Inside Zip’s ‘surgical’ approach to sports sponsorships

Many major sports sponsorships are designed to generate brand awareness across the country, if not the world.

Zip, a digital financial services company known for its buy now, pay later product in the US, got in the sports game for a different reason.

“We are not right for everybody,” Chief Marketing and Customer Officer Jinal Shah said. “For us to be responsible marketers, it is not a spray-and-pray…Awareness with the right audiences, at the right moment in their journey, is even more important than broad awareness.”

Because Shah and her team are more focused on product consideration and preference than awareness, they’re taking a “surgical and strategic” approach to sponsorship, homing in on just a couple of key regions where they’d like to build a deep brand presence, she said in an exclusive conversation with Marketing Brew.

Zip’s recent partnerships so far have been primarily concentrated in Philadelphia, including deals with the Phillies, the Flyers, and Xfinity Mobile Arena. Today, the company officially added the 76ers to its roster.

“The timing was critical,” Shah said. “They open their first season with LeBron James on October 20, and him joining this season made the timing just perfect for us to figure out how we integrate on the ticketing system, which is where payments can play a major role.”

Philly fanatics

Zip doesn’t have any special ties to Philly. Instead, Shah told us her team chose the city simply for its hyper-engaged sports fandom.

When the company first started experimenting with sports sponsorships a couple of years ago, it was with more of an eye toward broad awareness through partnerships with Nascar and WNBA star Kelsey Plum, she said. After that, though, the Zip team decided to test out what would happen if they “focused on building a real presence” in sports year-round in one city and gathering data from A/B testing different activations to determine success metrics, Shah said.

In addition to activating in Philly-area venues, Zip has also run local out-of-home and movie-theater ads, she added.

“It wasn’t just about [showing] up at the stadium during a game and [calling] it a day,” Shah said. “We really wanted to build that surround-sound experience…It’s giving us tremendous amounts of actionable data on what is the right combination of investments, where, to whom, at what time, for us to actually yield the most maximum impact.”

Zip has increased its US customer base by about 10% in the last year, according to the company. The next step, Shah said, is moving further up the funnel toward awareness, somewhat of a reversal of typical sports marketing goals.

Basketball brain

Showing up consistently is key to building consumers’ understanding of a multistep product like the Zip BNPL app, which requires users to download the app, set up a profile, and get approval to begin using it. To build that awareness, Zip has explored options like jersey-patch deals and venue takeovers, Shah said, but for now, its sports activations have been slightly more straightforward.

With the 76ers, the plan this season is to incorporate Zip branding on courtside LED signs and videoboards around Xfinity Mobile Arena, activate on the team’s digital channels, and offer perks tied to tickets and merch on the Sixers’ site and at the arena.

“The goal here is to make this partnership extremely useful to fans before they get to the game, and then when they are at the game,” Shah told us.

It’s Zip’s standard approach to sponsorship, she said. The company is also serving as the presenting sponsor of the Atlanta Dream’s WNBA playoff run this year, since Zip has a dense customer base in Georgia and a core audience of millennial women, Shah added.

Zip is still working on building its relationship with the W and finding its place within that league, she said, so fans of basketball—and other sports—could see more of the brand in coming seasons.

“Right now, we are not committing to a specific sport or a team,” Shah said. “We are committing to where our customers are, and showing up for them in whatever way is most meaningful. That has been a strategy that’s working for us…I don’t think you’re going to see that shift massively, at least over the next couple of years, but we also never say never.”