FairFX plc (LSE:FFX) Chief Executive Officer Ian Strafford-Taylor caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss their new sponsorship deal with Sky
Q1: You’ve announced quite a big deal in terms of sponsorship, could you give us an explanation of what was in your mind behind that?
A1: Doing Formula 1 with Sky, who have a dedicated channel to Formula 1 so we’re effectively sponsoring that, gives us a very good cut across the demographic that is typical of our kind of customer so we’re going to get a lot of slots there, there’s about 4,000 programmes in the time period we’re talking about. We’re at the beginning and end of each programme and in the ad breaks in between so it’s an extreme amount of exposure and Sky will promote us on other channels so not just on the Formula 1 channel itself and on Sky Go and on their website and on their app so it’s an amazing piece of coverage for us. Against all of that, I think it’s very important to emphasise that this is only a part of what we’re intending to do this year and it fits very well in what we’re planning to spend anyway so it’s not like we’ve taken our budget and put it all on this.
Q2: So you’ll be hoping that Lewis Hamilton will be watching and maybe sign up?
A2: Well joking apart, I think it’s very good in terms of timing that we do have a leading British competitor in terms of the UK viewing figures, it obviously helps and that was part of our decision process was knowing that there was Lewis and Jenson Button so there was interest here in terms of watching the races.
Q3: So you’ve struck a good deal as far as you’re concerned?
A3: It’s an excellent deal and apart from the viewing figures and the number of eyes on our brand, it’s also very important to us, the business, to have credibility of being able to do a deal like that with a counterparty like Sky. When you look at the previous incumbents of these slots was Shell V-Power, Rolex and Santander so we’re following some quite large company footsteps.
Q4: Finally, are there any plans to roll out other sponsorship positions in the market to increase the brand awareness?
A4: No, there’s no intention to do any other sponsorship because this really sort of cuts across a prefect demographic for us. There are plans to do more TV advertising which is a separate exercise so you’ll hear more from us in terms of marketing, this is just a part of it.
