The PR and marketing of Hungarian Fencing: what needs to be done, and our strategy for the future
Budapest, December 2006.
Index:
I. Fencing’s Past
1. Hungary’s
Sport of Success
2. The beginnings of our PR Activity
II. PR goals for Hungarian
Fencing
1. Creation of internal
communications
2. External Communications
3. Sponsors
4. International competitions held
in Hungary
5. Domestic competitions
6. Exposure in the media
7. Promotional and explanatory
films
III. A vision for the future of
the PR for Hungarian Fencing
1. Growing
Media Presence
2. Building up Fencing as a
Leisure Activity
3. „Conquering” Educational
Institutions
4. Sponsors
5. Increasing the number of
competitors, development of future talent.
I.
Fencing’s Past
1. Hungary’s Sport of Success
• Tradition, success, elegance and transparancy characterise
the more than hundred-year history of the sport in Hungary.
• Hungarian fencing is united under the banner of, and controlled
by the 93-year old Hungarian Fencing Federation.
• Fencing is Hungary’s most successful Olympic sport;
Hungarian fencers have taken part in 21 Olympic Games, garnering 34 gold
medals.
• Hungary has great expectation of its fencers, which are
not always easy to meet.
2. The beginnings of our PR activity
• It was a serious problem that, although our fencers were
heaping victory upon victory, these were not coming to the attention of the
public. We did not have the channels of communication to enable to the media to
keep up to date with the latest events and results.
·
This lack of
information made attracting sponsors to support Hungarian fencing almost
impossible, while the need to attract sponsorship grew increasingly due to
financial difficulties.
·
The real
breakthrough in PR came in late 2005, when the Hungarian Fencing Federation
accepted that communications and marketing must now come into their sphere of
operation, and appointed a dedicated member of staff to oversee these areas.
II. PR goals for
Hungarian Fencing
1. Creation of internal communications
·
The first and most
important task is the organisation of internal communications. While this is
lacking, we have no news or information to communicate to the press or public.
Team Captains and Heads of Specialist Departments must be briefed to pass on
news about their competitors and their accomplishments.
Flow of Information:
Organisational
Principle (what
fits our marketing strategy)
To date, we have:
·
Achieved great
progress in this field, and most people have acknowledged the importance of PR
and its possibilities and power.
·
Information coming
in to the Federation on all available channels ( by e-mail, telephone, text
message and fax).
·
The incoming
information is filtered and classified according to our organising principles.
2. External
Communications
· In order for it to be useful, we have to get the information we receive to its ultimate recipients by the appropriate channels.
·
Our website (www.hunfencing.hu) must be refreshed in
such a way that visitors always receive the day’s fresh news and information,
and the site itself needs to be user-friendly and logical. In order for this to
happen, the website needed to be updated both in terms of its appearance and in
terms of its internal structure.
· We had to create a media database that contained the contact details of all the important domestic media outlets. With the help of this database, we can communicate fresh news quickly and easily to to the media, and via them, to the public.
·
We must make the
ladies and gentlemen of the press feel welcome at our more important Press
Conferences, creating an opportunity for dialogue with them. The Press
Conferences shoudl be hosted at the Gundel Restaurant, one of Hungary’s
best-known, whose atmosphere, elegance and finish all go hand in hand with the
values of fencing.
To date:
· Having made the changes to the website, the visitor statistics accurately reflect the importance of the changes we have made (instead of 200-300 hits a day previously, we now have between 1,000 and 1,500).
·
The results are
palpable; with a minimum of financial investment, the number of views of the
website has increased by several times.
·
People are talking
about fencing more, which has a very positive influence on our media value and
popularity.
·
We have developed
very good relationships with the media, who are happy to help Hungarian
Fencing.
3. Sponsors
·
Before we began our
PR acitivity, there was in point of fact an almost complete absence of
sponsors.
·
The only sponsors
with a presence were fencing-specific sponsors, who spent only small amounts on
Hungarian fencing.
·
One of the
determining factors in attracting sponsorship is the success of the sport. In
this, fencing does not face significant problems, being one of Hungary’s most
successful sports.
