Marketing on Marathon Monday
Today some 25,000 runners will travel 26.2 miles from Hopkinton, MA to Boston in the 112th running of the Boston Marathon. Our office in Copley Square happens to be just a couple of blocks from the finish line, so I always try to swing by to check it out (although with 50,000 fans expected along the race route with many in Boston, its hard to get a great view at the finish line unless you show up hours before to park your lawn chair and cooler).
At any sporting event you’ll find BIG brand sponsors and advertisers aplenty. For the first time in 112 years, corporate ads have been permitted on the marathon starting and finishing lines. According to the Boston Athletic Association in a recent AP article, these changes illustrate distance running’s dependence on sponsors - for prize money, publicity, operating expenses, donations to cities and towns along the route to provide public safety and other services, etc.
I stopped by the finish line on my way to work this morning to take a few photos and saw that John Hancock is one of two brands with a presence at the finish line. JH has sponsored the Boston Marathon for 23 years now providing a variety of services as well as this year’s $796,000 prize purse (the largest in the history of the race). They also help support the thousands of media who cover the race and their corporate communications department manages the press room and coordination of press materials and credentials.
Adidas also had banners placed at the finish line and I heard that they partnered with MarathonGuide.com and WCSN (World Championship Sports Network) to provide a webcast of the marathon. Poland Spring is another sponsor, providing TONS of bottles of water at the finish line for runners. I also saw “wrapped” vehicles from Red Bull and Powerade, and multiple ads from Nike. Many other sponsors included Saturn, PowerBar, JetBlue, The Boston Phoenix and the Newton Wellesley Hospital - who actually started their own NWH blog to document a team who is running the marathon on behalf of the hospital.
I wonder what the original marathon organizers from over 100 years ago would think of all of these super sponsors and banners galore? Is it too commercial? I don’t think so - especially compared to what we see in other professional sports like the NHL or MLB. If you think about all the money and planning that goes into an event like this, it makes sense. Sponsors are very necessary and have become a valuable resource to the organizers and the runners themselves.
Good luck to all the runners and, to the sponsors, best wishes for a successful year!
I was one of the lucky ones who took the day off yesterday so I could watch the marathon. I grew up in Boston and it is one of my favorite days in the city. Towards the end of the day I met a runner who is part of the “50 Marathons in 50 States Club.” Yes, that means he has run marathons in all 50 states (and the prize … a T Shirt). Yesterday was his 66th marathon. He is from Pittsburgh and ran the Pittsburgh Marathon, when it was still in existence. The race was cancelled a few years back because the event lost its title sponsor. Although the Pittsburgh Marathon was small in comparison to the Boston marathon, it still attracted more than 6,000 runners. I would have to agree with Elicia that sponsors play an integral part in these types of events. Organizers are optimistic that the Pittsburgh Marathon will return in 2009, of course with the help of corporate sponsors.