The Name Game

This article originally appeared in the Spring issue of Business Ireland

Dean Van Nguyen meets the businessmen behind some of Ireland’s most lucrative sponsorship deals.

Attaching a company name to a magnificent arena or venue has long been common practice overseas. Starting exactly a century ago when the owner of the Fenway Realty Company, John I. Taylor, developed local land into Boston’s now famous baseball stadium Fenway Park, firms have seen the commercial benefits of naming rights and large sponsorship deals. These days millions are invested annually in the US and the UK by some of the world’s most recognisable brands who wish to be associated with major sporting events, concerts and other large scale events that take place within these venues.

While corporate sponsorship has been present in Ireland for quite some time (Eircom’s longstanding association with the Irish national football team, for example), only recently have naming rights to buildings and other structures become prominent. But with many modern architectural projects being recently completed in Dublin, there was a gap in the Irish market for a firm to help large companies form the most effective sponsorship deals possible.

Onside Sponsorship was established in 2005 with a specific purpose to service the sponsorship industry in Ireland. Traditionally a company’s sponsorship decisions had relied on a chairman’s preference, but Onside was formed with a view to helping to make sure that all decision making that goes into sponsorship is based on solid research and scientific business information. The company has already worked on many of the premier sponsorships deals that have happened in Ireland in the past seven or eight years, including representing Aviva in negotiating the naming rights to the Aviva Stadium, working with telecommunications company O2 on their sponsorship of Irish rugby and the O2 music venue and, more recently, they’ve worked with Bord Gais Energy in helping them secure naming rights to the former Grand Canal Theatre.

“Essentially we built a business with a view to helping to make sure that all decision making that goes into sponsorship is robust, rigorous and is grounded in real business information,” says Onside Managing Director and Founder, John Trainor. “We principally work on the sponsor side of the fence, helping [our clients] to do everything from defining sponsorship and helping to decide what areas they should be in. A huge part of what we do is measurement and evaluation around sponsorships so it’s about providing sponsors in particular with information and numbers to make sure the way they approach the sponsorship is sound business practice.”

Defining Strategies
Onside generally has four or five consultants working on various projects at any given time and currently work with approximately 25 clients, many of whom are premier brands in the Irish market. “If you collectively took all of our clients and put them into one bundle and took the total level of spend they’re investing in the Irish market it would exceed €50 million,” says Trainor. “The industry in totality is in the region of €120m and the clients we represent would probably make up €50m of that total market price, so in our own minds we would be the leading experts on sponsors in the market.”

Rather than just brokering deals, Onside develops entire sponsorship strategies for their clients. According to Trainor, these strategies are very much tailored to the objectives their customers are trying to achieve. “It’s very much dependent on the client, but typically [sponsorship strategies] would ultimately be grounded in their business objectives; what they are ultimately trying to achieve. They’d be defining very clearly upfront who their target consumer is or who their target audience is and then they’ll be helping us understand, within those different segments, what types of outcomes they’re trying to achieve. Some will be trying to maintain their existing customer base and just deepen the level of affinity their customer base has towards their brand. For some other clients, they might be looking for a fast track brand awareness build, so they might be looking to very quickly get from zero to a very high level of brand awareness. For other brands, their objectives are a bit more commercial and they’re looking to ensure that the sponsorship delivers brand equity building outcomes but also commercial benefit as in sales volume and being able to deliver back to the business proven bottom line revenue from the sponsorships.”

While a firm’s intentions can be varied, Trainor has seen a recent shift in what many of Onside’s clients wish to achieve. “Two years ago we found there was a swing towards a commercial sales driving ‘we want a quick sale’ mentality,” he explains, a trend that was no doubt a reaction to the economic slaughter firms were then facing. “Whereas right now, what we’re finding with our clients is that it’s more about maintaining brand affinity and brand image and making sure that’s correct rather than aggressively going after a hard sales objective.”

John Trainor, Founder and Managing Director, Onside Sponsorship (centre) with Bernard Brogan, Dublin GAA All-Star Footballer (left) and Olympian Paul Hession (right) at the Irish Sponsorship Summit 2012.

