How does sports marketing work in surfing?
San Marcos University presents the news of the day.
The before and after of sports marketing in surfing.
The internet and social media have definitively changed the perspective for interacting with the world; nowadays it is as easy as opening a social network and seeing a news story that happened just minutes ago.
Marketing in newspapers, magazines, and other media is now reduced to the digital age, where communication channels are usually more diverse and easier for the consumer.
Athletes have always been opportunities to convey a message to the buyer; however, choosing the right athlete to represent a brand or company becomes a subject of much analysis for large companies.
In our country there are a number of athletes who have experienced firsthand this change of the athlete as a product of marketing, one of these athletes is Diego Naranjo from Jacoba who throughout the years of his sports career has been characterized by the good work with brands.
In this article, Naranjo elaborates a bit more on what it was like when a talented generation transformed a sport that wasn't viewed favorably into a professional sport from which they make a living to this day thanks to their image.
What was the state of sports marketing like in your day?
Diego: Those were different times, the surf industry was still growing and surf marketing was 100% based on sponsoring athletes and subsequently each athlete had to work hard to do their job in order to expose their image in the media.
There were different ways to do it. The main one was as a high-performance athlete, winning events. Another way, if you were super talented, was to go on surf trips to appear in surf videos or on the covers of surf magazines, or to surf giant waves. It sounds easy, but it wasn't. In any of these three cases, it didn't matter where in the world you were from; these were very exclusive groups, and it was very difficult to belong to them. Only the best made it, or you had to have very good connections to be taken seriously.
In relation to your time and the present, what differences could you cite?
Diego: It's simple. These days, anyone thinks they're a professional, or anyone can claim to be, based on their social media followers. However, the vast majority, aside from having followers, aren't actually making money from having 10,000, 20,000, or 50,000 followers. Before, a magazine cover, a double-page spread, or even just a quarter-page spread was synonymous with money. Appearing in print media or on television was where you really realized if you were one of the best, and people in general were more aware of the national and international achievements of surfers. Back then, we focused on the work, which was training and competing, and our achievements spoke for themselves.
Do you think athletes have had to change their role in sports marketing?
Diego: Times have definitely changed. Nowadays, brands look for athletes who are also influencers and have profiles on different social networks full of followers. So they make athletes focus on getting more followers, rather than sporting achievements, which in the end means more followers don't bring them more sponsors.
How do you see the support of brands for Costa Rican athletes today?
Diego: If we compare it to my time, today there is much more support, but I still hear the same excuses from the 90s, when there was really much less support and it was more difficult.
Personally, where do you think the problem lies in obtaining good sponsorship and working in the right way?
Diego: In my personal opinion, I think brands don't really know who are elite athletes and who aren't.
For example, you see a surfer who has more than 20,000 followers on their social media, but when you start to investigate a little, you realize that they haven't won anything important in their careers. The videos they upload show a very low technical level or poor photo quality. Then you see other athletes who may be winning a lot of things, but you look at their social media and they don't even have 3,000 followers. I think this makes brands doubt who the real athletes are.
What do you think national surfers could improve in terms of working with brands?
Diego: First of all, it's important to keep in mind that the surf industry isn't doing well right now, so you have to be resourceful and look for other niches, like banks, car dealerships, insurance companies, or support from public companies. What I do feel will never change is that no matter your skill level, you always have to be a well-rounded athlete. By that, I mean you have to be a high-performance athlete and at the same time, you have to know how to speak in public, in front of cameras and microphones.
That's how it was in my time and it's still the case today. There are many athletes doing great things, but they spend their time hiding behind the nets; nobody knows much about them and you rarely see them speaking in public.
Therefore, here are seven tips to maintain a good relationship with brands and achieve benefits for both parties:
- Sticking a sticker on is not enough.
- Looking to work with a photographer to generate enough content for exhibition use.
- Create a calendar with the events you will be holding so that brands can track them on their own.
- Send reports to your sponsors with photographs after the events to provide more information about the competition when they sponsor you.
-Use your social media responsibly, not for bad language or actions that could damage your image or that of sponsoring brands.
- Make posts about products from the brand that supports you.
- Brands are not in it for charity, but to generate returns in sales.