My precious – being anal about sponsorship

At his first round match at this year’s Wimbledon tournament, Andy Murray, sponsored by the Highland Spring mineral water brand to the tune of £1m a year, was asked by the umpire to remove the label from the bottle he was drinking from. This is in order to placate Evian, ‘official water of Wimbledon’ and £3m a year sponsors.

Just how far should you go in protecting your investment in sponsorship?

This situation could easily have been foreseen by Evian, Wimbledon and Highland Spring – Murray’s sponsorship deals are all public knowledge. Even spectators at the event are being asked to remove the labels from non-Evian bottles of water for fear they be seen on TV drinking a different water.

The newspaper snippets about this tend to imply that Evian are obsessing over this enforcement and they come out worse – they’re ok with people drinking ‘other’ water as long as it’s not labelled. Evian meanwhile have one of the most distinctive bottle shapes, so it’s obvious when someone isn’t drinking Evian.

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