Sponsorship Activation
Building large scale sponsorship strategies is something Kevin Moore of global PR agency Fleishman-Hillard has significant experience in. As the company’s Head of Sports Brand Marketing he’s been involved in some of Irish sport’s most recognisable sponsorships including Ulster Bank’s support of Irish Rugby and the GAA Senior Football Championship. While Moore would have a role in organising sponsorship negotiations, more often his job is to counsel advice in terms of what are the right sponsorships for a company to choose and, once a scheme is chosen, then to activate it by developing strategies that will ensure the sponsorship is effective in achieving the company’s goals. In the case of Ulster Bank, Moore faced a real challenge in enforcing their brand on the GAA Championship as Bank of Ireland had long been established as its sponsors, but describes some lateral thinking as being key to achieving the firm’s objectives.

“[Ulster Bank] had spent a couple of years before that sponsoring the higher education championships, so student football and hurling,” explains Moore. “That was their main entry into GAA; that’s where they established themselves before they took on the larger sponsorship. The difficulty was they didn’t [originally] have the naming rights whereas Bank of Ireland would have had that luxury for 12 or 13 years. Ulster Bank had to work an awful lot harder to activate the sponsorship after the outlay of purchasing it. The first challenge was as simple as trying to create awareness. That moved very quickly on to the need to drive business and drive products. There’s a programme being established that will activate the sponsorship around the country but will also link specific products to it, so there will be events happening around the country that will have targets too, for example, becoming a member of a certain programme which gives you discounts of GAA tickets, so there’s a real product link.”

A Risk Attached
While the renaming of the O2 and the Aviva Stadium came after the sites had gone through huge redevelopments, there are still those who question the renaming of beloved venues for commercial purposes. In July 2009, Chicago’s famous Sears Tower was renamed the Willis Tower when London-based insurance broker Willis Group Holdings obtained the building’s naming rights, much to the chagrin of the city’s residents and just last year in Newcastle, after 120 years, St James’ Park was renamed the Sports Direct Arena. Such has been the uproar from the general public that some have resorted to criminal damage in an attempt to restore the stadium’s previous guise.

With these recent examples falling flat there has been a certain risk attached to O2 and Aviva’s decision to attach their names (as well as lay down significant capital) to venues. But according to Trainor, OnSide’s market research shows the public’s reaction to be largely favourable. “In general we’ve found that the Irish public is favourably disposed towards sponsorship of venues. We’ve carried out surveys and polls to test how the consumer feels about it and the majority across various studies we’ve done display a positive disposition towards venue naming rates. For example, when we – on an annual basis – ask the general public what their favourite sponsorship of the past 12 months was, sponsorships like the O2 and the Aviva in 2011 sat in the top ten more appealing sponsorships. The general public has given their thumbs up to it.”

There are even greater risks in sponsoring teams and individuals. In these cases, a company’s reputation is firmly in the hands of others. Sports stars can suffer loses in form or, worse, can behave in a way unbefitting of the brand they represent. They’re only human, after all. Throughout his career Moore has seen the best and worst examples for linking brands with individual sports personalities. “We’ve looked after Gillette for the past 20 years and Brian O’Driscoll has been an ambassador for the past six or seven years. Year after year he researches as one of the best sportspeople in the country in terms of recognition and suitability for brand. But the on a global scale Gillette have faced challenges with their investment in Tiger Woods and Thierry Henry, when the pair had a backlash from the public for        obvious reasons.

A Deeper Relationship
The success of Dublin’s O2 followed the triumphs of the venue’s London namesake. The UK-based mobile phone carrier worked with naming rights company AEG to banish the unhappy memories of the much criticised Millennium Dome and rebrand the impressive arena. Today, the new venue’s success and its positive impact on the O2 brand is a major sponsorship success story. “Part of the reason it worked so well is because O2 got into the stadium from the ground up,” AEG President of Global Partnerships Todd Goldstein told CNN Money last year. “We’re not splashing up signs and logos; we’re incorporating our brand as part of the core component.”

