Highland Spring has an interesting habit of sponsoring high profile Scottish sportsmen including Andy & Jamie Murray, Steven Hendry and the admittedly less high profile Alastair Forsyth (golfer). Out of this Sir Chris Hoy would appear to be the cream of this crop.
The Olympic cycling legend and BBC Sports Personality has the wholesomeness, likability, talent and track-record to make him a genuinely valuable brand ambassador. But for all his achievements and niceness he does lack a bit of sparkle and I think the same can be said of .
There’s nothing particularly wrong with it. It’s neat, simple enough and Sir Chris will probably get noticed on-pack simply for being him. The prizes are nice, the microsite is easy to navigate and the mechanic for entering is customer friendly – although I would have liked an email acknowledging my entry, which is also a missed opportunity in terms of communicating key messages. But in general the whole thing’s entirely predictable - the headline’s on the obvious side and the rest of the creative’s just a bit bland.
In fact it’s exactly what you expect to happen whenever a top sports personality puts their name to on-pack promotional activity. Owen, Wilkinson, Rooney & Henman have all done it and only the latter is vaguely memorable and I think that was really only due to media spend.
What reinforces the above is that Highland Spring has actually even done this activity before themselves with their on-pack earlier this year. In May , an almost identical promotion but with a less personable sports personality. So credit where it’s due, at least this prize fund’s something you’d want to win this time round.
That this appeared at first to be formulaic and predictable is just because it is exactly that. Good promotional activity should add to a brand and can be used to bring a sponsorship property to life. I’m afraid that this doesn’t really do either. The basics are ok but it lacks anything about it to make it stand out. That said the pool of similar activity contains a lot of huge brands and famous sports stars so at least the company’s good.
In summary it’s not bad but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before and doesn’t really do justice to such a strong brand or illustrious sportsman.
Promo Score – 5 out of 10
Agency – Multiply
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