Andre Oszmann Interview, Group Marketing Director Skandia

The knight in shining armour to the yachting fraternity, Andre Oszmann, Group Marketing Director Skandia © Magnus Wheatley

The dramatic entrance to Skandia Geelong Week © Magnus Wheatley

To the yachting fraternity, Andre Oszmann is the knight in shining armour, steering the sponsorship and marketing arm of Skandia in his role as Group Marketing Director. With sponsorship very much a hot topic in sailing at the moment, Magnus Wheatley caught up with him in Melbourne at the Skandia Geelong Week to discuss Skandia’s continuing support of major regattas, elite athletes and the grass roots of sailing. If you’ve ever considered applying for sponsorship read this first and see what the money men expect in return…you may well be surprised and heartened!

MW: You must be delighted with the Skandia Geelong regatta both personally and from a company point of view…

AO: Absolutely right Magnus, it’s beyond all our dreams and expectations. We really didn’t set huge goals for year one and this is year one of a four year deal. All we wanted to do this year was to make it more professional and take it up another notch whilst keeping the regatta essentially the same format. What we’ve done is combine two separate events that existed-the Festival of Sail and the Waterfront festival which is run by the City for the general population. We’ve combined them and headlined the sponsorship as Skandia.

MW: A four year commitment! That’s a long term view on an event…

AO: There are both commercial and altruistic reasons for that. We are a long-term savings company and we expect clients to commit money with us for a long time and if we can’t be seen to provide the same sort of commitment to things that we invest in then how can people trust us? Secondly we’ve found that our sister event, Skandia Cowes Week, which has been running under our sponsorship for 10 years just seems to keep on getting better and better in terms of returns. It does take a long time to get to know how it works and we can still make more of it each year. It’s like any business-you don’t get quick returns and if you’re not prepared to go in it for the long term then you shouldn’t bother.

MW: Do you have an overall model of risk and return.

AO: We don’t actually but I think a lot of companies do not understand what they’re doing with sponsorship, what it can do and how to use it. A lot just say ‘get my name on a car or football shirt, I’ll take some people for hospitality but I won’t really get involved with the sport’-that’s the traditional model and I don’t think they get very good returns. Skandia got a specialist consultant in after we had started and the first thing they said was that we had already done 2/3 of the job that they would have done as a consultancy already! We do set a target ultimately that we want to get a return of 200% on our money invested which is twice the sponsorship industry average. In other words for every pound that we put in we get three pounds back and in fact at Skandia Cowes Week 2003 we managed 229%.

MW: Sponsorship in sailing is such a thorny question but you seem to sponsor a very wide spectrum of sailors from Olympic medallists down to amateur sailors…what’s the ethos behind this and why sailing?

AO: Sponsorship is a great way of promoting your brand, not just your logo although that’s part of it, but your brand is who you are as a company and what you stand for. It’s an emotional thing, it’s your personality and in long-term savings there’s not a lot of personality as it’s a pretty dull subject for a lot of people. So we want to be able to do something that says we’re an approachable business and that people can interact with us. Now you can’t do that with advertising so sponsorship is a great vehicle for interacting and getting people to understand your brand. The next thing is: what’s the most suitable type of project to sponsor? That has to depend on what your communication objectives are and who you’re trying to communicate with. Skandia wants to be seen as approachable as well as promoting our core company values-Passion, Courage, Commitment, Creativity, Contribution-and that we’re an all embracing business. Looking at our business we have a broad spectrum of clients from high net worth to low net worth so our sponsorship programs have to reflect that. Sailing also is a very clean sport and it has a healthy image. It does have a slightly elitist image but that’s one of the things we want to break down and make more approachable. Sailing is also a fantastic way of billboarding but there’s also the engagement and the fact that people can participate in the events themselves. In sailing you can be completely involved at a very high level with the big ‘rock stars’ if you like and really experience the sport first hand. Sailing is so multi-level and we just couldn’t think of any other sport that offers the same opportunities. Another thing is that sailing is still good value because it’s not mainstream, although we think it’s up and coming fast, but it doesn’t have the same cost to a sponsor as many other sports do.

MW: How do you look at sponsorship on a commercial level?

AO: Well one of the great things about sponsorship versus advertising is, apart from the fact that you can’t get personal through an advert, the only person that benefits with advertising is the publisher and it’s a straight commercial deal. I would say that Skandia can get an awful lot more brand promotion through sponsorship and at the same time the money that you’re spending to get that promotion is really appreciated by the people that you’re sponsoring so we win and they win, it’s beautiful. Just look at the people out there enjoying Skandia Geelong Week…they’re loving it and the biggest satisfaction is seeing people enjoy themselves.