This idea of establishing a brand as part of the central ethos of a venue is something that’s echoed by John Trainor. “What’s happening now is we’re starting to see third and fourth generation evolutions of naming rights, and I think the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre is an example of that,” he explains. “For Bord Gáis Energy [it’s not] about having their name over the door but rather its about having an ability to offer their customers rewards and experience because those customers are loyal to them.”

He continues: “The sponsorship in its own right is reinforced by the Bord Gáis Energy rewards program which they have put in place and allows customers to gain access to discounted ticketing, and that’s where venue naming rights is likely to succeed and progress going forward. It helps to achieve a deeper relationship between a brand and their consumers because of this new way of talking to each other outside of the pure product-based discussions they generally have on a daily basis.”

This is echoed by Moore, who has helped Ulster Bank best utilise their sports sponsorships by linking in customer loyalty programmes. “They’re not really done for brand awareness, they’re done for customer retention. That’s the business logic; it’s not just about a name change. It’s sound business reasons and they get the results in terms of new customers from it.”

Ultimately, the intentions of schemes like this reflect why venue sponsorship and naming rights prove so popular for large scale companies. It’s because sponsorship is not about passive awareness generation, but about active engagement where a brand and their customers talk to each other in an active way about something that benefits both parties.

New Deli hits the streets of NYC this weekend and counts out the city’s hottest bands right now. Featuring write-ups by me on various worthy bands. Pick up a copy or read it online right here.

Ab Soul: Control System

Originally appears on AllHipHop.com.

Kendick Lamar has established a considerable platform for his fellow Black Hippy brethren to springboard from. As a collective, Jay Rock, Schoolboy Q, Ab-Soul and Lamar have released just a few songs under the Black Hippy name, but after the success of the latter’s Section.80, all four find themselves on Dr Dre’s Aftermath imprint; a label where even established artists like Rakim and Raekwon have failed to make an impact. While Jay Rock and Q have cut their teeth on their own independent releases, Ab-Soul is the last member out of the gate, and with his tiny output, unusual personal styling and a seemingly lack of enthusiasm for glossy production methods or large, radio-friendly hooks, he looks a very small fish in the pond where the good doctor resides.

While he might prove quite the quandary for Aftermath’s marketing department, Ab may well be the most artistically interesting of the Hippy clan. Control System (not released on Aftermath, by the way) is a long, complex record of scratchy beats, widescreen subject matter and elaborate rhyming schemes, which goes some of the way to explaining Ab’s lack of output thus far is his young career. His attention to detail is stellar, intricately building his rhymes with clever wordplay, popping syllables off each other like a well tuned jazz drummer. On “Bohemian Grove”, for example, Ab pulls out all the tricks, veering from three word bars to lengthy prose. Later, on “Illuminate” – where he addresses his unlikely place within the Hip-Hop world – his turn of speed is impressive, often putting the brakes on mid-rhyme, leaning into words slowly before jamming down on the accelerator and letting loose once more.

It’s wonderfully compelling to hear Ab construct his dense rhyme patterns, and he’s boosted by a near-flawless selection of beats. Production-wise Control System is in the same vein of Lemar’s Section.80, compiling a series of jazzy samples, AM radio soul and horror movie-esque compositions, linking instrumentation with subject matter wisely. “It was all a dream/I swear, it never happened,” opens ‘Pineal Gland’, which adds to the dark, nightmarish feel of the music. The doomed romance Ab outlays on “The Book of Soul” is beautifully scored by some ice-cold piano chords and rolling drum loops, while the scary outline of world politics on “Terrorist Threat” is appropriately foreboding.

Danny Brown shows up on “Terrorist Threat” and his manic spitting steals the show, underlining that, while Ab-Soul shows strong signs of being a great rap artist, he still has a way to go to be a truly great rapper. Still, Control System slowly reveals itself to be one of the most accomplished debut Hip-Hop records in quite some time.

Twista Talks New Album, Turning 40, and Those G.O.O.D. Music Rumors

Originally appears on AllHipHop.com.

