Nissan sponsors flagship Sky Sports show Soccer AM
Nissan has signed as the title sponsor for Sky Sports’ flagship football show Soccer AM. The Japanese car-maker will promote its Nissan Navara pick-up through the deal.
Nissan replaces hairstyling brand Brylcreem, which has sponsored the Saturday morning show for the past two years. The deal will run for the 2007/08 season.
As part of the deal, idents from Nissan’s “Respect” advertising campaign will open and close the show. The ads will be screened during the show’s 16 breaks. The sponsorship also includes branding on the Soccer AM micro-site on skysports.com and a highlights show called The Best Bits.
Nissan branding will also appear on the Soccer AM show when downloaded through Sky Anytime TV and Sky Anytime mobile phone clips.
Vicent Wijnen, Nissan’s marketing director, says: “The opportunity to work with Sky across several media is ground-breaking in itself.”
Nissan’s Navara has previously sponsored Channel 4’s Scrapheap Challenge. The deal, signed in 2004, was Nissan’s first major TV sponsorship. It also sponsored the spin-off show Scrapheap Challenge: The Scrappy Race, in a deal worth £1.1m. It axed its association with the programmes in October 2005 in favour of Five’s reality show Commando:VIP.
The Navara launch campaign, created by TBWA London, used images of the Wild West with the strapline: “Nissan Navara. It gets respect”. It aimed to demonstrate that the pick-up has more power then other diesel vehicles in its class.
