the highwayman

You probably have noticed that sports games are one of the preferred advertising and marketing tools as they attract thousands of people. Besides the thousands of spectators, there are millions of people watching them on TV or nowadays from the Internet. Thus, it is some sort of huge human traffic seeing these ads (maybe one day Google start putting its Google Ads in sports as well?!). So it is a hue business itself bringing big incomes for sports clubs and sportsmen (F1 racers, NBA basketball players, some football players being few of the ones that mostly benefit from this).
Ads are everywhere; in stadiums, ice hockey rinks, sportsmen jerseys and even shorts (and even on the back side of the shorts, right on the butt!), on the cars, on live broadcast, etc.

That was introduction. Anyway, I have no intention to turn it into boring article, rather I like entertaining people by videos and pictures. For that I chose the very company I work for - DHL. It is very obvious that it's been spending crazily over the past few years (after Deutsche Post bought it) on marketing and advertising. Some of them are here;

- DHL Formula1 Car
- The DHL Balloon — the world’s largest tethered helium balloon
- DHL Sponsorships in all kind of sport tournaments, you just get sick of seeing its yellow-red logo everywhere. Forget about all those vans and trucks you see on the roads...

One thing I've been personally expecting is to see DHL sponsorship ads on the jerseys of a big football club like Chelsea, Real Madrid or you pick it! Too expensive? DHL's got tons of money. Not a good strategy? Better than those sponsorship deals with all kind of X sports like windsurfing or futsal. I did quick search on that and it seems it actually bought shirt sponsorship. Urawa Reds, Japanese Football Club is the only well-known professional soccer club that has DHL ad on their shirts I've seen so far.
No offense to Urawa Reds, but I'd ask for more from DHL!

Speaking about this team... They have fantastic supporters! 12th player... Reminds me those Korean supporters from World Cup 2002. Dressed in similar color team jerseys, banners, flags, cheerful support, excitement... Now, lean back and watch the penalty shoot outs from this year's Asian Champions League semi-final game between Urawa Reds (Japan) and Seongnam Chunma (S.Korea). Watch the crowd behind the goals rather than the players; that's what makes football a beautiful game - supporters!

Source: Goraku

Some other teams with DHL shirt ads; (1) Irish Exciles Rugby Club, (2) DHL Ostrava Volleyball Club (Czech Rep.)

Coming back to Formula1 sponsorships, DHL is planning to register its own F1 team soon (I am not sure how long this "soon" will take, I heard from colleague). Now this could be 4x4 on-target marketing, advertising, showing off campaign! What's more, DHL will be awarding the pilots who made the fastest laps with its own special "DHL Fastest Lap" award. See the picture below;

Well, DHL / Deutsche Post used to have its car in F1 race in 2002 - DHL Jordan Honda team. Takuma Sato And Fisichella were the pilots.

Besides, that DHL also takes part in American Le Mans Series races with its Penske Porsche RS Spyder cars. See the candy below;

Source: Autoblog, Adrivo

Speaking about DHL ads, probably you have seen this funny one from US;

And last but not least, here's my own contribution. First picture is the imaginary future football jersey design for Galatasaray SK (Turkey) with different ads on it. Here it assumes that Google and Yahoo will go for this (yet it doesn't make sense, I know, they are the last ones to need to get advertised), and of coz Aibasoft (imaginary as well :)).

and yeah, that's the conclusion. Below photo was taken in Singapore 3 years ago, I was playing as a striker(!) for DHL FC (Die Hard Logistics, hehe!), and managed to score 2 goals whole season. I wouldn't call it that bad if we count the average number of goals we scored in each game! :))

And this one is taken this year. Again DHL team, but Europen one. Here I am back in my goalkeeper position. :) Not that I can't play on other striker position, just that there was a need for a keeper and I stepped forward ;).