Live blog: Samsung Unpacked 2013
What Mobile’s live blog from the Samsung Unpacked 2013 event
News - Alex Walls
March 14, 2013
Vodafone has announced a review of its sponsorship arrangements, one of the casualties will be its sponsorship of the McLaren F1 team.
The announcement comes on the eve of the first race of the 2013 season in Melbourne. Vodafone has said its sponsorship will end at the conclusion of this season.
“We have been very happy with our engagement with McLaren. Our relationship has been a key ingredient in bringing the Vodafone brand to where it is today. However, our brand is evolving, and we’ve concluded we will have less of a need for this kind of exposure in future. We now look forward to further success and brand engagement with McLaren in 2013,” Vodafone Group Chief Commercial Officer Morten Lundal said.
Vodafone has said it will be focused on a new, Vodafone-owned marketing platform, to be developed and implemented throughout 2013. Vodafone has said that it now has achieved near ubiquitous (90%+) awareness of it’s brand in all the markets where the company operates.
“We’ve achieved very high levels of recognition and awareness for the Vodafone brand, supported by our investments in sponsorship. We now want to focus on our own marketing engagement platform to showcase the key attributes of our brand directly to our customers, using digital interactions and live events in ways that are both locally relevant and globally consistent,” he said.
So far McLaren isn’t having much of a year, having lost 2008 F1 champion Lewis Hamilton after the 2012 season. He went to Mercedes AMG.
