Carls­berg, Puma, and Bar­clays are among some of the brands that have real­ly impressed this sea­son, with cam­paigns and con­tent ini­tia­tives that nur­ture sus­tained fan engage­ment.

The 2014/2015 Pre­mier League sea­son has come to its inevitable con­clu­sion, with Jose Mour­in­ho’s Chelsea emerg­ing vic­to­ri­ous. While a FIFA cor­rup­tion scan­dal that emerged at the close of the sea­son may have put a mark on the sport’s rep­u­ta­tion, for many fans, these will blend into mere head­lines.

Brand mar­keters will also be tak­ing a well deserved end of sea­son rest. For key spon­sors, the Pre­mier League has long been an impor­tant oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­mu­ni­cate mes­sages about their brand and prod­ucts, to a hyper-engaged, and pas­sion­ate group of con­sumers.

As sea­sons have pro­gressed, mar­ket­ing activ­i­ty has become more sophis­ti­cat­ed; cer­tain pub­li­ca­tions have com­ment­ed on how the Pre­mier League has become a “data mine­field” for brands. Unlike sea­son­al or one-off events, sport­ing engage­ment span numer­ous months of the year and main­tains extreme­ly high lev­els of inter­est.

Con­sumers have been treat­ed to some clever cam­paigns that pro­vide fan­tas­tic exam­ples of how brands can fos­ter sus­tained engage­ment. Here’s a run through of the most excit­ing brand cam­paigns, stunts, and mar­ket­ing activ­i­ty around this year’s Pre­mier League sea­son.

Best Of The Brands: Premier League Edition

1. Carlsberg’s Year-Round “Moments”

Carls­berg start­ed this sea­son as the offi­cial “beer part­ner” of the Pre­mier League, as well as for Liv­er­pool FC with whom they have main­tained a long and loy­al part­ner­ship.

Kick­ing off the pre­sea­son hype, Carls­berg launched a TV spot with anoth­er clas­sic in a long line of punchy slo­gans: “That calls for a Carls­berg.”

The ad focus­es on cap­tur­ing Pre­mier League moments that invoke a sense of pas­sion. As Mike Thomp­son, mar­ket­ing direc­tor at Carls­berg Group, said: “The film ‘Take Your Seats’ embod­ies the excite­ment every fan feels ahead of the upcom­ing sea­son.”

For Carls­berg, the brands’ 21-year spon­sor­ship of the plat­form pro­vides a unique plat­form for the brand to mar­ket across an entire Pre­mier League sea­son. It’s an idea that the brand has whole­heart­ed­ly embraced – with con­cepts such as “A Carls­berg moment”, or “If Carls­berg did…” (revived again ear­li­er this year to cap­i­tal­ize on user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent and engage­ment).

Carls­berg don’t do sun­day side!! But if they did!!!!! pic.twitter.com/ldox1dDIVb

— Dar­ryl Smith (@sharkeysmith) May 19, 2015

Such ini­tia­tives illus­trate how it’s the long-term rela­tion­ships the brand fos­ters with con­sumers, the rit­u­al of set­tling down to watch the game with your mates and a six pack, that they are look­ing to cap­ture and com­mu­ni­cate. After all, these kinds of moments dri­ve year-round sales.

For all intents and pur­pos­es the beer brand has got­ten their mes­sag­ing just right, espe­cial­ly in the con­tent of dig­i­tal cam­paigns and social media engage­ment. Carls­berg drew 17,026 between May 2 and June 1 (the peri­od cov­er­ing the final weeks of the sea­son), with tweets peak­ing on May 24 around the news of Steven Ger­rard’s retire­ment, accord­ing to Top­sy data.

If Carls­berg did cap­tains they would be #ProbablyTheGr8est. Good bye and good luck Cap­tain Fan­tas­tic! #Ste­venGer­rard pic.twitter.com/yyPANek8lb — Carls­berg (@carlsberg) May 24, 2015

The lat­est fig­ures have showed pos­i­tive sales fig­ures, in it’s three-year spon­sor­ship of the Pre­mier League, with annu­al sales total­ing £532m in the year pre­ced­ing March 2014.

2. Puma — #LoveorFootball

In a shift from more tried and test­ed approach­es, based on adver­tis­ing or high-pro­file sports spon­sor­ships, Puma adopt­ed a dig­i­tal­ly-led approach in 2015 that looked to lever­age online and social media engage­ment.