·
Besides the need for
successes, it is very important that our achievements get wide publicity and
moreover it is important to make sure that a given sponsor’s name also appears
in our press releases. This is the most difficult aspect, since this mostly
comes under the heading of advertising, which requires financial expenditure.
·
Among the first
things we must do is prepare a PR and marketing plan, since we can only bring
in sponsorship if the sponsor can see measurable and palpable exposure in
return for their financial support.
·
With this basic
principle in mind, we have to create a plan that includes the main opportunities
for exposure that fencing can present to sponsors.
·
The contracts we
make with sponsors must be based on clear and mutual benefits, and must also
contain the responsibilities of both parties.
·
In order to achieve
the required number of exposure opportunities, we must create the following
important elements: message board, sponsor’s board, a new and
elegant facade, headed letter paper, sponsorship booklet...
· In order to satisfy the needs of our sponsors, we must measure and record the exposure the sponsors are getting. In order to do this, we must use an independent media agency.
To date:
· In most cases, the sponsor’s name appears with the publicisation of our results and news.
· We have brought into being a list containing all the opportunities for sponsorship exposure.
· Our contracts with our partners are correct and businesslike.
·
We now have a new
message board, sponsor’s board, elegant facade, headed letter paper,
sponsorship booklet.
· We note and record sponsorship exposure.
4. International competitions held in
Hungary.
·
The Hungarian
Fencing Federation is responsible for organising five international
competitions to be held in Hungary in the next competition season, for which it
needs name sponsors.
- The Heracles Junior competition for six weapons.
- Women’s Saber Grand Prix;
- Gerevich-Kovács-Kárpáti Foil World Cup;
- Women’s Foil Grand Prix;
- Women’s Saber BEK and World Cup.
· We must hold press conferences before the competitions, at which we must create the opportunity to inform the members of the press fully.
· We must execute our contractual obligations towards our sponsors by fulfilling the terms of our contracts with them (deploying advertising stands and adverts) in the interests of our long-term relationship with our sponsors.
· We must promote the competitions in a suitable way to drum up more of a spectatorship, raising our media worth.
· We must find a way of communicating the live scores on the website, in order ot enable both the public and the media to have blow-by-blow access to the results.
To date:
·
We have found name
sponsors for all our competitions.
·
We have been able to
significantly increase our sponsorship income:
·
Most of our selected
competitors also have sponsorship while training.
·
Every one of the
competitions mentioned was preceded by a press conference, to which
representatives of all the important media outlets were invited.
·
Our sponsors were
promoted at the site of the competition with advertising displays and flyers.
·
In order to attract
more spectators, we published special advertisements and organised smaller
advertising campaigns.
·
There were qualified
MCs at each of the competitions to inform and entertain the audience, with
games and competitions.
·
The poster campaign
preceding the Men’s Foil VK deserves special mention. We displayed 550 City
Light posters to publicise the competition, which will be visible for two
months.
· Hungarian Television has undertaken to broadcast three of the five competition finals in the next year, which represents a very significant step forward.
·
At two of the
competitions, we used large display screens to keep the spectators informed of
the results, broadcast interviews and show the sponsor’s promotional video.
·
During the entire
period of the competitions, the Federation’s website had the results on-line.
Our promotional poster for one of the competitions:
5. Domestic competitions
·
The Special
Departments and clubs belonging to the Hungarian Fencing Federation together
organised dozens of preliminary heats and qualifying competitions.
·
We have to create a
unified ranking list that would allow everyone concerned to be informed within
days of each competition of their standing in the rankings.
·
One of the most
important goals of these competitions is to expand the fanbase of the sport,
especially allowing younger people to get involved.
·
We need to create a
domestic competition series that would place epee fencing on new foundations,
ensuring its long-term success. This competition cycle must be nation-wide. We
must get the support of notable figures for these programmes; they should then
be extended to both sabre and foil fencing.
