So this is probably one of the most relevant stories in my neck of the wood’s right now….Carling will no longer be the headline sponsor of Reading and Leeds festivals. Or lager partner.
For me, Carling is one of the few brands that have that all-important heritage and credibility in music. It has built up over several years, a strong affiliation with music at all levels, and this is something that I believe is key for other brands to learn if they want to get involved with music….to embrace the smaller opportunities as much as the big ones. It’s where the talent and fans come from, and where opinions are formed.
Although the title sponsorship of such prestige festivals as Reading and Leeds isn’t cheap per se, compare it to the incredible reported cost of their new TV campaign (£14m) and it doesn’t really stack up. Where is the emotion, relevance and tangibility/experience in a TV ad.
I’ll be interested to see whether the reports of the money being put into a single new event are true, and what comes of them. For my money, I’m at a push to see what it could look like, other than a fully owned but much smaller/less impactful festival experience. I’ve just seen a promotion in NME about their Carling Supports activity - “Carling Supports will be rolling out across the country again in 2008, scouring the length and breadth of the UK for the next big thing”.
But what I would expect to see is the whole concept of ‘Belonging’ fully explored, as it is one of the most relevant strategies out there (along with ‘Make the most of now’ which I’ve slowly and annoyingly come to respect, and that’s after working on Vodafone for a year!)
The only other place I can see them going (back to) is football, as it represents the whole ‘Belonging’ thing, but that’s not going to a cheap or easy thing to achieve, given the dominance of the other brands in a saturated market.
And whilst there may be genuine business reasons for the decision (Government pressures etc), I’m still surprised and a bit gutted to see one of the benchmarks for music marketing making a wrong move.