MW: Well that was a slightly leading question, how much do you put in?

AO: One of our criteria is that we only sponsor if we can have naming rights and title sponsorship. If you can’t do that then you don’t actually get the benefits due to the level of involvement you can have in moulding the way the sponsorship property, whatever it is, operates. If you ask any of our squad how we get involved with them in relation to any other sponsor then they’ll say that it’s deep and we think that’s really important. It’s unrealistic to expect the sponsorship property to give you what you want just by giving money, you have to put in effort. We put in quite a lot of money but we also put in a lot of effort and people resource in working with whoever or whatever we’re sponsoring. In the case of someone like Nick Maloney we will actually be helping pretty significantly in the way that we’re putting that whole deal together. I also think that if you just go in with a blank cheque book then you run the risk of people taking the mickey and they don’t value it as much. However if you go in and say here’s the funding for the basics but we’ll sit down with you and make it fly then it’s a serious two-way deal and we do like to work in partnership. Generally we become very good friends with both the people we sponsor and the events which can become hard when you get into something that needs to be sorted out! However the benefits far out-weigh the negative side.

MW: So this is a long-term investment and people reading this article may think to themselves ‘why don’t I give Skandia a shot’ for whatever their plans or projects are in sailing. How does someone secure sponsorship from Skandia?

AO: We do, not surprisingly, get a lot of approaches and we’re looking at things all the time. I wouldn’t say we never say never but we are pretty open minded and we’re looking to spread the sponsorship internationally. One of the things we do find is that there are an awful lot of talented sailors in the UK and because they know what we do there in sailing there’s a natural preponderance to deals being done there. Of course it suits us because we are predominantly based in the UK but we do want to spread more internationally and more to grass-roots so we are looking at things all the time. We do have an overall budget which we work to at the moment and depending on the continuing success of the business the promotional spend may get bigger.

MW: Interesting the ongoing success of the business, how about the ongoing success of the sailors? I’m angling here at guys like Iain Percy and Steve Mitchell who are tipped for gold in Athens next year. Would a gold medal add considerably to the cost/benefit of Skandia being aligned with a gold medallist?

AO: Oh yes for sure. If you take something like the Skandia super-maxi that just won the Sydney-Hobart then that makes it unbelievably hot property and it reflects fantastically well on us. We obviously pick people that fit in with us and are prepared to go the extra mile. A lot of the great stories in sailing are about human endeavour and man against the elements etc…Whether they actually win the race or not is irrelevant-obviously not in the Olympics where winning is everything-but Iain and Steve if they get the gold then that’s going to create extra value but to be honest we get terrific value from them anyway.

MW: So what about the types of people you choose?

AO: Well you know, Magnus, all the individuals that we sponsor and you can see the type of person we are looking for. Those individuals share the same type of values that we as a company aspire to and are therefore great ambassadors for the company and the sport. That rubs off beautifully on everyone we come in contact with and I would never sponsor anyone or anything without going to see the person or event and deciding whether they’re Skandia people or Skandia friendly.

MW: Interestingly there doesn’t seem to be a Skandia hard-sell…How do you get the return in the end and close the deal?

AO: Really important point this. We don’t sell direct to the public as we do our business through independent advisers who we bring along to Skandia Cowes Week or Skandia Geelong Week and get them out sailing or give them hospitality/get them involved. They are our prime target for direct interaction. If they like us as a business and like us as people and think that we are a company that they and their clients can trust, then that’s great, they’re the ones that go out and sell direct for us to the customer. Now at the same time if the customer who has heard of us in the marketplace has a good feeling for us then when that financial advisor advises that person to choose a Skandia product then they go ‘oh yes, they’re a good company, they did this or did that’ then we’ve succeeded. The other thing we know is that on the whole the people that go sailing fit the demographic that we want as customers and we do also know from research that they do really appreciate our sponsorship and commitment that we’ve put in.

MW: That’s interesting and has never really been explained before…

AO: Well we believe that you’ve got to get people on your side and pleased with what you’re doing for them in general rather than just going straight in and hard-selling…that never works.

MW: Now you’ve got a foothold in sailing that really is as strong, if not stronger, than say Rolex…It’s a pretty remarkable story…

AO: Well we’ve worked hard on it and it is very much about being personable and choosing the right things. I think also in sponsoring just one sport (aside from the general hospitality that we do) is a deliberate plan because if you spread the money all over then it’s dissipated and people are not sure what it is you stand for. I think if you can own a place, and there are a lot of places in sailing, like fun, live hard/play hard, work hard and if you’re really good then you can win something then it’s a good image to promote to the widest possible audience.

MW: Thank you Andre and best of luck for the future.