Swimming in internationally-recognised swimming competitions, including the largest open-water swim in the world, the Midmar Mile, one is immediately confronted by the importance of sport sponsorships.
The Midmar is sponsored by Aquelle, a South African bottled water producer that prides itself in producing a “uniquely wholesome brand of water” from a source of “exceptionally pure natural spring [that] water flows under the earth’s surface”.
The brand’s alignment with swimming seem clear: both are connected with water, health and naturalness.
Other brands appear to have locked on to the associations with water and swimming too.
This includes British Gas, which was the sponsor for British swimming for some time, helping youngsters’ learn-to-swim programmes and supporting British elite swimmers.
This was because the gas company was aware that swimmers were more likely to choose gas than many other market segments.
This may have been because gas is sometimes considered more environmentally-friendly than electricity, and might appeal to a sense of healthiness and eco-consciousness, including on water quality and scarcity issues, that have sometimes been associated with swimming and the swimming community.
Interestingly, though, swimwear brands are sometimes considered the more obvious sponsors for swimming competitions, since swimmers are directly interested in certain brands’ commitments to apparel functionality and chlorine resistance, among other issues.
Swimmers are also natural brand partners since fitness-conscious swimmers’ social media profiles oftentimes display swimmers in the sponsors’ products, thereby promoting the products more or less continuously to a group of swimming followers.
However, it is instructive to see that other brands, including Aquelle, have developed an excellent marketing strategy, which includes providing fit race finishers, which I would assume would prefer water over less healthy beverages, with new flavoured waters for testing.
In addition, a quick scan of social-media posts show many race entrants clutching their complimentary favoured water bottle, that they receive upon completion of the race, blissfully unaware that the posts would subtly show an endorsement for the brand.
Deborah Spicer writes for the trend-mapping futurist blog, Spicy Trends. To subscribe to a newsletter on trends in society and, specifically, in marketing, mail deborah@spicytrends.co.za.