The return of GBR Challenge

Leslie Ryan describes their sponsor search and the signficant changes in the team make-up

If GBR Challenge is to cut the mustard in Valencia in 2007 then in addition to Peter Harrison's backing they need commercial support too. Co-ordinating the drive to find this is the British campaign's Head of Sponsorship and Marketing, Leslie Ryan.

A significant change of tack in Ryan's approach to rounding up corporate backing this time has been to part delegate it. "One of the key issues we identified was that we needed to get a partner on board in terms of a good sponsorship adviser and sales team. Hence we are working with Apace. That has made a big difference to me. To do this job properly you need to know the sponsorship market inside out."

The sponsor hunting team at West London-based sports marketing company Apace is led by Judith le Fleming who has a background in Formula One. There will be more on Fleming in a subsequent article, but suffice it to say she is extremely credible in the sponsor hunting world.

Aside from Apace's activities Ryan says that they developed a great many leads during the previous Cup cycle. "There are a whole lot of companies we spoke to last time," says Ryan. "And even if the response at the time was ‘no’, it was usually a pretty positive ‘no’ in the sense of it being interesting, but it was too far away, too soon - there was always a 'but'. So I was quite enthusiastic at the end of the last Cup because I knew if I phoned up those people again they would definitely listen because the Cup is coming to Europe."

Working with Apace has also helped dramatically change the GBR Challenge pitch. "We have a much more tangible package - the four year program, the build-up of racing, the race events. Ten days of hospitality, I can put a value to that - ‘if you were to buy it as a non-sponsor this is what it is worth’. So the package is much more transparent and has got much more real value for money. Last time it was a great story and an emotive sell. This time it is a more commercial package."

At present Ryan and Apace have been focussing on British companies but they will be casting the net wider imminently. "It was a point that Apace made to us at an early stage, that we are highly unlikely to get a big amount of money out of a British company in terms of investing in sports sponsorship. In their experience big companies that invest in big deal sports sponsorships have traditionally been US or German companies. They are the two big markets, if you think of the big deals that have been done in Formula 1. Vodafone is an exception being one of the few that stands out as being happy to claim their Britishness as well as being global and spending a lot of money in the sponsorship world. When we first sat down in May and drew up a target list of companies not surprisingly it was not that long."

As usual the proposal is based on tiered levels of sponsorships. In the case of GBR Challenge there are five levels with the title partner at the top. £15 million spread across four years starting in the first of half of 2004, buys the rights to this and companies have the flexibility to split this over the 2004-2007 period or uniquely can ramp up their contribution.

"For that we will sell the name and the majority branding rights," says Ryan. "We are ideally looking to build on the value of the GBR Challenge brand because we still have an investor called Peter Harrison. So the ideal scenario is that the name will change to XYZ GBR Challenge. The only situation where I would see that not happening is if that title sponsor wants to lessen the overt nationality of the team. That has been a comment made by a number of global organisations. They are fully aware it will be the British team and it is a national event, but there is a request to focus more on the values of the team and make it team versus team rather than country versus country from the companies we are talking to. HSBC is a classic example - a global local bank with a group policy not to sponsor national teams."

The deadline for Ryan and Apace finding money is around September 2004. "We would have to have a fairly major commitment to having the money by then," says Ryan of GBR Challenge's fortunate cashflow situation. "The good thing is that we physically don't have to have the money in, but we have to have a commitment to bring that money in over four years. Peter is looking for partners - if they didn't give us the money until 2005 or 2006 it wouldn’t matter, although he’d need to feel very confident about this.

"I would be majorly concerned if we weren’t a substantial way down the road by September 2004. There is nothing we don’t have now in the sales package that would substantially change and because it is a program of racing starting in 2004, we don’t have people saying it is too far away. Everyone we have talked to says the four year program has made a substantial difference. The feeling that the America's Cup is a one-off event that happens over distance periods of time is not a positive one."

Ryan says that getting a rolling campaign going in the America's Cup, with sponsors committing beyond one cycle is hard because of the event changing venues and managers. "There is so much uncertainty as a race goes forward in our game. If Oracle won for example, they could completely change a rule, so I think to get a partner to commit to more than that is unrealistic. Certainly companies are now looking for a long term commitment, because they realise that to get any sports sponsorship to stick and to gain awareness with the public it does take time and it does take a build-up period."

AC Management are aware of this too and have said they plan to use the 2004-2007 period to build up public knowledge and awareness of the America's Cup. "It takes a year or two to build up awareness of how this event works and then you add all the teams and the emotion and the people and brings it to life," says Ryan.

A common misconception in the selling of sponsorship, partnership or whatever the latest expression for this is, for a yachting campaign is that the corporate buck will buy brand exposure. Simply - it won't. With the possible exception of Kingfisher's recent involvement with Ellen MacArthur now she has reached superstar status, companies looking for brand exposure will focus on mass media sports such as football.

Thus even Ryan and Apace who are selling one of the hottest properties in yacht racing, are looking for a different approach. "There are two angles they usually go down," Ryan says of sponsors. "One is the teamwork and that whole managing and running a team and people working together and associating with that value and using the visual imagery and the story to personify what they are trying to communicate about themselves. UBS did a bit of that with their advertising campaign last time.