To date:
· The establishment of the Olimpici Epee Grand Prix domestic series of competitions can be viewed as a great step forward. Olimpici was created in order to place the future of Hungarian epee fencing on new foundations and give it new directions for development. The target age-group is 10-14 year-old children, who can use the skills obtained in their fencing training to good effect in everyday life.We are filling out fencing’s character-building and team-spirit building ethos which encourages children towards living a healthy lifestyle. One of the main goals of our programme is to get families involved in fencing. We’ve planned the competition series so that it covers the whole country. Our motto is: ’because fencing’s worth it’. We were able to bring on board as patron of the programme Dr. Szili Katalin, the Leader of Parliament and Dr. Scmitt Pál, president of the Hungarian Olympic Committee.
· We have created the unified rankings list, from which every interested party can inform themselves of the results within two days following each competition, and can check the current state of the rankings.
6. Exposure in the media
· We must put in place independent monitoring of the media exposure of each one of our events, using an independent media monitoring agency.
To date:
· We have had exposure as detailed in the table below:
7. Promotional and explanatory films
·
The number of
spectators interested in our sport has declined since the ’80s. Contributing
factors to this included the restriction of the basis of the sport and the
inability of the Federation to provide effective PR. Fencing is divided into
three different weapons, and understanding the rules of each is not as
straightforward as in the case of ball games. The spectators at our
competitions were seriously hampered by their incomplete understanding of the
rules, impeding their enjoyment and understanding of the bouts. We have to
create a film explaining the rules, which must be used before every
competition, in order that interested spectators should understand what’s going
on on the pistes.
· In the course of preparing and executing this work, we must pay special attention to using subcontractors with specialist expertise in their fields.
To date:
· Explanatory film:
The film is divided
into three parts – one for each of the different weapons– and demosntrates in
both words and imahes the foil, saber and epee and the rules pertaining to
each. Thanks to each of the four-minute sections, spectators are given the
opportunity to acquaint themselves fully with the rules of the sport, making
what they then see in the competitions more enjoyable.
· Promotional film:
At the beginning of this survey, we mentioned that we must do everything we can to get the media to pay as much attention as possible to us, to ensure our exposure in as many media outlets as possible. Our promotional film, modified to apply to each competition individually, will help with the promotion of individual domestic competitions, in that it will be available for TV broadcasters to use. The 10-second film represents the dynamism and vivacity of our sport by showing a lunge followed by a hit. MTV broadcast the Westend Women’s Epee GP, the Gerevich-Kovács-Kárpáti Foil World Cup and the UniCredit Women’s Foil GP. We were able to use the promotional film in the build-up to all three.
III. A vision for the future of the PR for Hungarian Fencing.
All of our future
PR and marketing activity must work towards spreading the popularity of fencing
and expanding the number of both competitors and spectators.
1. Growing
Media Presence
·
Growing the number
of guaranteed appearances in the media by forming media partnerships.
·
Guaranteeing a
higher-profile presence for our sponsors by using paid advertisments.
·
Expanding TV
coverage to all of our competitions.
·
The creation, in
collaboration with our main sponsor of round-table discussions with the media
at which the leaders and competitors of our sport discuss contemporary issues
in Fencing.
·
The presentation of
the lives of our successful fencers, so that the public should know them ’off
piste’ as well as on.
·
If possible, every
one of our competitions should be preceded by at least a small poster campaign.
2. Building up Fencing as a Leisure
Activity
·
Setting up fencing
as a leisure activity that, with easily memorable rules and specially developed
technological aids that could serve as an attention-grabbing attraction at
various festivals and events.
· This would give laymen a taste of fencing, which might encourage them to take up fencing, train, and compete.
·
Fencing could become
more popular.
· Our well-known fencers could train with interested laymen.
3. „Conquering” Educational Institutions
·
Persuading schools
to start offering fencing as an afternoon physical education activity.
·
Schools specialising
in PE should also offer fencing.
4. Sponsors
·
Growing our income
from sponsorship and the marketing value of our current competitions.
5. Increasing
the number of competitors, development of future talent.
· Reach more children and persuade them to take up fencing.
·
Increased numbers to
choose from will give us increased freedom of choice in developing those
individuals who will represent the future of Hungarian fencing over the coming
decades, and allow us to choose the most promising candidates.