Patron saint

In part one of our interview with him, Air Miles enterpreneur Keith Mills talks about why he is backing Alex Thomson

Keith Mills is not someone one immediately associates with yachting, particularly grand prix round the world yacht racing. His name has more frequently been seen on the business pages thanks to proving himself as one of Britain’s foremost marketing entrepreneurs, specialising in customer loyalty schemes.

Mills will go down in marketing history as the creator of the now familiar concept of Air Miles. This he conceived in the late 1980s establishing businesses in America, Europe and the Middle East. His latest venture launched just over a year ago in this vein is Nectar, a UK-based reward scheme initially set up for users of Barclaycard credit cards, BP petrol stations and the Sainsburys supermarket chain.

"As a business Nectar is now established with a great management team and while until early this year I was very heavily involved with the executive management of that business, I now have been able to step back as non-executive chairman," Mills explained to thedailysail. "I have controlling interest in that business so I take a very close and keen interest in it and will do for some time to come, but now I don’t need to be there every day. So that started to free me up to look at other projects."

These other projects have taken him away from his normal line of work: he has within the last month taken up a new and vital position spearheading London's bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games, while in the moment between he is acting as the business brains behind Alex Thomson's campaign for the Vendee Globe.

Mills sailed the Seychelles to Salvador section of the Clipper Round the World Race in 1998/9 on board Ariel. Skipper of this boat was one Thomson then aged just 25 and who over the course of the race's 16 legs, won 13 of them.

During the weeks he spent on board Ariel her young skipper impressed Mills greatly. "I think Alex is a great sailor. He has some really special talents. I’ve sailed with him shorthanded on the Open 50 and the Open 60 as well and I think he has that determination that is necessary when you are sailing shorthanded and also has the ability to deal with crises in an incredible way, which again is something you need as a short handed sailor. It is one thing getting the crew to run around doing things, it is another going up the mast on your own. I think he’ll do really well."

Following the Clipper race when Thomson was uncertain of his next course of action, Mills came to the rescue. "He wanted to continue racing but that was tricky. I helped him with some early sponsorship with his Open 50, sailthatdream, but then he approached me when the Farr 65s came up." The Farr 65s using the Millenium round the world race formed the basis of the new company Formula One Sailing. "I helped him set that business up and negotiated the deal with the owner and basically got it off the ground and spent the first year or two holding his hand and then gracefully stepped back to let him get on with it."

Mills was initially a director and shareholder in Formula One Sailing and says it is now a successful business, although he got involved to help Alex rather than for financial benefit. "Frankly I don’t do this for money. I don’t know any self-respecting businessman who gets involved in sailing to make money! I did it because I am interested in it and I had a lot of time for Alex. Once I’d helped him get it established and it was well on its way and both my time and my money were not necessary, I stepped back and let him get on with it, because I have a lot of other things on my plate..."

Mills says he has done much the same with the new company, Alex Thomson Racing, which aims to put the 29 year old skipper through next year's Vendee Globe. "I helped him set the business up, I provided the initial capital and put in place the infrastructure to help him get it going." Key to this was acquiring one of the leading Open 60s, Roland Jourdain's highly successful Sill.

With the boat in their possession they are now trying find a title sponsor for the boat. "Hopefully by early next year we will have our title sponsor in place and he’ll be all set and ready to go."

Obviously Mills' extensive contacts list in the corporate world and his endorsement of Thomson's campaign will be invaluable in this process. "I know a large number of very senior people in British industry and in marketing in particular through my many years in that business, so it is helpful. Finding sponsors is often is a bit like finding needles in haystacks. You have to find the right company at the right time and timing with most sponsorship deals is pretty much everything. Approach the right company at the wrong time and you can draw a blank. We have got a number of very interesting prospects and over the next two or three months we’ll see."

Although he doesn't have direct experience in sports sponsorship Mills says there are direct parallels with Nectar. "Within Nectar we call our clients ‘sponsors’ and they commit to very very large multimillion pound commitments. It is very different in the context of sports sponsorship but there are many other characteristics which are very similar. By and large it is the same budget - it comes out of the marketing budget, and whether you spend your money on a customer loyalty program, advertising, sales and promotion or sports sponsorship, someone, the Marketing Director generally, has to make the decision about where he is going to get the biggest bang for the buck. In the context of what Alex is doing I think the results that Kingfisher have been able to achieve with Ellen have been nothing short of remarkable and I think that sets a very good precedent for other sponsors looking at another very interesting property in Alex."

Obviously Ellen was younger and a girl from the Midlands when she embarked on her Vendee campaign with Kingfisher. Isn't Thomson the wrong sex to be going to get sponsorship in yacht racing? "He is and he isn’t," says Mills. "For a lot of brands, a clean-cut Jamie Oliver look-alike with all the character is quite an attractive proposition. They are two very different characters and they would appeal to different brands. I can’t imagine Hugo Boss finding Ellen the right person to be their brand icon whereas Alex and Hugo Boss would fit quite well together. I am not suggesting that they are going to be the sponsor, but different brands are looking for different personalities."

Mills says that Ellen's Vendee Globe campaign unquestionably made the corporate world in the UK sit up and take notice of sailing sponsorship. "Is it easy to get sponsorship in sailing? No. Is it easy to get sponsorship in any sport? No. Getting sponsorship even for major events is extremely difficult and in the last two or three years has become even more difficult as marketing budgets have been squeezed.

"The one benefit Alex has in looking for sponsorship is that it is such a unique opportunity. If you think of most of the sports that attract sponsorship money - football in particular - the ability to have your sponsorship diluted in that sport is enormous. Ambush marketing goes on all the time - that is where you sponsor a league or you sponsor a football team or an individual footballer, only to find your competitors are buying another part of that property and you have to question how much bang for the buck you are getting. Whereas Kingfisher and Ellen and all she has been able to accomplish gave her enormous profile in a very unique way. It has set the benchmark and there isn’t any reason why Alex if he is half as successful as I think he could be, shouldn’t achieve similar exposure."

Alex Thomson will get his first opportunity to prove this, this coming weekend with the start of the Transat Jacques Vabre race two handed across the Atlantic.

Tomorrow Keith Mills talks about the London bid to host the Olympics in 2012