Youth & Sports Marketing

Last April, sports fans' attention was focused on over 60 basketball, hockey, 7’s rugby, cross country and swimming teams where thousands of athletes were vying for a national title in the KSSSA (Kenya Secondary Schools Sports Association) National 1st Term Games. Traditionally, national brands dominate sponsorship in the anticipation that the tournament's glow will rub off on their brands. The hope: that millions of fans (courtesy of television and print media) will also notice their brands! Indeed, marketing your brand during the national championships means you’re part of something historic and magical – like when a guy named Biko Adema single-handedly destroyed Maseno in 2005, or when in 2001 a barefoot Alice Timbilil outclassed the cross country field and then a week later repeated the same feat at the senior level...

But sponsoring the National Games, often means dropping a boatload of cash, and that's where most brands give up. They decide not to play. Here's the truth: You don’t have to spend millions to be a part of the action.

By hand-picking the right schools and putting your shillings directly into the school community, your brand can share in the excitement of high school sports and win some fans - while not breaking the bank.
If you’re running a brand on a tight budget and looking to take advantage of the goodwill and high brand engagement that sports marketing delivers, here are the schools I would recommend you look at targeting. These schools attract a combined spectator audience of more than 250,000 (this is far much more than the national championships can deliver). This audience comprises of the school’s student community, the general student community (not from the respective school) that often visits these schools for organized tournaments and the community around the school that often comes to watch the games.
These schools dominate their regions, have enthusiastic fans, and boast interesting centres of activity that allow you to reach students in a new way.
You should also know that due to the free education program, non-educational activities like sports have had to contend with serious budget cuts. Schools are now more accommodating to corporate sponsors who add value to their sports teams. Gone are the days of ‘in kind’ partnerships, when providing the school with a crate of soda was deemed as sponsorship, school administrations are now much wiser and want hard cash to run their sports teams.

My Top 5 Schools For Effective In-School Sports Marketing
1. Laiser Hill Academy – Sitting comfortably in the heart of Kiserian, Laiser Hill is a mixed school with a population of about 700. Currently the National & Rift Valley champions, Laiser Hill has a fanatical following around the area and are the toast of Kajiado District. Laiser Hill’s support also spills over to the Nairobi suburbs of Ongata Rongai and Kiserian.
2. St. Austin’s Academy – Prestigious, up market and synonymous with high school hoops. When you need to align your brand with the A,B market, look no further than this institution. They also host a lot of inter-school activities which target similar upmarket, private institutions, so partnering with this school’s basketball team will give you major inroads into this market.
3. Maseno High School – Nothing says you connect more with Nyanza’s youth than ‘endorsing’ Maseno High as the Provincial Basketball Champions. A simple billboard should do the trick. Remember the ‘President Obama’ endorsement billboards in December last year?
4. Mang’u High School – Probably has one of Kenya’s most influential alumnus associations (which boasts President Kibaki). Align yourself with the success of their basketball and hockey teams, and the influential alma mater factor is never too hard to wiggle in.
5. Mombasa Baptist - This institution’s campus is loaded with centres of activity. The fact that it is mixed and has a large population only adds to its attractiveness.

If you feel that this type of approach will work for you, why not take advantage of the 2nd term games? Remember, the 2nd term games calendar is entirely different from the 1st term, thus you need to engage an entirely different set of schools.