The Japanese auto maker has signed an eight-year agreement with the ICC for all its cricket events.
Tokyo: Nissan Motor Co. of Japan will sponsor the 2019 cricket World Cup and other international tournaments under an eight-year agreement the automaker has signed with the sport’s governing body.
Under the agreement with the International Cricket Council (ICC), which runs through 2023, Nissan will also sponsor the ICC Champions Trophy and ICC World Twenty20, as well as under-19 and Women’s Cricket and qualifying events.
As a global partner, Nissan will have broadcast and digital rights at all ICC events.
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The investment in cricket is part of our bigger strategy to invest more money on sponsorships as we believe sponsorships are really a good way to connect with people.
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-Roel de Vries, corporate vice-president and global head of marketing and brand strategy for Nissan, said in an interview.
Vries said the current media landscape, which is dominated by digital, makes it challenging for a marketer to connect with its target audience effectively. Cricket—as do other sports that people love to engage with— therefore offers an effective platform. The tie-up with ICC is a significant expansion of Nissan’s international sports sponsorship strategy. It’s associated with world’s major sports such as football and basketball.
The local arm of the Japanese car maker, which established the India operations five years, remains on the fringes of a competitive car market with a less than market 2% share.
Vries said the association with a sport like cricket, which has a huge following in India, will help the ‘young brand’. Having missed the target of cornering a 5% market share by 2015, Nissan has now set a new milestone of meeting the goal by 2020.
In the six months to September, Nissan’s sales in India slipped 23% to 19,563 units from the year-ago period, according to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers, or Siam.
Vries conceded that India is indeed a challenging market. Unlike elsewhere, “in India we need to fight and get the market share, you cannot grow together”, he said.
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It will take time for people to just know and understand and trust us.
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It’s the first time that a Japanese automaker has associated itself with cricket.
Cricket is not really a global sport, and the fact that Nissan has chosen to associate itself with the game shows that it has adopted a very focused, market-led strategy, said Avik Chatopadhyay, an independent brand consultant.
The move, he said, could also be prompted by the fact that there’s little scope for new entrants to vie for the sponsorship of motorsport events like Formula One and the World Rally Championship.
Source : Mint