When Sports Sponsorship Really Pays

Our sponsored tennis player, Chris Eaton, continues to make stunning progress through Wimbledon and is all over the national news. To come from 661 in the world and make it through to round 2 is fairy tale stuff and the press have not failed to notice!

It is now my job to make sure that our customers and prospects make the connection and that Retail Answers reaps the benefits.

Sports Sponsorship – It Really Can Pay

As commercial director of Retail Answers, I am responsible for our marketing strategy. Using a small budget, I try to position our consultancy and software development services and Rapid, our store intranet, to make sure that we are at least on the list when a retailer is looking for these things. The strategy so far has been made up of our website, our newletter, targetted mail shots, speaking at conferences and entering the Retail Systems Awards. We also sponsor a couple of young sports men.

This week Chris Eaton, our sponsored tennis player, came from a world ranking of 659 to qualify for Wimbledon. This really is a quite remarkable performance and with the British press’ love of young British Wimbledon hopes has hit the headlines. We did well to get Retail Answers logo patches rushed across for him and RA logos are on the back page of the Daily Mail, feature in a video of Chris on the BBC website and will almost certainly be on national television next week. With only four Brits in Wimbledon, I ‘m sure they will be featuring in the highlights as well. This is the kind of coverage that would be way out of our budget if we were to pay market rates.

Chris has been working hard, full time, at his tennis for four years before he generated any publicity for us. I’m not suggesting that this is a quick pay back! It is also unpredictable and not very well targetted, the RA logo is in the national papers not the Retail Technology trade press but we have hit the big time with it and it is great fun being involved. After all Ellen MacArthur paid back Kingfisher in spades.

So when you are thinking about your marketing strategy, consider sponsoring a young sports person. You might get lucky and if not you will be furthering British sport and benefitting a committed young person.

 

BTexpedite and Retalix target the UK grocery industry

The recent tie up between US retail system supplier, Retalix and BTexpedite is exciting from a number of points of view.

BTexpedite is a major player in the provision of EPOS and merchandising systems for fashion retailers with customers such as Oasis, Thomas Pink and JJB Sports but it doesn’t really have a strong presence in the grocery and fuel sector. Retalix has Tesco, Sainsbury’s and BP as references in the UK so adding Retalix to their portfolio should give BTexpedite a great platform to make inroads into this sector. Torex with its ArcIris system might need to take heed.

Retalix has a strong base in the US and with large retailers. Thirty percent of the world’s top 50 food retailers use Retalix software. The new offering is a complete package solution, a “shop in a box” offering which should enable Retalix to gain customers who are smaller than their core customer base.

Finally, (last but not least) this is a new and exciting option for grocery, convenience and fuel retailers in the UK. Although Retalix has been available before, it wasn’t being offered in such an accessable package. Any organisations in these sectors thinking of replacing systems should at least take a look at this option!