Wasabi Technologies and Liverpool Football Club
The 6th Annual Awards
- Best Brand Sponsorship
ABOUT THIS ENTRY
Wasabi Technologies, a US-based tech startup, began expanding to Europe five years ago, with the goal of bringing affordable and high-performance cloud storage to France, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands. Wasabi wanted to build its reputation as a disruptive technology provider so when IT decisions were being made, buyers would be familiar. To achieve this, Wasabi chose to partner with Liverpool Football Club (LFC) to give the company access to the largest football fan base in the world and legitimacy by association, along with access to executive-level technology buyers often at sporting events.
How does this represent “Excellence in Engagement”?
Wasabi’s work with LFC has seen marked success in terms of fan engagement. Ongoing social media tagging/promotion allows Wasabi to tap into LFC’s diverse and expansive fan base, turning the spotlight on the brand and driving remarkable levels of engagement and interaction. Wasabi drives additional engagements by giving away signed jerseys and tickets to games, often in conjunction with the Hot or Not videos.
By tapping into Liverpool Football Club’s passionate fanbase with a worldwide reach, Wasabi has been able to digitally mobilize an army of previously unreached audiences. Further, this partnership is engaging fans in ways that other tech – sports partnerships are not. For example, the Wasabi/LFC partnership receives 82% more average views per post than Oracle earns with Golden State Warriors; 44% more brand engagements than Amazon Web Services.
Wasabi’s partnership goes beyond the norm and seeks to engage with fans on a deeper level. The jointly developed ‘Red Hot Beats’ music therapy program with the LFC Foundation for local Liverpool community youth suffering from mental health issues.
Objective
As Wasabi began to rapidly expand across the globe, Europe became an increasingly critical market. Determined to prioritize brand growth in Europe in a disruptive way, Wasabi set out to discover the best step forward. After crunching the numbers, Wasabi learned it would take $4-5M in each of the three markets to do the paid media required for brand building. Wasabi wanted to be more disruptive than that. Instead, the company could partner globally with Liverpool Football Club (LFC) to build brand awareness among a large audience.
The goals of this global growth campaign were to increase name recognition in France, DACH, and the UK, and ultimately build the company’s reputation so when tech decisions were being made, buyers would be familiar with the Wasabi.
Beyond increasing brand awareness, reaching IT decision-makers was a critical part of this partnership. Wasabi also wanted to ensure that the campaign with LFC was holistic and incorporated different media platforms and in-person events and activations.
Strategy & Execution
Wasabi set out to create a partnership with LFC that was integrated across media platforms, including social and broadcast. A pillar of the partnership is the “Hot or Not” content series, which consisted of players rating topics as “Hot” or “Not”. The series is featured on LFC’s Youtube account and shared across the social media accounts of the team and our company. Social media played a key role in this partnership, with ongoing social media tagging/promotion allowing us to tap into LFC’s diverse and expansive fan base.
Throughout the campaign we incorporated in-person events that included LFC legend appearances to drive interest in the brand and encourage event attendees to engage with our team. Another element of this strategy is our corporate social responsibility program ‘Red Hot Beats.’ This year, our UK team was able to participate in the community day with LFC Foundation, helping Wasabi make in-person connections with the Liverpool fan community.
In 2023, our relationship with LFC accelerated as the club had officially become a paid customer. That meant we received “Official Cloud Storage Partner” designation, and we could now do proactive media relations with this story and leverage the club’s top digital executive as an advocate.
Organizations
- Wasabi Technologies
- Liverpool Football Club
Links
Featured
- Diogo Jota
- Dominik Szoboszlai
- Ibrahima Konate
- Joel Matip
- Roberto Firmino
- Virgil van Dijk
- Cody Gakpo
- Curtis Jones
- and Adrian
Credits
Celebrate in NYC
Join us for the 6th Annual Hashtag Sports Awards™ on the evening of June 6, 2024 as we celebrate finalists and reveal the winners of this year's awards live during the show.
