Can the All Blacks Convert? How our biggest brand can capitalise on its success.

Following our coverage in the New Zealand Herald, National Business Review and Le Matin (France) during the Rugby World Cup, Rahul Sharma looks at the opportunities for the All Blacks following their world cup success.

Before the world cup kicked off, we said it was make or break time for the All Blacks. Now with the tournament all but a fond memory, we can look forward and contemplate where to now for this iconic brand.

In terms of a story, things couldn’t have been scripted any better. Despite a string of injuries the All Blacks rolled on, with a vengeance. With the tournament culminating in a nail-biting finale, which was capped off by the 4th first-five of the rank kicking the decider - providing a fitting finish to an epic fairy tale.

The win secured legend status for the squad in the mind of New Zealanders, the victory also cemented the All Blacks place as rugby’s most successful team, the sports biggest brand and potentially – the biggest sports brand in the world of 2011 – as highlighted by the All Blacks nomination for 2012 Laurens World Team of the Year Award.

In terms of measuring the exposure that the All Blacks received during the world cup there are some figures that stand out. As a tournament, the RWC truly came alive online and in the social media space. To get a feel for the extent of exposure on social networking sites, since 1 September the RWC2011 and the teams have gained more than:

• 185,000 new followers on Twitter
• 1.1 Million Facebook Likes, 621,000 new Facebook Fans, and 331,000 Comments
• 4.1 Million mentions on Twitter
• The RWC 2011 official mobile application received more than three million downloads and resulted in over 350 million page views

Add to this the tournament is estimated to have received a cumulative global television audience of 4 billion and we start to realize the scale of the event and the extent of the exposure that the All Blacks received for themselves and New Zealand as a nation.

While the world cup victory means the All Blacks brand will remain in the upper echelons of sports brands for the next four years, the opportunity for the All Blacks brand is considerably larger. It’s matter of leveraging the exposure, the reputation and the mystique that surrounds the brand and using it to engage new audiences and building a fan base that potential sponsors simply can’t turn down.

In terms of earning potential the real opportunity for the All Blacks will lie in the ability to grow the sponsorship portfolio through the addition of a global, multinational sponsorship deal to compliment the relationship with Adidas.

The other avenue through which the All Blacks brand could continue to grow is through the approach to players themselves. As a sport – rugby is set to grow rapidly – with it’s inclusion in the Olympics and the development of the game in markets including North America, Eastern Europe, South America and of course Asia.

While rugby players’ salaries are dwarfed by their football-playing counterparts, there is significant capacity to leverage individuals on a larger global scale. Players like Nonu, Kaino and Dagg have the potential to become household names. When they are but alongside the likes of Carter and McCaw, the NZRU has the potential to help these individuals gain international contracts that will help keep them in New Zealand while providing a different form of exposure for the NZRU and the All Blacks brand.

There’s no questioning the resounding success of this years world cup, but we’ll wait and see what this means for the future and whether the All Blacks can build on the platform that they have established.

See also: www.nzherald.co.nz