‘We’re proud of the communities we serve and passionate about supporting grass roots football’

With tension mounting around England’s place in the UEFA Women’s EURO final this weekend, Michelle Wicker, Brand Marketing Manager for Euronics UK, tells ERT why supporting and promoting the sport in a major new sponsorship deal has been so important, and how Euronics members can still get involved.

“We have localised our activity so it’s meaningful for our members, our suppliers and our employees,” she says. “They can be proud of it and the communities we serve.”

Q&A

Q: Euronics International is an official partner of UEFA Women’s Football. Why have you struck up this partnership? What was the appeal?

Michelle Wicker: There’s an international story and a local one. Firstly, the decision was taken to sponsor UEFA Women’s Football, which we’re incredibly pleased about. It gives us lots of opportunities to talk about things we care about, like showcasing equality, promoting health and wellbeing, building confidence and self-image, and driving positive social change.

We believe that women’s football and grassroots girls’ football can do those things and we think Euronics agents can help with that. It will also strengthen our relationship with our members, and we want to help them serve their local communities.

We know that women’s sport – football, in particular – is gaining huge interest, so it’s great timing.

We’ve also taken the campaign down to grassroots level. What does it mean for our members? It’s about community – some of our members have stores that have been handed down through generations.

We’ve localised our activity so it’s meaningful for our members, our suppliers and our employees – it’s great for them. They can be proud of it and the communities we serve.

Q: Have you had a good response to the initiative from the members? Are they getting involved and running with the ball, so to speak?

MW: Absolutely! We’re encouraging members to sponsor local girls’ and women’s football teams. That’s where we’ve had a huge impact – better than we thought we would.

At the Euronics Showcase in April we created a Fan Zone, which was very celebratory of our sponsorship.

We had a football shootout and tricks with Taylor MacDonald from Reading FC Women – she engaged the crowd. We also had the UEFA Women’s EURO trophy there, a football mascot and an ‘activation book’, showing members how they could get involved. All our staff were dressed in football shirts, too.

It really got the message out there – we had over 100 Euronics agents who registered that they were interested in sponsoring a local team and 62 of them asked for our help to get involved. We’re over the moon!

We’ve also run two pilot schemes with members – Albany Radio, which is sponsoring the Ware Youth FC U11 girls’ football team, and Pooles Domestic with FC Britannia.

Q: The EURO final takes place at Wembley this Sunday (31 July), so what marketing activity has there been and what will there be around the final?

MW: Our logo will be on show during the games, we have updated the livery on our lorries, we have ticket giveaway competitions on social media and we also ran two radio competitions, with Heart and Absolute Radio, for people to win family tickets to the final.

There’s also POS – some of which is linked to products, like ‘The Ultimate Game Night’, with TV and audio.

We also have a theme called ‘Together We Are Electric’, which is based around the spirit of team, with a nice play on words to tie into our electric appliances.

We’ve been posting on social media and encouraging our members to take part – to send us pictures of their displays on Facebook and the winner will receive a gift voucher.

There are two hashtags we’re using: #UEFAWomensFootball #WomensEuro The campaign is definitely going to get louder towards the final this weekend!