Longtime Kanye West affiliate Twista excited the Internet recently when rumors began circulating that the rapid-fire rapper would soon be joining Ye’s label, G.O.O.D. Music. No doubt, some of the 76 percent who voted the label as the Chicago native’s ideal home in a recent XXL poll can recall tracks like “Slow Jamz” and “Overnight Celebrity” – songs that rank among his biggest hits and command a unique space in their producer, Kanye’s, 24-carat back catalog.

On those rumors, Twista is keen to set the record straight with AllHipHop.com. His upcoming album, The Dark Horse, is due for release on his own label, Get Money Gang Entertainment, and he looks set to further enhance his unique rap legacy:

AllHipHop.com: I’m sorry to remind you about this, but you turn 40 this year. Did you ever think at this stage in your life you’d be still making new albums?

Twista: Early on in my career, I didn’t think so, because you used to hear a lot of talk about rappers retiring. Like, that seemed to be a norm that was about to place, but later through the years, you started to hear rappers talking about never retiring, or doing it forever. Especially looking at artists like Jay-Z, Nas, Eminem; artists like that, my age and older. Jay-Z and Nas, they’re older, but Eminem is close to my age, and he’s still considered one of the top rappers in the game, so I definitely think I can play it out just as long as an R&B artist can play their career out.

For full interview visit: http://allhiphop.com/2012/05/11/twista-talks-new-album-turning-40-and-those-g-o-o-d-music-rumors/

St. Lucia - Unashamedly Pop

Originally appears on The Deli’s website.

Jean-Philip Grobler rejects the idea that he is a synth-pop artist, citing his equal use of electronic and non-electronic instrumentation to support the claim. There are prominent piano chords, wandering guitar riffs and the odd sax solo littered throughout his sound, but with programmed beats providing the heartbeat and earthly synths bringing the soul, the South African – who releases music under the moniker St Lucia – does create instrumentals of great electronic beauty. The comparisons to Temper Trap and Empire of the Sun are appropriate, but to my ear, Peter Gabriel is the most fitting comparison. A wonderful thing, I’m sure you’ll agree.

When did you first start making music and how did you end up gravitating towards your synth pop style?

I started making music when I was about 11 or 12 years old and went through a whole bunch of different genres before I got to what I’m doing now. When I first started [making music], I was really into Boyz II Men, Michael Jackson, Sting and Phil Collins. I was making these pop songs, I suppose in a sense similar to what I’m doing now, and at all times I had about three albums planned out that never came to fruition because, well, I was at school. I then went through about 10 years of being really into rock and alternative music and wanting to make really big and bombastic, but still considered and somewhat cerebral, rock songs. I then got bored with that and, I suppose, rediscovered my roots which was in the eighties and making pop songs and my style and way of doing things changed a bit. I also find it somewhat funny that people call what I’m doing synth pop because, if you listen to what’s in there there’s probably an equal amount of electronic and non-electronic instruments. So, I like to think of what I do as a sort of amalgamation of various things, and not strictly synth pop.

The bio on your BandPage profile cites Temper Trap and Empire of the Sun as touchstones of your sound. Those guys are actually quite contemporary. Were there artists you particularly admired that influenced your sound? I ask because I think I can hear quite a bit of Peter Gabriel in there. Am I right?

There is definitely a Peter Gabriel influence, but I wouldn’t say there’s one artist that influenced me above all others. I really admire or gravitate towards artists that have a very strong artistic vision, and that aren’t afraid of being pop, or don’t see pop as some kind of sub or lesser musical genre. I think there’s a very interesting middle-ground between being poppy and being ‘experimental’, and that’s the ground that I think people like Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, Fleetwood Mac, Prince and artists like that occupy.

Tell me about your EP the recording, its themes, what you intended it to achieve?

The EP took about two years to make. That seems like a long time, and it is, but I was experimenting with a lot of different sounds and ideas and, like I said earlier, more or less changing my entire approach to making music. I pretty much recorded the whole thing myself, apart from drums and a few bits and pieces here and there. There’s probably about 40 or even 50 songs that came out of that process, and I would just sort of develop every song in parallel, and then as it neared completion it just seemed like these six songs are the ones that fit together best.

