{"id":7832,"date":"2023-08-03T14:47:09","date_gmt":"2023-08-03T14:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/marketing\/inside-rakutens-sports-marketing-playbook\/"},"modified":"2023-08-03T14:47:10","modified_gmt":"2023-08-03T14:47:10","slug":"inside-rakutens-sports-marketing-playbook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=7832","title":{"rendered":"Inside Rakuten\u2019s sports marketing playbook"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 ggMJgB\">Rakuten has been something of a good luck charm for the Golden State Warriors\u2026or maybe it\u2019s the other way around.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 ggMJgB\">Since the cashback company became the official jersey badge partner of the NBA team in 2017, the Warriors have won two championships, although they already had five under their belt before then. Rakuten, on the other hand, was significantly less well known in the US then than it is now, according to CMO Dana Marineau, with brand awareness growing from 23% in 2017 to 63% as of this year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 ggMJgB\">\u201cI obviously cannot say it is the Warriors [sponsorship] that solely has skyrocketed our brand awareness,\u201d Marineau told Marketing Brew. \u201cOf course there are other things we have in market\u2014there\u2019s other advertising, the Super Bowl\u2014but you cannot discredit how amazing that kind of awareness is, on a championship team.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 ggMJgB\">After Rakuten, a Japanese company, acquired Ebates in 2014, it ran into a problem: No one in the US had heard of Rakuten before, Marineau said. In the years since, the company figured out that sports marketing was part of the solution.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 hlktdj\"><strong>The Bar\u00e7a effect<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 ggMJgB\">In 2016, Rakuten and FC Barcelona announced a deal that would keep Rakuten\u2019s name on Bar\u00e7a jerseys for the next five years. According to Marineau, it set the stage for Rakuten\u2019s sports work in the US.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 ggMJgB\">\u201cIt was the foundation of how we knew, here in the US, of the power and the influence of sports marketing, and particularly team partnership and team sponsorship,\u201d she said. \u201cThat is how we knew that it would work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 ggMJgB\">The 2017\u201318 season was the first during which the NBA allowed jersey sponsorships, and Rakuten was one of the first brands to capitalize, signing a deal with the Warriors that was reportedly worth $20 million a year. Rakuten renewed the deal in 2021, then again last year. With its US headquarters in the Bay Area, the Warriors were a natural pick, Marineau said, and it didn\u2019t hurt that the team had just won a championship.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 ggMJgB\">Half of Warriors fans said they were more likely to consider Rakuten because of the partnership, according to MarketCast data Marineau shared with Marketing Brew. Additional data that Rakuten commissioned from sports marketing and management firm Wasserman based on the 2021\u201322 Warriors season showed that 64% of fans agreed that the partnership improved their perception of Rakuten.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 ggMJgB\">Marineau said the biggest indication of success, however, comes from Rakuten member surveys: When Rakuten asks how they heard of the company, the most common answer is via a friend, then an ad, then the Warriors jerseys.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 hlktdj\"><strong>Alley-oop<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 ggMJgB\">After six seasons on the jerseys, plus a separate brand ambassador deal with Stephen Curry, it\u2019s no surprise that fans are at least familiar with the name Rakuten. But do they know what the company does? Teaching them is Rakuten\u2019s next step, Marineau said.<\/p>\n<div class=\"style__InlineSubscribeWrapper-sc-8ccc5960-1 jArFiG\">\n<div id=\"inline-subscribe\" class=\"style__Container-sc-6fdcc87e-0 style__RoundedContainer-sc-6c630ac0-0 iTWzCH wGFGp\">\n<h5 class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 cVdxJM inline-subscribe\">Get marketing news you&#8217;ll actually want to read<\/h5>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 iEaGlZ inline-subscribe\">The email newsletter guaranteed to bring you the latest stories shaping the marketing and advertising world, like only the Brew can.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 ggMJgB\">\u201cWe transition from brand awareness, and credibility, and trust, and gaining those things, to now educating,\u201d she said. \u201cNow we have a different challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 ggMJgB\">The Warriors are part of this next phase, too. The partnership has always included signs in and around the team\u2019s arena, but lately, the brand has\u00a0 been more focused on sharing information about Rakuten as opposed to just driving awareness by displaying the logo, according to Marineau.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 ggMJgB\">Rakuten also serves as the presenting partner of the \u201cRakuten Runway,\u201d where players show off what they are wearing when they arrive on game days and \u201chow you can buy it and save on Rakuten,\u201d Marineau said. The brand is running 30-second ads against \u201cevery single local broadcast\u201d of a Warriors game, in addition to some spots during nationally televised games, to help educate viewers as well. The company didn\u2019t share details about its marketing budget or how much is dedicated to sports.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 hlktdj\"><strong>Overtime<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 ggMJgB\">There\u2019s no talking about Rakuten\u2019s sports marketing without mentioning its star-studded Super Bowl ads. This year\u2019s saw Alicia Silverstone reprising her iconic role as Cher Horowitz from <em>Clueless<\/em>, and last year\u2019s featured <em>Ted Lasso<\/em>\u2019s Hannah Waddingham.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=PDh7W0WFTd8\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=PDh7W0WFTd8<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 ggMJgB\">Super Bowl spots are among the most sought-after (and expensive) inventory in advertising, so Marineau said it took \u201ca lot of work\u201d to make the business case to buy one the first time around. Ultimately, Rakuten leadership went for it to address a \u201clack of informed awareness\u201d around the brand, she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 ggMJgB\">Super Bowl spots can be tricky when it comes to tracking ROI, though views on social platforms help paint the picture, as does press coverage. The <em>Clueless<\/em> campaign saw about 600 news stories, with more than half of the outlets that covered it having never written about Rakuten before, Marineau said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5a46198a-12 ggMJgB\">\u201cThat alone is worth it,\u201d she said, explaining that \u201cof course you\u2019re going to see app downloads higher than a normal Sunday, and search volume higher than a normal day\u2026but the power of the Super Bowl actually is the halo effect for the rest of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Read the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketingbrew.com\/stories\/2023\/08\/03\/inside-rakuten-s-sports-marketing-playbook?utm_source=&#038;utm_medium=syndication&#038;utm_campaign=feed\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rakuten has been something of a good luck charm for the Golden State Warriors\u2026or maybe it\u2019s the other way around. Since the cashback company became the official jersey badge partner of the NBA team in 2017, the Warriors have won two championships, although they already had five under their belt before then. Rakuten, on the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7832","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-marketing"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Inside Rakuten\u2019s sports marketing playbook | Brandiary<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Rakuten has been something of a good luck charm for the Golden State Warriors\u2026or maybe it\u2019s the other way around.Since the cashback company became the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=7832\" 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