Effective Branding

12^th January 2007

The Malta Independent - Friday Wisdom

Hats off to Birkirkara FC for organising the AC Milan training camp in Malta during the Christmas break from competitive football. It has been a great success from its many dimensions. Presumably, given the enthusiasm of local supporters who paid premium prices to see and meet with their idols, it was also a financially rewarding venture.

Certainly Milan supporters had a bonanza. At the airport they could see their team come or go four times. During the training sessions Milan players made themselves reasonably accessible. Obviously the match against Birkirkara was very well attended even though it was transmitted direct on TV. At organised events there was a fair degree of accessibility and whoever was purposely mindful enough to get an autograph or take a photo probably found a way to do it.

AC Milan themselves seem to have had their expectations fully met. Their official statements during press conferences and their website communications are quite full of eulogies for the organisation and effectiveness of their Malta training camp. Coach Ancelotti went as far as to indicate that they might be seriously tempted to repeat the experience in future whenever his team needs to find the serenity leading to effectiveness on the pitch during competitive matches.

Birkirkara FC have gained a special relationship with AC Milan which permitted some of their players to rub shoulders during training sessions with some top-class world players. The friendly match will be for the memory albums. The final result of 5-0 is quite unkind to Birkirkara, who until the middle of the second half, before they suffered the second goal and before their team got dismembered by many substitutions to give a piece of the action to everyone, they were still very much in the game.

However, probably the major beneficiary of this venture is Malta’s brand as a warm tourism destination. Without hard-sell branding billboards and glossy publications, the venture must have produced a significant contribution to the enhancement of our tourism brand where it matters i.e. among foreign potential future consumers of our tourism product.

If Malta is up to scratch for a top-rated team like AC Milan to hold their Christmas training camp in, it should be equally attractive to the many other professional sports clubs who might not have the strength of the Milan brand but who certainly can provide us with a regular flow of lucrative business. The success of Milan’s training camp should be commercially exploited to lure others to do the same at different times of the year.

Birkirkara FC will no doubt use the experience gained to exploit commercially the opportunities opened up by this success. The national Football Association could consider emulating such initiatives giving their efforts the status of a national association that could lure peer national teams to hold training camps here before major international tournaments.

But the branding benefits will go much beyond that. The many thousands of viewers of Milan Channel and visitors to AC Milan’s official website have been bombarded with positive views about Malta which has no doubt helped to warm their heart with the prospect of a Malta tourist visit at some time in the near future.

This is real branding. Not billboards, pamphlets or assertive advertising. Real branding comes from delivering the real thing at the right price and quality, and then let the product speak for itself while encouraging the independent media to spot the value we deliver and to go and tell the whole world about it.

In comparison with the CHOGM venture I get the impression that as a nation we have reaped much more value from the Milan’s visit with a much smaller investment.

Well done to all. Obviously mistakes were made as well. Playing the national anthem when the players had already dispersed all over the pitch was wrong. Indeed this not being a national event there was no scope for playing the national anthem before the match.

But the biggest mistake was not inviting FC Internazionale. They would have been a better choice.