Tires, tyres … not tired of sponsorships!
Has anyone else noticed an uptick in the number of sponsorships from companies that make a certain rubber covering to the wheels of cars, coaches, trucks, or lorries? Whether you favor, or favour, tire, or tyre, here we specialize, or specialise, in tracking sponsorships in digital media! One thing is for sure — we’re seeing a lot of these sponsorships, in football, or ahem, soccer!
So why have tire sponsors gotten into the game in the first place?
Brands are always looking for a way to differentiate themselves and build brand awareness, and tire brands are no exception. Think about it. You generally only buy tires once per year at most, and usually it’s right after you get a flat and are at the tire shop. The mechanic comes out and says “do you want Bridgestones or Pirellis?” Most of us are going to pick the one we’ve heard of, or perhaps the one that is on our favorite team’s jersey. Buying CPC ads in Google isn’t going to work.
Aside from some of the big name tire sponsorships that have been placed such as Yokohama on the Chelsea jersey, the newest trend is go for sleeves in the Premier League and Spanish Leagues.
It’s literally become an arms race!
Since the beginning of the EPL season, we’ve seen $1,225,168 in social media auction equivalent value from sleeve sponsors including $673,124 from Nexen Tire, $368,719 from Alliance Tires (complementing parent Yokohama Tires), and $20,504 from MRF Tyres. (sure, we could value this using hugely inflated television CPMs, but there’s no basis for that, so we’re going to go with the more accurate values for the purpose of this post)
And the tread is showing no signs of wear – in addition to sleeves, tires are also turning up in the NBA, NHL, NFL, MLB and beyond.
From sleeve sponsorships to your favorite Jeremy Lin bobblehead, tire companies are investing in ways to enhance their brand reach.
Sponsoring sports teams goes far beyond positive psychology, however. Sports tends to involve an engaged, captive audience with large impressions both on, and more importantly off, the TV. Additionally, unlike some other methods, sports marketing has an active audience who seek to engage with their favorite teams across all social platforms. This is especially helpful for tire brands because they can reach an entire online target demographic that will not tune out social marketing messages as easily as they do for print, radio or television. Tire brands are shifting their thinking from the TV-commercial centric marketing strategies of days past to aligning their brands with accessible physical sponsorships and engaging social content from clubs around the world.
Now that we know why, where do we look to find out how these tire sponsors are lighting up their brands? Why, by using Blinkfire, of course!
There are many ways to look at tire sponsors using Blinkfire:
Go to the advertiser section on Blinkfire, and select the “Automotive Aftermarket” category. Here, you’ll find a list of the top 10 brands with the most engagement over date ranges of your choice:
Next, you can scroll down to find the top posts with the most visual mentions for the past week, two weeks, or month:
You can also see individual tire brands by searching for them using your explorer tool.
We have many ways to find the sponsors you’re looking for at Blinkfire. Let us know what other types of posts we should be working on, and don’t hesitate to drop us a line!
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