[B]Saatchi & Saatchi Chief Exec to be United's new Commercial Director[/B]

swooshboy

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Saw this in the Independent.

I guess it seems a good move. If we are to increase our revenues then we will need to explore avenues that are as yet untrodden.

I'm sure that many will draw on the article's repeated use of the term brand to represent Manchester United, and how this is indicative of everything that is wrong with football.

But the reality is that football has become a huge commercial business. If we are to compete then it is important that we attract the right people. Obviously we attracted the wrong people when Glazer took over, but this appointment seems fairly shrewd.


02/26/2007
The Independent
English
(c) 2007 Independent & Media PLC



MEDIA WEEKLY | ON ADVERTISING

Ask a punter anywhere in the world to name an ad agency and chances are they’ll pick on Saatchi & Saatchi, one of the few adland brands to have passed into popular consciousness. Ask a punter anywhere in the world to name a British football team and I reckon Manchester United would score most goals.

Now the chief executive of Saatchi & Saatchi, Lee Daley, is heading off to be the group commercial director of Manchester United. Choice of team aside and assuming that most admen have long since surrendered any ambitions to give Beckham a run for his Predators, this is probably up there as a dream job for many agency blokes. Beats pushing toilet roll for a living.

But footie fans might wonder what an adman can bring to the beautiful game. Simple: football clubs have become some of the world’s biggest brands, commanding a lifetime of unswerving loyalty and an insatiable thirst for new brand experiences.

Simple. Obvious. Yet this idea of the football club as product, with incredible badge values and fresh marketing potential, is still wildly underexploited. Clubs are only now beginning to lift their marketing ambitions beyond ticket sales, TV rights and basic merchandising. Football is entertainment, possibly the world’s most popular. Last year’s World Cup final drew a global audience of 603 million (up 14 per cent on 2002, and 41 per cent of the audience were women); the Champions’ League final between Barcelona and Arsenal had a worldwide audience of 209 million. This is event television on the grandest scale. Even football’s dark moments, such as the farrago at Manchester United’s Champions’ League match in northern France last week, underline the power of the game as a social and commercial glue.

What’s more, as broadcasters and advertisers struggle to find programme properties that draw mass audiences, football’s value continues to soar. And if that wasn’t reason enough, then the explosion of new media opportunities (and the spiralling cost of players) is also fuelling clubs’ commercial ambitions. Football’s elite generate some of the world’s most prized content at a time when the opportunities for slicing, repackaging and squeezing extra value from that content are multiplying. So as the media world gets smaller, United fans in China (where the encouraged popularity of English football has become a political instrument of “soft power”) are as likely to download webcasts, mobile messages, buy the T-shirt, as the guys in Salford. So the Reds are keen to get on with the squeezing.

Not that United is doing too badly working its brand assets. It might not be the world’s richest club any longer (Real Madrid is) but revenues from the club, its merchandising and its media topped £200m last year and the club’s shirt sponsor AIG has signed a £56.5m four-year deal for the privilege. Now United’s chief executive, David Gill, wants to boost that by a further 50 per cent by 2010, motivated in part by the debt the club inherited when American investment tycoon Malcolm Glazer bought the club back in 2005.

It’s not hard to see why they picked Daley. He’s compelling and inspiring, and a passionate advocate of new communications techniques and channels. Too passionate sometimes, perhaps. This is after all the man whose agency is responsible for infecting the advertising lexicon with the term cultgeist. But Daley undoubtedly has the vision and en-ergy to unlock new revenue streams for Manchester United and has 20 years of advertising experience to draw on. And, yes, he’s a lifelong fan.
 

wiuru

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I know this stuff is not as interesting as the footie but in real terms this is a top draw money man ..We will not only compete ,but lead with this guy at the helm ..