More than sporting success
Check out @JehueGordon’s Twitter feed and you’ll find video of the 2013 400 metre hurdles World Championships gold medallist vigorously flicking heavy ropes in the gym before dropping dramatically to the floor. “This rope is a killer,” he writes on his feed. It’s a glimpse into the training regimen of a world-class athlete.
We can all imagine the hours of gruelling exertion required for an athlete to compete against the world’s best. Not many of us have thought of the effort required to get the financial support to allow the athlete to put in those hours.
The 24-year-old hurdler, who has taken the uncommon decision to train locally rather than accepting a track and field scholarship at a US college, has three local sponsors helping him on his way to the Olympics in Rio. Bmobile has sponsored him since 2008, Toyota since 2013, and Courts recently accepted his proposal for a partnership. “It’s not about being fortunate or getting lucky or anything like that,” he says when asked if he considers himself fortunate since only a relatively small proportion of local Olympic-calibre athletes are afforded corporate support. “In order to achieve, you need to work hard. You need to put in that work, you need to put in the hours required.”
But as Brian Lewis, President of the Trinidad and Tobago Olympic Committee (TTOC) points out, athletes are competing for scarce corporate CSR funding, not only with other athletes but with other causes. Sporting success therefore has to be complemented with a strong personal brand. (That means building a strong personal brand to complement your sporting success.) “There are some athletes who are better at building their brand,” says Lewis. “But we don’t have a tradition of that, so you can’t expect athletes to wake up one day and go counter-intuitive to the culture.”
Lewis has been beating the drum of market-focused change, urging sporting organisations and athletes to consider the marketing principles behind an “association” rather than viewing corporate support as an entitlement. Marketing jargon spills out of him: win-win, compelling selling proposition, market-driven metrics. The athlete must perform and make himself desirable.
Jehue has built a brand. He graduated from UWI with Honours, hosts a TV programme interviewing other top athletes, and he stayed local. He tweets under the persona Young Prince, emphasizing “Ambition” and “Hard Work”. “We try to push a brand whereby I’m a young ambassador for Trinidad and Tobago. I’m a growing individual who is aiming to inspire the youths and the future of Trinidad and Tobago,” Jehue remarks.
In terms of promoting mutual benefit, he’s on the same page as the TTOC President. Jehue’s sponsors expect that he’ll make himself available for speeches and school tours, mostly in the off-season, when he isn’t consumed by training. He posts to Instagram and has 6,000-plus followers on Twitter. Apart from sharing bits of his training regimen, general sports news, and the results of fellow athletes, he’ll occasionally use his social media platforms to acknowledge his sponsors.
What is corporate T&T looking for in an athlete? In announcing the choice of Olympic-bound sailor Andrew Lewis as one of his company’s three sports brand ambassadors, Flow’s Managing Director Brian Collins said when he met the yachtsman for the first time: “Andrew was cool, well dressed and extremely affable. Now we know more. Following his accident in December we’ve all come to know the survivor who is extremely passionate about life and his sport.” Passion and presentability: It’s a tiny window into what guides corporate decision-making. Plus, everyone roots for a survivor.”
Jehue says he accepts that business is about maximizing profits, but points out that the list of sponsored athletes is relatively short: swimmer George Bovell, Andrew Lewis, javelin thrower Keshorn Walcott, sprinter Richard Thompson, and himself. There are others, but not that many. “To be honest, I don’t give them wrong, but I give them wrong at the same time,” says Jehue, equivocating about the level of support from corporate T&T. “If you’re supposed to see sports on a global level and what it does—for the individual, for the brand, for their company and also for the country—then they should not think twice about investing in athletes.”
The criteria for accessing the Ministry of Sports’ Elite Athlete Assistance programme were recently changed, which meant a cut to Jehue’s state funding. To an athlete, who gets “picked”, this can seem capricious. “The market still is not the way you would expect it to be, because it’s not just about me, it’s also about the other athletes. What about the other athletes who are just as successful, but are not really getting the same support? Or those who are probably not as successful, but are getting more support?”
Brian Lewis puts the onus on the athletes and the sporting organisations that often lobby for funding on their behalf. He wants to see a movement away from the “begging bowl kind of approach” to one where the sporting body tries to “strategically discern” what a company wants in return. “You have to now identify where the win-win is because at the end of the day, sport can’t really compete in the philanthropy market with HIV/AIDS, breast cancer, that kind of thing.”
Since Lewis believes that sport can’t outcompete other causes for CSR funding, he says stakeholders must convince the private sector that they can drive sales. Sponsorship becomes a marketing relationship. “If it is I can prove to you that I can generate off of my social media, or my database access, $50 million a year in sales—I’m just calling a figure—then the valuation of that association is based on an expanding figure. Whereas on the CSR side, you may have $3 million for CSR.”
He admits, however, that there are drawbacks to viewing athlete sponsorship as an investment opportunity requiring a measurable return on investment. If Corporate Social Responsibility no longer exists, deserving athletes will be left behind. “The downside of that,” says Lewis, “will be National Sporting Organisations and athletes and stakeholders that aren’t able to deliver best-in-class from a branding perspective, will struggle.”
Others will flourish. With only a few meets left before Rio 2016, Jehue hopes to peak at just the right moment to stride smoothly to the Olympic podium. It would be the ultimate way to satisfy all concerned. Most of all, the Young Prince himself.