Jamie Corr
Managing Director – Sports
Hill and Knowlton Promotion
What do you see as the biggest challenges of communicating with athletes, participants, fans?
I think the key thing is making sure that your message from a communications and marketing
perspective, is relevant and authentic to both athletes and fans. Can you talk a little about being authentic and what that means from a consumer point of view?
Authenticity is really about understanding who your audience are and ensuring that that content is
tailored towards what they feel is relevant. How do you manage marketing communications when things are not going well, for the team, for the
club?
I think it is imperative at the beginning, to have that foundation of authenticity that previously
mentioned. Even if the club or the team is not performing well, it’s really important to maintain
communication with your fans. They want you to be speaking to them and they want to see the team
communicating and not hiding. Social media has changed marketing and communications in sport; how have you seen those things
change over the past decade?
Yes, there’s been a huge change. I mean, even when I started my career, it was in traditional
communications. So that was when I would be speaking to journalists and that wasn't that long ago.
That’s still a very, very important part of communications. You know, you still need the mainstream
traditional press and television, etc. However, there is also, as everyone is aware, a plethora of digital
platforms. And as communication specialists, you need to understand how a piece of content is
spliced and diced for each of those different platforms. Because each of those different platforms has
a different audience. How have you seen COVID-19 impact on teams or clubs and how specifically has that affected
communications?
I think the first key thing for me is there has been a real increase in creativity and how athletes or
teams are actually communicating with their fan base. I think the other very exciting thing for me from
an athlete perspective is what we've seen this summer with athletes as activists and its social
influencers. Prime example being the Manchester United player Marcus Rashford and what he has
done around community activation and really using his presence as a football player in the United
Kingdom to drive social change. When you think about players and their endorsements, and sponsorships, how does this interact with
the team? How does this become a message to the fan or consumer, and how is it managed?
It’s a very interesting question because I mean, if you look now, you will have football players whose
fan base is bigger than their clubs. So let’s take Ronaldo, for example; his overall fanbase and digital
media presence is bigger than Juventis. Now there was a…there is a hint that event is purchased
Ronaldo to increase the commercial value of their brand, globally. So that is the power of athletes
now. And also, going back to what I mentioned earlier, athletes have a voice and can really create
change. And they’re using that voice to create change, but they're also very smart and they use their
presence to create a commercial value for themselves, which brands want to align themselves with?
NOTE – the views expressed in the video are those of a subject expert, and do not necessarily reflect
the views of the World Academy of Sport. The video is intended for teaching purposes, only.
