Reach, Association and Purpose.

How cycle sponsorship amplifies Brother's ultimate positioning statement. By Tim Johns and Phil Jones.

Over the last decade, Brother UK has become synonymous with elite British cycle sport, a world of speed, adrenaline, excitement and technology, and strength, courage, determination and suffering. From televised races with an audience of millions to grassroots teams and support crews, the breadth of our investments offers a window on the comparative value of reach and association.  

By constructing a comprehensive portfolio - teams, riders, races and in-race support crews - we've worked to ensure that the business has a meaningful presence across domestic cycling.

With targeted investments, Brother UK now reaches a vast constituency of prospective customers, both aficionados and casual observers, while aiming to win the respect of those whose sacrifices create the champions of tomorrow.

For example, by sponsoring the Tour of Britain and the Women’s Tour, international races with world-class fields that enjoy daily coverage on national terrestrial television for a week or more, we place our logo before millions of viewers. We know that this audience will include IT procurement professionals and business owners, who specify our products in large-scale organisations, as well as members of the public, who might be considering a home printer.

We know that the former are likely to be dedicated followers of the sport; senior professionals whose engagement with cycling over the last decade has been well-documented. We know that the latter are more likely to be casual observers, but this lower personal investment in the sport aligns with their lower investment in Brother UK. Passion can be a key driver when deciding investments worth thousands of pounds. Recognition is sufficient for a purchase of hundreds.

Reach is the goal that drives our investment in televised races. By contrast, association drives our sponsorship of three domestic road teams, each with separate squads for elite men and women, and our funding of the Neutral Service p/b Brother UK support vehicles that provide vital in-race support. These investments embody our strapline, #AtYourSide. 

The gleaming, high-performance Neutral Service vehicles, laden with spare bikes and wheels and smartly presented in our black and white livery, represent the transformative power of corporate investment in grassroots sport. We’ve professionalised and raised standards for all racing participants.

Our pursuit of “permission to play” from a valuable constituency, and our avoidance of the more typical “wallpapering” effect, easily identified as transitory and cynical by those who have given their lives to a sport, continues in our team sponsorships. Critically, the teams provide the crucible in which the value of association ignites: the human stories of their staff and riders. From firefighters to doctors working on the frontline of Covid, many of our athletes serve our sponsorship off the bike, as well as on.

Turn up to the biggest races in which our sponsored teams and riders compete, and you’d be hard-pressed to discern the amateur from the professional (perhaps only the size of the bus gives it away). It’s a tribute to the standards of our teams, and the dedication of our riders, most of whom have full-time jobs, that in annual showcases like the Tour of Britain and Tour de Yorkshire, those who carry the Brother logo also carry the fight to star riders from top-tier squads with multi-million Euro budgets.

Association offers a wider frame of reference, however. Ultimately, our sponsorship of elite domestic road racing is about creating platforms for people to improve their potential. Whether we’re sponsoring a team or a race, or providing neutral service support, we’re allowing someone – manager, rider or volunteer - to aspire to something, and become something that, previously, they might not have been. 

While reach is directly aligned with the hard economics of return on investment, association embraces the sheer joy we take from seeing people improve and growing themselves. Internally, we use the strapline “To grow ourselves through growing others”. From a professional perspective, we want our channel partners and business partners to grow through our relationship and the Brother products they sell. By placing the same ethos in our cycle sponsorship, however, we amplify our ultimate positioning statement.

British domestic road racing might not be the best investment for businesses who are only chasing views, eyeballs and bang for buck. Other sports, may offer greater reach in terms of the live audience attending the event, not to mention a larger television audience. Combine the millions of viewers with the tens of thousands of fans in the stadium and the cost per eyeball is quite low.

Internally, we use the strapline “To grow ourselves through growing others”. 

Brother UK, of course, knows a fair bit about stadium sport. We served Manchester City as shirt sponsor for 12 years, after all. But with cycling, we adopt a wider perspective to celebrate some of our key credentials as a brand: technology, productivity, success, and more. By operating at a deeper level, we’ve found a sport that exemplifies many of our core values. 

Naturally, cycling also supplies reach, content, and brand ambassadors – all of the tools necessary to carry our brand towards the audience – but, additionally, it allows us to showcase our wider purpose as a business: "to make people and businesses more successful, more quickly". Each young ‘graduate’ from a Brother UK-sponsored team now earning a living as a professional rider in the UCI WorldTour is a testament to the success of that ambition. 

 A strengthened sense of purpose is perhaps the ultimate return on investment. Evidence from research shows that organisations driven by purpose tend to develop greater returns in the long-term than those that are not. Typically, a good team of people that buys into what the business is trying achieve – critically, because it creates a greater impact than personal financial gain – achieves greater loyalty, output and discretionary effort.

This, in turn, leads to business growth, success and longevity: outcomes, arguably, very high on the list of all leaders.