Published by Steve 3 July, 2008 - 12:57So here we are; Lucy’s blog entry number 2 and this time the challenge is ‘branding’, or more specifically branding Andy Murray.
Now this begs the question, does Andy Murray need branding? After all, aren’t we a bit bored of all the ‘Rogers’, ‘Rafas’, ‘Kates’, ‘Siennas’, and ‘Madonnas’ of the celebosphere? I know there is ‘aspiration’ but don’t we need something a bit more to aspire to?
However, let’s imagine that we were given the brief – please create a brand ‘Andy Murray’, avoiding all references to “dour Scot”, “plucky Brit”, good loser, blah blah blah.
The boy has become an adult; a successful, driven, focused, hard-working adult who happens to play tennis for a living. He participates in a physically, emotionally and mentally challenging sport; annually travelling huge distances and is solely responsible for the employment of at least 5 other people who help him with his business. And make no mistake, it is a business; if he can’t play then he can’t pay them (although sponsors do help there).
However, it is a business that nearly all of us would never have the chance to forge a career in. Sports careers are necessarily short-lived, intense experiences. To survive in top-flight sport you need talent, mental strength, dedication, a huge measure of ego, self-belief and the ability to work very hard.
The question for marketers is how to translate that into a brand that has wide appeal in the modern market. After all, most of us understand we would never survive in that world, so of what relevance is it to us?
Putting aside all the obvious cross-over opportunities – racquets, sports wear, healthy ‘lifestyle’ brands, electronic gaming etc, we would look at who Andy Murray actually is – rather than who he is generally believed to be – obvious I know!
While we wouldn’t be looking at funking-up or ‘yoofing’ his brand just for the sake of it, we would look at using his age, family, self-belief, obvious talent and frank bloody-mindedness to appeal to a broader spectrum than the previously limited tennis fan or Scottish nationalist demographic (that’s me being very tactful there).
After all, who doesn’t want to back a winner; who doesn’t want to look like a winner themselves by association – look at Abbey/Santander and their association with Lewis Hamilton via the McLaren team, after all, a building society is not usually sleek and sexy is it?
In fact one brand that we believe would be a great fit for Andy would be Burberry – no, stay with me!
Think about it, Andy is British, strong, independent, instantly recognisable, successful, passionate, young and performs well anywhere in the world. All of these traits just scream Burberry to me.
There has been a lot made of the ‘chavviness’ of Burberry; that is old marketing and they have worked very hard and successfully to overturn that image. However, it is our feeling that their current use of Kate Moss and the Society Young Things, while beautifully produced, presented and successful at steering the brand back to ‘quality’, slightly misses the point.
So, brand Andy Murray….give us a call Andy if you want any ideas!!
