The Portuguese national team might have taken home the Henri Delaunay Trophy but they weren’t the only winners at the UEFA Euro 2016.
As the first-ever Chinese company to sponsor the UEFA European Championship, Hisense has now proven itself to be a stand out from many other Chinese brands.
To kick things off, Hisense branding (both pitch side and in stadia) was on display at over 50 games during the tournament, seen by 2.2 billion people watching live and on TV. Hisense also created stand out product displays at the UEFA fan-zones across France that were visited by a potential 3.3 million people.
This boost in visibility is already paying off. In just four short weeks, Hisense brand awareness with consumers in the UK rose from 7 per cent to 19 per cent during the tournament. According to UK-based research company Opinium, Hisense has shot up their EURO 2016 Brand Table, rising to 12th from 18th at the start in terms of strength of association to EURO 2016.
The Hisense branding was a small part in a wider integrated campaign that included social and user-generated content elements. The @HisenseFootball accounts were created specifically for the tournament and connected football fans with Hisense branded content including reactive real time posts relating to all of the games in the tournament as well as integrating the Hisense mascots Harley and Beta.
According to social intelligence experts, Synthesio, Hisense was the third-most mentioned sponsor on social media during UEFA Euro 2016 with 22,700 mentions.
Operating across Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, the Hisense social media presence reached an additional 40 million people online.
Hisense took a very creative approach when it came to reaching new audiences. As part of the campaign and bringing product further to the forefront of the sponsorship, Hisense worked with renowned ‘football freestylers’, including Sean Garnier and freekickerz, creating ten pieces of original content.
Hisense launched a competition alongside this activity, ‘Quest for Glory’ featuring Harley and Beta practising daily to get ready for tournament. Using #HisenseQuest fans could enter the competition by showing how they prepared for UEFA EURO 2016 for a chance to win Hisense products and tickets to the final.
UEFA Euro 2016 may be over but Hisense is still a big supporter of UEFA, sponsoring international competitions until the end of 2017, including the European Qualifiers for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, the 2017 UEFA European Under-21 Championship and UEFA Women’s EURO 2017.
Closer to home, Hisense is excited to be involved with Australian sport, so stay tuned for some big news about the Australian Open Tennis Championships, the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix, in Melbourne and more!
Australia
