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Airwallex Showed B2B How Sport Sponsorship Should Be Done
Most B2B Brands Rent Space in Sport. Airwallex Tried to Own It.
B2B sponsorship money is pouring into sport. Nearly a billion dollars went into Formula One alone last year, most of it from tech and financial services. The instinct is right. The execution, almost universally, isn't.
In his latest column for The Drum, True Co-Founder Cos Mingides argues that B2B keeps making the same mistake. Brands buy the stage, then waste it.
The lazy default
The pattern is depressingly familiar. A B2B brand sponsors a team. Out comes a voiceover about precision. A line about speed. A logo on a car doing 200mph and a tagline claiming the brand operates the same way.
CrowdStrike did it with Mercedes. AT&T did it before them. The sport arrives with its meaning pre-loaded, the brand stands next to it, and nobody remembers a thing. Borrowed meaning never sticks.
What Airwallex got right
Airwallex took a different route with its Arsenal partnership. The brief was honest: most fans had never heard of them, and a logo on a perimeter board wasn't going to fix that.
So they made something worth watching. Spike Lee directed. Thierry Henry starred. Current first-team players appeared alongside him. Sky bought primetime, timed to a live match. It wasn't a sponsorship activation. It was a brand earning attention from an audience that owed it none.
The question every B2B sponsor should ask
You have the stage. What are you going to do with it?