In terms of its themes, I only realized after finishing the EP that there’s a very strong theme of losing something, or the fear of losing something, but then also of gaining something in the end. I think that that correlates a lot with what I was going through in my life at the time. Pretty much all of my lyrics are written ‘train of thought style’, and so it’s very interesting to me when you do something completely unconsciously but then very specific themes emerge.

All I can hope really for what the EP achieves is that it gives people a similar feeling that I get when I listen to my favorite music, or the music that inspired the EP.

I liked the EP’s desert island cover. What is your own all time desert island album?

The album that’s stuck with me the longest is Radiohead’s OK Computer, but I’m not sure if that’s the best music to have on an island. For an island, I’d probably choose Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits.

Your music often has flourishes that aren’t common in synth-pop. I’m thinking about the sax solo in ‘All Eyes on You’. What is your process when it comes to outlining your arrangements?

Again, it’s a very subconscious process. I pretty much develop everything at the same time, the ‘song’ part, the arrangement, the lyrics, the production and sounds. I’ll often start by building a rhythm section and a general groove and then just starting adding layer upon layer on top of that. A lot of the songs on the EP went through more than one version before I got to the final version. I think I have about five different versions of ‘We Got it Wrong’. I like to just keep trying things until it feels right to me, and sometimes that has to do with seeing which version of the song works best in the context of the whole, so it might only come together very close to the end of the process. Also, I’m a sucker for Saxophone solos.

Friends - The Bugs and The Buzz

Originally appears on The Deli’s website.

In an era when zealous music blogs compete to be the first to unearth potential new stars, the spotlight often seems to fall on young musicians who’ve done little more than strum a few simple guitar chords in their bedroom and upload the recordings to Bandcamp or Soundcloud. Take Brooklyn band Friends. Having not yet put out a release longer than a single, the five-piece has still garnered much positive attention from seemingly every online music resource, as well as mainstream press exposure from The New York Times and The Guardian among others. The group was even named one of NME’s Top 50 Artists of 2011, and was nominated for BBC’s “Sound of 2012” poll. Having captured the imagination of critics and fans despite a limited output, Friends have actually moved beyond the whispers of being an Internet buzz band to one riding a huge wave of excitement and positivity.

It’s been a dizzying rise really. The band only formed in 2010 when bass/percussion player Leslie Hann and drummer Oliver Duncan moved into Samantha Urbani’s apartment to escape a bedbug attack and discovered the singer’s treasure chest of solo recordings. This revelation sparked the trio to collaborate. Later adding guitarist Nikki Shapiro and multi-instrumentalist Matt Molnar to the line-up, these “Friends” (they’re actually named after Brian Wilson’s favourite Beach Boys album, and not the relationship that they share with each other or a bizarre mutual love for the former NBC sitcom) very quickly snapped into tandem, and the sparkling arrangements on their early singles have defied their relative inexperience playing together as a band. Each track would fall under the loose description of indie pop, with the band incorporating everything from Spector-produced sixties girl pop to seventies disco beats and hot Sly Stone-esque funky guitar riffs. Consider the sinister but danceable groove of “I’m His Girl,” the sultry “Friend Crush” and disco-funk jam “Mind Control” – it’s a wicked concoction of influences.

But despite the candy shop of styles, Friends actually encompass this wide variety of genres into their sound quite naturally – they’re more hat-tippers than straight revivalists. What each single does share, however, is a lack of wasted space as the unit has already demonstrated an expertise in crafting tight, catchy, pleasure-crammed pop delights. Think Talking Heads at their most playful, and you’re some of the way there.

Friends’ debut album Manifest! drops this summer via Fat Possum in the US and Lucky Number in the UK, and is surely one of New York’s most hotly anticipated upcoming debut records. Unfortunately, with hype, comes added pressure, of course, and a dip in quality would be deemed a disappointment to the same musical press that has given their young career a serious boost. But let’s dare to dream.

Body Language - Body to Body

This originally appears via The Deli’s website, though a shortended version was the cover story in the latest Austin edition.

