Creating a sports sponsorship strategy with business and social impact at its heart.
The Challenge
Subway is one of the largest restaurant brands in the world and recently shifted their global brand positioning to ‘Eat Fresh, Feel Good’ with a particular focus on ‘Active Living’ and supporting their customers to lead healthier lives.
This global brand positioning was initially introduced in the USA with a series of individual athlete collaborations including Travis Kelce, Simone Biles, Serena Williams and Tom Brady.
Subsequently the EMEA team were challenged to develop their own strategy for a move into sports. The brief was broad but included the following key challenges:
- Driving engagement and pride for their thousands of franchisees around the country
- How to stand out in the cluttered world of sport sponsorship
- Move beyond badging to something more meaningful
- Be routed in community
- Create connection with their core audience
The Solution
Think Beyond built a strategy ‘Fresh Moves’ that focuses on encouraging communities to move more by supporting the growth of new or up-and-coming sports. This was built on the key insight that for many young people – a key demographic for Subway – these ‘newer’ sports are seen as more welcoming and inclusive than more traditional sports and therefore offer fertile territory for the brand to show up.
Having identified the territory, we built a strategic framework to inform the implementation and support additional markets to roll out the strategy. This identified:
- The rationale for the positioning
- Core principles to underpin the territory
- Definition of Subway’s role in tackling the issue
- Guidance on who Subway partner with to bring this to life
- How Subway use talent to elevate their position
- How Fresh Moves supports broader Subway business goals
We identified three properties to partner with initially – GB Basketball (GBB), Breaking GB (BGB) and Skateboarding GB (SGB) – all of which fitted perfectly with the strategy. We led on the negotiations on behalf of Subway delivering three strong partnerships. Think Beyond is managing the activation of these partnerships over the coming year.
The Impact
The partnerships are starting to come to fruition over the summer of 2024 and internally have been incredibly well received by franchisees:
- Delivered the GBB Subway Summer Slam which consisted of two games (men’s and women’s) of GB vs South Sudan, alongside building a fan zone and facilitating athlete engagement with fans.
- Activated 2 Skate Jams for SGB in Sheffield and Wolverhampton, with the social campaign for Sheffield reaching over 240,000 people.
- For Breaking GB, we are helping to organise the Breaking GB National Championship.
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