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What athletes want from their brand partners: Mark Knowles, Caitlin Bassett, Robbie Cornthwaite and Emma Tonegato

There aren’t enough opportunities for Australian athletes to work with brands unless they’re “the superstars”, according to Robbie Cornthwaite, soccer player for the Western Sydney Wanderers.

Mark Knowles, Caitlin Bassett, Robbie Cornthwaite, Emma Tonegato and James Begley at Mumbrella’s Sports Marketing Summit

Speaking at Mumbrella’s Sports Marketing Summit, Cornthwaite said there are fantastic athletes out there who have the potential to be wonderful brand ambassadors for companies or products, but that they “need to be given a bit more of an opportunity.”

Cornthwaite was joined by three fellow Australian athletes from the worlds of netball, rugby and hockey as they sat down to discuss working with brand partners. Included in the discussion were Mark Knowles, captain of the Australian Hockey team; Caitlin Bassett, goal shooter for the Diamonds and Sunshine Coast Lightning; and Emma Tonegato, Australian rugby sevens player and Olympic gold medalist.

Bassett explained how the ‘quality over quantity’ method is one she employs when deciding which brands to work with: “For me, when I was younger it was about having as many sponsors as possible, and I guess now it’s about really having a few, but ones that you can service really well and that are important to you as a person. Not just through your sport, but through your values as a person off the court.

“I still do get offers of, oh you know ‘We can send you some free stuff and you can post a picture of it’ or the old token ‘Thanks, Mars Bar!’, and I’ll turn them down because number one I want to promote an active and healthy lifestyle, but number two it’s just something that’s not my brand, it’s not my way of going about things, and it doesn’t feel authentic to me.”

 

Bassett added that the #RiseAboveIt anti-bullying campaign she launched with Samsung was so powerful that it made her break down into tears when she first laid eyes on the finished video.

The athletes also discussed how social media has changed the marketing landscape in a big way: “It’s changed a lot as I’ve gone on as an athlete,” said Bassett. “When I first started 12 years ago social media wasn’t really a big thing, especially when promoting your own brand or promoting other brands. I think for me what works best is when it’s authentic, so if it’s something that you care about, I always find I’m more than happy to post about things I love doing.”

Knowles agreed with Bassett’s sentiments, adding that he prefers posting branded content “that really touches home”. When pushed for an example, he said: “Earlier in the year my shoe sponsor Asics spent my five-year-old boy a pair of hockey shoes, his first pair of shoes for the year. An organic photo for me was me and him putting our feet next to each other and saying ‘How cool is this? Flynn’s got shoes the same as dad’s’.”

Over the course of the discussion, it became clear that the athletes felt social media following was often a more important factor when obtaining brand sponsorships than good, old-fashioned talent on the court or field. Knowles said: “I know that the 20th best player in the Australian men’s hockey team has 50,000 followers, and he would make more than the captain of the national team, for example. That doesn’t mean they’re a better player, it just means that their social media following or their ability to sell a product was better.”

The athletes also touched on some of the challenges they face when it comes to conflicts between sponsors. “We had an offer from one of the big sports brands, I went to the AIU and said ‘This is what I want to do, this is awesome’, and I got shut down because there was a conflict,” said Tonegato. “I’m respectful of that, but at the same time it’s very tough when you’re trying to get your foot in the door and make a name for yourself.”

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