With their glitzy synths, soulful licks and pretty vocal harmonies, Body Language channel a lifetime’s worth of music fandom into their own hybrid sound. Citing everyone from Bill Withers and The Beach Boys to Animal Collective as influences, the group is a fine example of the modern Brooklyn indie scene, with music-obsessed artists drawing inspiration from a variety of eclectic sources. In the case of Body Language, members Grant Wheeler, Matthew Young, Angelica Bess and Ian Chang all bring their own personalities to the table, adding to the interesting jumble of sounds and styles heard on their latest release Social Studies.

“Every member is involved with the outcome of the tracks,” explains Grant. “There are niche roles in writing, sequencing, performing, production sometimes one member’s work will sort of define the track. It fluctuates between songs, but to put it loosely, Matt does a lot of sequencing and songwriting, I do a lot of production and sequencing, Ang does a lot of vocal melody writing and writing on other aux instruments and Ian writes drum parts and also helps figure out vocal arrangements.”

Grant originally met Matt and Ang in Hartford, Connecticut, and the seeds of Body Language were sewn when the trio began cutting dance remixes and a few original tracks to spin at a weekly party hosted at a local dive by their mutual friend JPrez.  Shortly after the event reached its peak fun and popularity, the group upended and moved to Brooklyn to hook up with good buddies Machinedrum and Praveen of Sepalcure who were hosting parties through event organizers Percussion Lab and Cassette NYC. Following the move, the band started collaborations with Passion Pit on the early writings of their album Manners and became the backing band for rapper Theophilus London. It was at this stage when they completed their lineup.  “Ian Chang came to drum for [London’s backing band] The Lovers, and we knew we had to get him involved with our own project in the future,” says Grant. “We eventually brought him on board a year later to debut Body Language as a quartet in support of Passion Pit at the Bowery Ballroom in 2009.”

Since then the foursome have hardly stood still. Releasing their first EP Speaks in 2009, the follow up Social Studies is the sound of a maturing band. According to Grant, both records came from completely different stages in their evolution. “Speaks was almost written almost in its entirety while we were still in Hartford. It was largely detached from being a band they were just murmurs of our interest in writing pop music. We were still transitioning out of writing somewhat obscure IDM. As soon as we wrapped up writing with Passion Pit, we started writing Social Studies. ‘You Can’ and ‘Falling Out’ were drafted in early 2009, and we just played them live a whole lot.  That’s really where the formula for the current sound started creeping in. We wrote skeletons of tracks and started playing them as a band.  The bits and pieces of the song were easily filled in by our natural inclinations while playing them live.  At this point, we’ve played out a majority of the tracks that will be on our upcoming full length. That’s how we finish music.”

As well as working on their first album, Body Language have maintained their hard work ethic by gigging constantly and recently producing a record for dream pop artist Vacationer. Still, Grant remains adamant they should maintain this momentum. “We are now wrapping up the full-length. Everything is recorded, we’re just making it sound magical now. We’ll be making our rounds on the live circuit as well”

Nicki Minaj Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

Originally appears at AU.

Interview: Obie Trice

Originally appears on AU Magazine’s website.

As one of Eminem’s central lieutenants when the bleach-blond bad boy was the biggest pop star in the world, Obie Trice has seen the summit of hip-hop success. But six years on from the release of his last album and the 34-year-old is adjusting to being a rap artist in 2012. Perhaps hoping to follow the lead of younger artists like serial twitter users Odd Future and YouTube sensation Kreayshawn, Obie has recently sought to expand his own Internet presence.

“It’s pretty cool,” says Trice of social networking, a phenomenon not yet fully realised the last time the Detroit native was promoting a record. “I’m fairly kind of new to Twitter. Getting used to, y’know, to things happening – great things happening – in my daily process and actually saving those things on Twitter. I have to get pinched by people and people on my staff, like, ‘you have to post that on Twitter’. I just keep reminding myself to keep saying things on Twitter. I like the Facebooks. I’m cool with the whole thing, just getting used to it. I’m getting it together for the Twitter thing.”

For the full interview visit: http://iheartau.com/2012/03/obie-trice/