Q&A with Managing Partner Chris Lawson
The British Continental sat down with Orientation Marketing Managing Partner, Chris Lawson, to discuss the agency’s sponsorship focus.
This post originally appeared on https://thebritishcontinental.co.uk/
FIRST OF ALL, TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOUR COMPANY…
We are a marketing agency based in the north-west of England which focuses on the pharmaceutical, health and other life science industries. I created the business in 2015 with my business partner Gareth and we currently have six employees based in our Chester office, and a satellite office in Toronto, Canada. We work with a global client base who are located in a number of countries such as Switzerland, Germany, France, United States, Australia and of course the UK. We may still be relatively young as a business and small in number, but I’m very proud that we’ve achieved a reputation as a leading marketing services provider in the industries we serve. We’ve got pretty ambitious plans for the future of the business, we have to have to achieve my aim of retiring to Tuscany whilst still relatively young to ride my bike and drink good wine every day!
AND TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOUR SPONSORSHIP INVOLVEMENT IN CYCLING.
I’ve been a keen cyclist since I was 12, moving from mountain bike racing to road (predominantly for functional winter training) and then a combination of both ever since. I was always keen to support cycling in some way if the opportunity arose. I remember in my early cycling days seeing the likes of Mapei and Mercatone Uno as team sponsors and realising that above all else, they were business owners who loved cycling and wanted to support the sport and help it grow.
As a business, we don’t really have a need to invest in marketing (I appreciate the irony, being a marketing agency and all) but Gareth and I agreed that sponsoring a cycling team made sense in terms of aligning the physical and mental health benefits of cycling with our clients objectives of promoting good health and improving the quality of life for their customers. There has been a history of health and drug companies sponsoring teams and races, such as Omega Pharma and Amgen (who sponsored the Tour of California), so we clearly aren’t the only ones to make this link.
“I remember in my early cycling days seeing the likes of Mapei and Mercatone Uno as team sponsors and realising that above all else, they were business owners who loved cycling.”
WHAT LED YOU TO SPONSOR THE CRIMSON PERFORMANCE TEAM IN PARTICULAR?
A good friend of mine messaged me that Matt Hallam was looking for sponsors to get Crimson Performance off the ground. I met with Matt and really liked what he had to say about his different approach to rider recruitment and providing ‘return on investment’ to sponsors. Matt recognised that especially in year one budget dictated the number and quality of races the team could enter, and also to an extent the profile of rider he could recruit. He had to approach return on investment from a different angle and also, as a team, they had to punch massively above their weight (entering the Tour Series in their first season I thought demonstrated their ambition perfectly). The story resonated with what Gareth and I were trying to achieve with Orientation Marketing, and so we seemed totally suited to one another.
WHAT DO YOU GET OUT OF BEING A TEAM SPONSOR?
As I mentioned above, aligning our brand with a healthy and positive team and sport such as cycling means we can use some of the excellent images that Matt provides to sponsors for our own content production such as blogs and website imagery. We also co-create content with the team on topics such as nutrition, recovery and healthy living.
Then we have the benefits of our branding on the team kit, team car and training wear. Being able to see our brand on the team is great at the roadside, but the most value we see on the team sponsorship from a credibility standpoint is in televised races such as the National Road Series and the Tour Series. Being able to inform clients and prospects that they can see our brand featured prominently on Eurosport and ITV was a real draw for us. The Tour Series footage on ITV in 2018 captioned the team name (at that time Crimson Performance RT) and as a direct consequence, we increased our investment in the team to become co-sponsor and ensure future captions would include our company name.
BRITISH CYCLING HAS SAID THERE WILL NO LONGER BE TV HIGHLIGHTS OF THE NATIONAL ROAD SERIES ON EUROSPORT. WHAT IMPACT DO YOU THINK THAT WILL HAVE ON SPONSORS LIKE YOU?
It’s a continual trend in the decline of British Cycling’s support of domestic racing, unfortunately. Every year there seems to be the promise of outreach and new initiatives to the teams and nothing improves…
READ THE FULL INTERVIEW ON THE BRITISH CONTINENTAL
This was an except from The British Continental interview with Chris Lawson regarding Orientation’s announcement to become title sponsors of Crimson Performance-Orientation Marketing Race Team.
See the full interview here.
