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Swisse considering less TV ad spend and more original content as part of deal with Australian Olympic team

Despite having enjoyed massive success and sales spikes with its sponsorship of a handful of Australian Olympians and Paralympians at the Rio Games last year, vitamin giant Swisse believes it can do even better next time by reducing its TV spend.

Sarah Chinball says Swisse enjoyed huge success with with its Olympic and Paralympic marketing program

Swisse is a sponsor of both the Australian Olympic and Paralympic teams, but also invested in extra content beyond its TV presence with a series of individual stories as well as daily ’24 hours in 60 seconds’ updates on the progress of the Aussies for the duration of both games.

However, speaking on a panel on leveraging sports marketing at the Mumbrella Sports Marketing Summit in Sydney, Swisse Wellness general manager Sarah Chibnall said next time Swisse would look at taking money out of TV and applying it to creating and sharing more original content.

While she said that she would not have the final call, such a move would be one she would back.

“I would probably invest a little bit less in our above-the-line advertising on television and do more in bringing those stories to life,” Chibnall said.

“One thing we couldn’t do was get do was get down into the grass roots and do that in the community to bring it to life in the community. If we could probably redirect some of those funds.”

The Swisse partnership with the Australian Olympic and Paralympic Teams runs through to 2024.

While Swisse is considering tweaking its TV and content mix for future games, Heineken believes it has struck the right chord leveraging its global partnership with Formula 1 at the Melbourne Grand Prix.

Heineken Lion Australia managing director Andrew Campbell said the brewer had shifted its focus from The Australian Open Tennis to F1, but the focus was on the fan experience rather than the race itself.

Heineken channeled its efforts into the promotion of an exclusive Saturday night concert with VIP tickets handed out to people willing to engage with live-streamed interactive billboards.

With little idea how well the concept would work shifting from a tennis-focused audience, he said that Heineken had doubled its audience attending in first year.

“For us we had this amazing asset, the Heineken Band Experience, which had been very successful relationship for 20 years with the tennis.” Campbell said.

“In Australia, the opportunity wasn’t brand awareness, that is why you didn’t see a lot of Heineken on track, it was around that fan experience.”

Heineken’s interactive billboards gave fans the chance to win a VIP F1 experience

Sanitarium national community engagement manager David Martin said the brand had invested a lot effort in to its TRYathlon events for kids across Australia and New Zealand, running the events in an environment where there “no winners or losers”.

Martin said from the beginning the events were aimed at helping parents promote healthy lifestyle decisions with their children.

“Dealing with junior sport we are dealing with the most vulnerable in our society, we are dealing with the future of Australians and New Zealanders here so we are very careful to conduct the program that get gets the best results for the kids,” Martin said.

“So from the beginning we have never timed the children, what we have done is we have set a significant challenge for a child  and when the child achieves that they get a great sense of achievement.”

Martin said the program had grown to become the largest youth triathlon event in the world with 45,000 children taking part and 180,000 people attending the events.

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