Carl Stahl GmbH in May 2008 extended the sponsoring agreement with boxing professional Firat Arslan. The cable and lifting technology specialist is also principal sponsor of the triathlete Ricarda Lisk since July 2008. Leonhard Fromm spoke with Managing Director Andreas Urbez about the motives.
Mr Urbez, in early summer your company developed a corporate philosophy for sport sponsoring. How is this to be understood?
ANDREAS URBEZ: We had to define criteria for handling queries in which an athlete, sports club or sport association requests us to provide financial support or payments in kind. Such matters cannot be simply handed out or decided upon depending on one's daily mood. This creates too much dissatisfaction.
What was the trigger for this?
ANDREAS URBEZ: We entered a partnership with Firat Arslan 15 months ago, rather spontaneously in response to the situation because, like Carl Stahl, his home is in Süssen and at the time we were seeking a marketing idea for a new product line, and his sport and athletics fit well to our target group, and the chemistry was simply right. However, this partnership evidently became a nation-wide signal to the sport that there was something to get here.
How can one imagine this?
ANDREAS URBEZ: Since then, up to five queries a week from all forms of sport arrive at our headquarters or subsidiaries, with more or less qualified requests. Therefore we required a competent place to go for such queries to be properly considered and evaluated. However, we also required a catalogue of criteria for objectively evaluating the queries, on the one hand in order to recognise qualified opportunities and approaches for us, on the other hand to also be able to make rejections.
Why is this so important?
ANDREAS URBEZ: Our Arslan engagement had very apparently aroused greediness, which in fact in 99.9% of all cases cannot be satisfied. This doesn't make us any friends. Therefore it must be very clear to everyone why we are saying no - and why we must say it.
Can you give an example?
ANDREAS URBEZ: The largest number of queries have already not complied formally with our requirements. When someone requests by mail or telephone call that we could also finance a tennis racket for him, since we had money even for professional boxing, then we must make it clear to him how distant his project is from our goals. Simultaneously the processes must be standardised, in order to keep the personnel effort for us to a minimum.
And how did it come to the engagement for triathlete Ricarda Lisk?
ANDREAS URBEZ: Her inquiry already formally trumped almost everything else with regard to appearance, expressiveness, and concrete proposals for co-operation and costs. She demonstrated why she and her sport is a good fit for us, offered advertising opportunities on her athletic clothing or personally at competitions, and proved her media presence with press articles. The 27-year-old from Waiblingen was thus seen nation-wide in almost all media as World Cup winner of Hamburg at the beginning of July, and gave interviews in SWR and ZDF.
But instead of winning medals in Beijing, the attractive woman only took 15th place.
ANDREAS URBEZ: She came into the finish as best German, which was one of her most important targets. Moreover, she is young enough to get a medal in four years in London. We also don't win every contract we would like to get. It is decisive to give one's best and to have ambitious goals. The rest is communication.
How do you employ your advertising partners?
ANDREAS URBEZ: For the AMB in Stuttgart, Ricarda was star guest at the booth of our trade fair party. She was at the Eurobike in Friedrichshafen in autumn, where she promoted our Nokon Bowden shift cables and we plan an attractive brochure "Carl Stahl Life" with some of her themes. Other ideas are in the pipeline.
And how do you employ the promotional value of the boxer Firat Arslan?
ANDREAS URBEZ: His portrait is presented worldwide on 10,000 Carl Stahl placards at customer sites. The boxer presents our lifting tackle in product catalogues and in dozens of company ads, and in about 40 industry and specialized media the model athlete in boxing attire serves as an eyecatcher who draws attention to us and brings us to mind. Our red-gray logo on his boxing pants is moreover seen on ZDF live transmissions worldwide by a public of millions.
Can you measure the success?
ANDREAS URBEZ: The image gain is certainly difficult to estimate. With solidity and discipline, however, Arslan is certainly a good ambassador for our company and also creates a form of internal identification for the company, when I consider that with nearly 200 employees, we participated live in his first title defence against Darnell Wilson in the Stuttgart Schleyer Hall. The sponsoring of Firat and Ricarda are a part of our international marketing budget which we must spend in any case to underpin our worldwide presence. We have nothing to give away and in any case we cannot spend this money ignorantly, which is why for the time being we will not make any further commitments.
But you also support clubs in Süssen on the local club level.
ANDREAS URBEZ: Yes, but here other criteria apply, as we have also defined this in our corporate sponsoring philosophy. On the one hand, local is about our social responsibility and on the other hand we consider the clubs, especially the sports clubs, as teaching sites where children are not only just taken off the street, but also learn social competence which we and other companies later can build on in the employment marketplace.
