02 Extend England Rugby Sponsorship

O2 today announced it has extended its contract with the RFU to continue as the official sponsor of England Rugby for a further four years.

England team
The £4millon a season deal between O2 and the RFU will be visually reflected through O2’s extensive kit sponsorship of all fifteen-a-side England men’s teams including the senior team, the Saxons as well as the U20s, U18s and U16s. For the first time O2 will also sponsor the England women’s rugby team who are the current European Champions as well as being the RBS 6 Nations champions three years running.

It will also further establish O2 as the exclusive telecommunications provider to both the RFU and individual England squad members and provides an extensive package of rights including ticketing and hospitality at matches.

O2 Rugby Content
The new deal will continue to give O2 player access rights on both a squad and individual player level, to enable the creation of unique mobile content for customers over the next four years.

Branding and O2 Experiences
The sponsorship will provide O2 with extended rights to build a greater brand presence at Twickenham both through stadium advertising and by facilitating better O2 customer experiences.

Ronan Dunne, CEO of O2 UK,

From a brand perspective the partnership with England Rugby provides us not only with great visibility but also allows us to create unrivalled mobile content and experiences for O2 customers.

O2 want to spread the positive messages about rugby union to a wider audience and their support of the Go Play Rugby and Play On campaigns ensure that we have regular contact with our supporters and expose the sport to potential new players and fans. They have been an outstanding sponsor over a number of years and they are the epitome of a company that believes in brand building and the longevity of its key business relationships.

This long term partnership is one of the longest running sports sponsorships and has been extremely successful in raising O2’s brand exposure and awareness with this sponsorship creating 27% brand awareness. It also helps to build brand affinity through delivering unique VIP offers and experiences for O2 customers.

Measurement becomes Mainstream?

One of the promises of an integrated digital media offer, powered by the Internet, has been tons and tons of useful measurement that can be used to make content relevant and advertising efficient.

Most companies don't actually use this data. They make users fill out registration forms, collecting information about gender and age and postal code, with an implicit undertaking to provide a more customised experience, but in reality this data is rarely used.

There have been notable exceptions. You probably don't want to know the level of detail about your habits resides in the Google databases. Bolt.com, one of the early Social Networks employed a team of statisticians to analyse teenage behaviour that was then sold to blue chip marketing brands.

Now the big-boys are waking up, perhaps. NBC have announced that they will use next month's broadcast of the Olympics to research how their audience consume media across several platforms including mobile (cell phones).

The 'billion dollar research lab' may go towards producing what NBC calls a "TAMI" -- Total Audience Measurement Index, which takes into account TV, online, video on demand and mobile phone usage. It may eventually be used to negotiate deals with advertisers across several platforms at once.

2008. The technology is available. The knowledge is available. And yet, words like 'eventually' and 'may be' are still used. Perhaps content providers don't want to know that nobody is watching or that the advertising is not relevant.