Steve Mingle - A Football Fling: Could Oxford United Really Steal the Heart of a Manchester City Fanatic?

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2015

Pitch Publishing

A2 Yeoman Gate

Yeoman Way

Durrington

BN13 3QZ

www.pitchpublishing.co.uk

Steve Mingle, 2015

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A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library

Print ISBN 978-1-78531-056-0

eBook ISBN: 978-1-78531-109-3

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14 May 2013. Its 5pm on a normal working day. Which means that not much work is getting done. I receive an e-mail from Paul, my business partner, headed Oxford United Shirt Draw. It says, simply, Fancy a punt? I look at the details and see that local businesses are being offered the chance to take part in a raffle to become Oxfords shirt sponsors for the forthcoming season. It costs a grand to enter. Pauls got the e-mail, not because of our business, which as a two-man outfit is far too small to be on the Clubs radar screen, but because hes the chairman of, and driving force behind, Stonesfield Strikers, his local villages youth football club. With 12 teams, the mighty Strikers are one of the regions most successful and highly regarded grassroots clubs and are a community partner of Oxford United.

I dont have any particular affinity for Oxford United but, unusually for me, no aversion towards them either. Like Paul, Im football-daft and it would be quite something to see our company logo on a proper teams shirts. We already sponsor three of the Stonesfield teams, but this is a small gesture of support for the local community, rather than an investment made in the expectation of benefitting our business.

I reply instantly to his e-mail. Why not? with, as an afterthought, Great idea on their part, by the way. Cant imagine well win, but Ive no problem supporting such a smart initiative.

I dont give it too much more thought, and a couple of weeks later Im away on holiday when I get a text from Paul saying, We are the selected away shirt sponsors for Oxford United!!! How cool is that? Goal highlights on Sky and BBC every other week. Maybe even a live game. Shirts with our company name across the front in the club shop. Fans flocking in droves to away games in shirts bearing the legend Isinglass Consulting.

At first, all I can think about is the buzz well get out of seeing our name here, there and everywhere. But the broader picture soon comes into view. Weve just acquired tens of thousands of pounds worth of advertising for an outlay of a grand. Weve got a potential new customer base, the vast majority of whom if not absolutely all of them dont know us from Adam. And its not just the 5-6,000 who regularly attend home games wholl be within reach, its everyone with an interest in the Club and who follow its fortunes via the website, local press and other media.

At the very least well be having loads of fun over the next year. At best, well be having loads of fun and seeing some tangible business benefits. But how do we go about it? We can hardly expect people to start putting work our way just because they see our name on a football shirt, so what opportunities can we realistically expect to generate, and how will the Club help us? How will we fit Oxford United into our already busy lives? And, most of all, will we end up as passionate and committed Oxford fans, or will it be just a one season stand, with the Club erased from our memories the morning after the seasons over?

A BIT of background. Were a two-man business, set up in 2007, and our main activity is to advise companies on pensions and pay. You wouldnt call it exhilarating. But weve made a decent fist of it, and are proud of what weve achieved. It certainly beats working for a big company, which is what both of us did for many years before taking the plunge and doing our own thing.

Pensions is not an industry notable for generating raw excitement for those of us unfortunate enough to work in it, so we keep ourselves sane by indulging in a few alternative activities, notably running corporate events quizzes, gameshow nights, team-building days and the like. We enjoy doing this so much that were in the process of setting up a separate company specifically to provide this service. Weve worked together on and off, mostly on, for the last 13 years, and are quite definitely mates first, business partners second. Were both football fanatics. Ive been a Manchester City season ticket holder for donkeys years, at last getting some kind of compensation for the decades of pain, suffering and ridicule. Which naturally means that I loathe and detest Manchester United.

Funnily enough, Paul happens to be a Manchester United fan. Hes a typically intermittent season ticket holder, a self-confessed glory-hunter, picking and choosing his seasons according to how well he thinks theyll do. Somehow, our divergent allegiances have never damaged our personal or professional relationship, even if people who dont know us too well might occasionally think otherwise. The flow of insults and abuse between us is pretty much relentless.

The day after we win the draw, Pauls invited into the Club for a photoshoot and to discuss marketing options. We immediately get plenty of coverage in the Oxford Mail and on the club website. And Paul is presented with a hastily assembled brochure detailing the range of advertising and promotional opportunities, and their associated costs. You can feel his enthusiasm bursting through the e-mail on my laptop screen. Hes had a fantastic day, theyve treated him as if wed paid the full whack for the sponsorship deal rather than just being the jammy winners of a 1,000-entry fee raffle. Im having a great break in France, but cant wait to get back and become immersed in it all.

We meet up a few days later and look through the options. Pitch-side advertising hoardings, concourse ads, Oxford Mail flyers, e-mail campaigns to some 35,000 folk on the clubs contact list, website ads, match programme advertising. Theres a temptation to go for the lot, to enjoy the sight of Isinglass Consulting here there and everywhere. But we need to keep our business heads on. What we offer is pensions advice to companies. Out of the 5,000 or so folk who regularly attend Oxfords home games, how many of them will be in a position to commission our alleged expertise? Quite possibly zero. Most certainly very few. But there might be some potential buyers on the clubs list of contacts.

We need to make a basic decision. Do we just stick with the shirt sponsorship and enjoy it while it lasts or do we really go for it, work closely with the Club and make a concerted effort to take advantage of our luck? Can we realistically expect to reach people who are genuinely interested in what we have to offer? Do we have the time to commit to making the effort?

We decide to go for it. We were never going to do anything else. Lets get stuck in and see where it takes us. We go for the advertising hoardings, the concourse ads and the website banners. Hoardings for the general name awareness, and the kick of seeing our logo in a prominent place at home games and on TV highlights. The concourse ads will enable us to provide a bit more detail about exactly what we do, and we know well be capable of putting together some eye-catching stuff. Well position the ads in a mix of locations between the stands and the corporate entertainment areas. And in order to provide maximum reach in generating name-awareness, we go for the website banner.