In part­ner­ship with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol, Puma con­duct­ed a study to find out whether foot­ball fans had greater love for the game, or for their part­ners.

The cam­paign has a clear social media com­po­nent, tap­ping into one of the great con­tro­ver­sies that sur­rounds foot­ball fanati­cism.

I did the Puma love­or­foot­ball sur­vey and accord­ing to my answers, @YesWeCrann loves Foot­ball 20% more than me.

— Stephanie Be (@StephanieBe) August 20, 2012

The study is a great exam­ple of how Puma seeks to engage with foot­ball fans via authen­tic con­ver­sa­tion. It’s part of what Puma refer to as a “com­plex mar­ket­ing pro­gramme… rely­ing on a blend of media part­ner­ships, PR, social media and POS to dri­ve engage­ment around reac­tive con­tent.” (The pre­sea­son reveal of the spon­sor­ship deal with Arse­nal foot­ball club was a fan­tas­tic exam­ple of this intent, which saw a brand­ed video pro­ject­ed onto the Riv­er Thames.)

3. Barclays — #YouAreFootball

“To the mil­lions of fans who make the Bar­clays Pre­mier League what it is, we say thank you. You Are Foot­ball.”

Bar­clays signed a new three-year deal with the Pre­mier League in 2012 report­ed­ly cost­ing them more than £40m a year in spon­sor­ship. Sea­soned spon­sors, the brand devel­oped an emo­tion­al­ly charged video that cap­tures the pas­sion and com­mu­ni­ty of fans on match day.

This year was the 20th con­sec­u­tive year of the bank’s rela­tion­ship with the league, and year after year there is a sim­plic­i­ty to their mes­sag­ing which is effec­tive. Through­out, Bar­clays have been there as pri­ma­ry spon­sors, through the highs and lows, and there they remain. For a brand with such a strong asso­ci­a­tion with the league, they almost don’t need to engage in high pro­file stunts to win the atten­tion of fans.

In thank­ing the fans, Bar­clays pay dues the fact that their pres­ence have been accept­ed by many foot­ball fans as peren­ni­al spon­sors, and as part of their Pre­mier League expe­ri­ences.

4. Nissan’s — Global Sponsorship Reach

Japan­ese auto­mo­bile man­u­fac­tur­er Nis­san is mak­ing some big moves in the foot­ball world, replac­ing Ford as the offi­cial auto­mo­bile of the Cham­pi­ons League, as well as sign­ing a five-year deal with Man­ches­ter City secur­ing the brand’s place as the offi­cial auto­mo­bile spon­sors of one of the fastest grow­ing Pre­mier League fan-bases glob­al­ly.

This sea­son, Nis­san looked to use the pow­er of glob­al stars to raise brand aware­ness on social media:

In the com­ing sea­sons, Nis­san hopes to use “user-gen­er­at­ed cam­paigns crowd­sourc­ing in pic­tures or goal cel­e­bra­tions from fans [to] form the bulk of the strat­e­gy with Nis­san opt­ing to build long-term affin­i­ty to sport­ing suc­cess rather than dri­ve short-term sales.”

5. Subway — Grassroots Community Health And Well-Being

Sub­way announced a part­ner­ship with Liv­er­pool FC in April last year, with the inten­tion of pro­mot­ing a pos­i­tive health mes­sage amongst fol­low­ers of the club.

In an inter­view with Mar­ket­ing Week, Subway’s Euro­pean region­al mar­ket­ing direc­tor Man­aaz Akhtar, spoke of the mutu­al ben­e­fit of the brand’s part­ner­ship with the club and it’s con­tri­bu­tion to pub­lic health:

“Over the past year we’ve been look­ing to help get every­day peo­ple more active. Our spon­sor­ship with Liv­er­pool FC and par­tic­u­lar its youth foun­da­tion is an exten­sion of that work we have already done in the UK and will help us take this to a high­er lev­el… we real­ly believe in the work they are doing with their youth foun­da­tion as it real­ly con­nects with what we are doing.”

Final Thoughts

The Pre­mier League offers brands a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to encour­age year-long engage­ment around a sport fueled by tremen­dous lev­els of pas­sion, loy­al­ty, and rit­u­al. In the case of Carls­berg, and to an extent Bar­clays, those that man­age to weave their iden­ti­ty into the cul­ture of the sport can achieve the kind of aware­ness and loy­al­ty that all brands must hope to emu­late.

Who were your brand win­ners for the 2014/2015 sea­son?