket and other sports over the years."

explained Eric Bequin, OMD MENA's regional managing director.

"This edition of the OMD Creative Masterclass was intended to look at alternatives for brands to communicate through sports."

"With the introduction of global sporting platforms in the region, such as F1 for example, we owe it to our clients and teams to explore every avenue to capitalize on the passion that audiences have for sports in the region," added Shadi Kandil, general manager of OMD Dubai.

"The feedback throughout the event from our teams, clients and media owners is very positive, which demonstrates the value they see in the Masterclass."

"The active sports scene here and abroad means we have ample opportunities to communicate with audiences through sports," commented Dubai Holding's communications channel director Mohamad Itani.

"The OMD Creative Masterclass allowed us to explore innovative ways to activate this passion point while remaining accountable."

Hasham Al Ziben, Regional Manager of ART, added: "Once again, OMD has managed to address a key subject from a variety of interesting angles. Sports have a unique ability to cut across demographics and psychographics and this event has given everyone a fresh perspective on how they can align their brand with relevant sports."

The fourth OMD Creative Masterclass was produced in association with Al Wataniya, ART/ARM, Kassab Media and the Choueiri Group.