Nick Brown Hayson/TV3 NZ Raise awareness of Telecom’s sponsorship of the Super 12 competition beyond simple naming rights.Connect rugby fans with the Super 12 competition in an entertaining way via Telecom’s products and services. To showcase Telecom as the communication company at the forefront of entertainment and convergence television was the obvious medium, why?Super 12 features prominently via actual game broadcasts and news stories.It’s a great entertainment medium, thus an ideal place for a product that we wanted to position as entertaining.Given the amount of sponsorship clutter, we needed TV to deliver cut-through and position Telecom as the sponsor of Super 12.Broadcast sponsors can often achieve greater recognition by the public than the actual event sponsor. Thus we needed to ensure any broadcast sponsors or other Super 12 sponsors did not devalue our sponsorship.Television reaches a broad audience, which is what the sponsorship was targeted at.The media solution was to deliver an interactive television opportunity to encourage those that consume the medium to participate and be involved.The opportunity was for a show that could engage viewers in an entertaining way. A show that would give Telecom ownership of Super 12 without having the ‘me too’ look via TV advertising or promotions which the other sponsors were doing.The show we named Telecom Super Plays.Telecom Super Plays was a website and a four minute show that evolved from an objective of building a new kind of TV programme that helped showcase Telecom as the communication company at the forefront of entertainment and convergence.For maximum audience potential and to be topical we wanted placement on a Sunday night. Sunday night being an ideal time to deliver a ‘wrap up’ of the Super 12 weekend.With TV3 having branded its 6pm sports news segment ‘Super Sports Sunday’, we saw this as an ideal lead-in to Super Plays. TV3 programming agreed to give up programming time to accommodate Super Plays so long as we used a TV3 personality to front the show.By getting Super Plays to be part of Super Sports Sunday, meant that it was positioned as a programme and not a commercial break. Result being that by not being charged full commercial rates, it was feasible to run with the concept, as the core of our budget needed to go into producing the show.TV3 saw Super Plays as an integral part of its Super 12 coverage, thus agreed to promote Super Plays via:Mentions in the Sports NewsTrailer schedule Mention in the lead-up to TV3’s coverage of the game of the weekend (Saturday night)Television is an entertainment medium, thus it was vital that we deliver interactivity in an entertaining way and accessible to everyone, as TV is a mass medium.Viewers were invited to vote on an 0800 number, or via the website, for the best Super Play. To contain interest to the Sunday night voting was open for one hour, and then a winner was announced on TV3 at the commencement of the Sunday night movie, and on the website.

Telecom Super Play’s delivered stunning results for both Telecom and TV3.Super Plays was able to use Telecom technology and encourage usage of its products by providing new ways for rugby fans to connect with the Telecom Super 12 competition, the result being that product and service usage increased week on week through out the competitionOn the brand image monitor research, sponsorship awareness increased 16 percentage points from 38% – 54%.Super Plays proved to be more cost effective than if we had scheduled a sponsorship advertising campaign that could never have delivered on all the sponsorship elements.Telecom Super Plays was in TV3’s top 20 programmes every week.Seven episodes of the total fourteen were in TV3’s top 10.The huge success of this groundbreaking use of television is in the fact that Telecom and TV3 are screening a new season of Super Plays for 2002. The media team:Identified that to deliver entertainment and connectivity it could only happen through television.Negotiated with the TV programmers and News team to agree to integrate a commercially driven programme as part of its new programme.By securing placement in programming the entire budget could be allocated to producing a programme that truly entertained and deliver connectivity.Convinced the TV network to promote the programme on channel.Recognised that the programme would be a good fit for the TV channels positioning and target audience. Super Plays was a ground breaking combination of television, telephone, email and a website that introduced a new level of interactivity to New Zealand TV viewers.Super Plays was able to use Telecom New Zealand technology and encourage usage of its products by providing new ways for rugby fans to connect with the Telecom Super 12 competition. (A competition that is the Southern Hemisphere equivalent of Footballs Champion League, featuring teams from New Zealand, Australia and South Africa). This innovative use of television allowed Telecom New Zealand to own the event in a very crowded sponsorship environment.We created a four minute programme that because it was entertaining and allowed fans to connect with the competition, the TV network (TV3) incorporated it as part of their peak time Sunday night line up.

It proved to be so successful for both Telecom New Zealand and TV3, that Super Plays has been commissioned as part of TV3’s programme line-up for the 2002 Super 12 season.

The media team:Identified that to deliver entertainment and connectivity it could only happen through television.Negotiated with the TV programmers and News team to agree to integrate a commercially driven programme as part of its new programme.By securing placement in programming the entire budget could be allocated to producing a programme that truly entertained and deliver connectivity.Convinced the TV network to promote the programme on channel.Recognised that the programme would be a good fit for the TV channels positioning and target audience.