| Sports: | Marathon |
| Career: | Swiss marathon record holder |
| European championship Silver Marathon 2018 | |
| 7th in Olympic Games 2016 |
Starting Position
After many years of collaboration, Tadesse Abraham, the current Swiss record holder for the marathon, lost his personal main sponsor in the summer of 2018 due to the company’s strategic changes. Samm group is required by his client Tadesse to find a new main sponsor within a few weeks as it represents a vital source of income for his training and team setup.
Challenge
For an athlete, the personal main sponsor is on the one hand the main financial source of income and on the other is an important factor in successful marketing via activity as a brand ambassador.
Three factors make our search more difficult: First of all, Tadesse spends a large part of the year training in camps in Ethiopia or at races which makes appearances sometimes difficult for its potential sponsor. Secondly, the marketing budgets for the year have pretty much been tied-up for most companies. Thirdly, Tadesse cannot provide logo presence on his shirt for international races due to the IAAF restrictions.
The samm Approach
Having identified the business and marketing needs of our prospect, we drew-up a strategic proposal which would make sense to them in terms of employee and customer engagement as well as CSR. Their charity mission was also highly relevant to Tadesse’s story. We tried also to look at linking the person Tadesse with the company in this partnership beyond the sporting and performance aspects. Their relevant market was national so the fact that Tadesse can speak German and French were an added value.
The contract with Generali Switzerland was signed before Christmas 2018 beyond all expectations. The insurance company with offices throughout Switzerland has been involved in athletics since 2017. As the main sponsor of marathon’s races across Switzerland, Generali Switzerland will capitalise on this partnership to enter into campaigns such as motivating employees at the workplace, engage with clients and partners as well as promote healthy and active lifestyle. The charity aspect, Generali endorses the project «The Human Safety Net» and gets involved together with the ex-refugee Tadesse who is relevant to the story. In short, all represented the perfect fit with a logical rationale which we presented to Generali.