"Another message is the technology side - that is really important especially with British associated companies. They like to use it as a showcase for innovation in Britain. Even if they are not a technology company they are usually interested in that."

Some companies with regular programs of backing major sporting events get involved because they feel they can't afford not to be there. "A company inviting its clients to attend a hospitality event there because it is a new and recognisable global sporting event that is coming to Europe for the first time," Ryan gives as an example. "It is almost a 'we can’t afford not to be there because everyone else will be involved'."

Peter Harrison's role in the GBR Challenge search for sponsorship has also changed. Ryan says that they have spent most of the summer working on a new organisational structure based on their lessons learned from the last campaign. "That combined with Peter having been heavily involved the last time and now running something he knows considerably more about than he did the first time round, has led to him desiring a lesser role," she says. "We have a monthly review meeting with him. We are now working off a fully defined and detailed monthly budget and a plan. He was involved with us in developing that plan and setting down that budget." However Ryan and Apace are continuing to exploit Harrison's many contacts at boardroom level.

As if to back this up Ryan says that they are now looking hard for a CEO, a kind of Michel Bonnefous figure for GBR Challenge, a role they plan to have filled by April 2004. Popular RYA head Rod Carr has been widely touted as being the ideal candidate, London 2012 Olympic bid boss Keith Mills has also be contacted. "We have had a whole host of discussions with a lot of people, people with connections," says Ryan. "Basically it is looking for the right person to do the job. It is an important role for us to fill and we are going to go down the advertising in Sunday Times and the recruitment consultancy route as well as just word of mouth process. It is a vital role for the team and it sends out lots of messages. It is for someone to run the day to day business."

At present Derek Clark is Heaad of Operations but even with GBR Challenge at its reduced size the amount of mangerial time this takes is huge.

"That person in the short term will probably be very focussed on the commercial side of the business, but equally is a spokesman and a leader," says Ryan. "This person needs to a generalist someone who could run a large business and who knows the challenges of doing this from the financial management side to the internal motivation side, who can help us make decisions and balance one side of the business up against the other. Last time we were all heads of department but we were all most concerned about our own department and we needed a mediator."

The new CEO will be central to their drive for commercial funding but Ryan has also been looking to wheel out Olympic faces to associate with GBR Challenge. Iain Percy during the summer was heavily fired up about being just such a person although this has yet to come to pass, partly due to his Olympic commitments. "One of the issues was the time he could dedicate pre-Olympics," says Ryan. "Initially we thought let’s have October and November as two months where he could come with me to sponsorship meetings. It is such a huge plus. They want to see the people who are going to lead the team and sail the boat and he has got a great personality. That is one of the things we need to move on to quite quickly in 2004, but in reality his involvement will be after the Olympics."

Moving on from the sponsorship side of the campaign and GBR Challenge are currently far from dormant. During thedailysail's recent visit to the base in Cowes Derek Clark was leading a post-ACC rule revision design meeting and the likes of Rob Humphreys and Phil Morrison were lurking around.

"At the moment there are 22 people employed, some of them are three days a week and some are full time," says Ryan. "That changes substantially from January-February onwards because that is when we physically start to do real work with modifications on boats, rig and sails, whereas a lot of our time so far has been in the planning, talking to suppliers and partners and bring together lists of people who we want to bring on board."
At present they have four sailors already signed up - James Stagg, Jules Salter, Mark Sheffield and Andy Heming, the first three original GBR members and Heming having come from Prada. "The reason they are involved now is obviously to retain them going forward but also because they have skills outside of their sailing skills," explains Ryan. "James looks after the deck and hardware packages, Mark looks after electronics, Jules is a lawyer and Andy is on the sails side. They are also involved with the design side and they are looking at putting together the squad of sailors that we need from the middle of next summer onwards." The GBR Challenge v2 sailing squad will be finalised by the end of January.

This time round the team is likely to be slightly more cosmopolitan and Ryan hints that this might particularly be the case with the design team. "The last time Peter was overtly looking for a British team. We have also talked to a number of people from other teams that we feel would add value or fill a gap that we didn’t have on board. That is throughout the team. That being said we have pretty strong talent in this country therefore there are not a huge amount of gaps in it. The talent in the UK plus the experience the guys built up last time is now pretty impressive. The team will still be predominantly a British one, certainly othe sailing team."

A key member everyone would like to see involved with GBR Challenge is Ben Ainslie. Ryan says they are having a dialogue. "We’ve had a number of chats with Ben and we’ve all been extremely open. He’s talked about sailing recently with Team New Zealand. That is what we have said to all of the sailing guys - to keep an open dialogue because we have a longer term programme this time, so we can be more flexible with things like Olympic campaigns and Volvo Ocean Races. It is not the case that you have to be on board full time from January. It does give us more flexibility, but equally there is a level of commitment. The difficulty with people like Iain Percy and Ben, is that having them on board now substantially helps my cause. If I can go to sponsors and say I have got these two key guys on our team the likelihood of getting sponsors in goes up. So it is a bit chicken and egg."

Tommorrow Ryan reveals what she has learned about America's Cup 2007