O2’s head of music sponsorship, Paul Shulver, shares O2’s position on sponsorships and experiences in the music industry and how that relates to O2’s brand values and objectives.

Where did O2’s involvement with the music industry begin?

Go back to when we started our relationship with music back to 2005 with Wireless [Festival], that was our first experience working with the music industry and since then we’ve just made sure that we really understand the nature of the music industry, how it works and the key players that are a part of it. We’re a telco, we’re not a music company, but because of the investment that we’ve made in music and because of the venues that we have and the relationships with the promoters that we have and the different artist partnerships, we’ve now accepted as part of the music industry.

What does O2 do for its customers through its music sponsorships and partnerships?

They get access to gigs because Priority Tickets go on sale 48 hours before general release. Over the course of 2015, [O2’s venue sponsorship] covered about 340 different venues, about 5,000 shows and basically means if you’re an O2 customer and you’re a music fan, the chances are we’re going to have something of value for you or something that responds to your music tastes or where you live in the country. That’s why Priority Tickets is so strong and works so well because we can respond to our customers wherever they are and it’s not just about being in venues.

How does O2’s sponsorship benefit the music industry?

We’ve tried to really understand and work out where can we add value to the music industry and how can we find a position for us as O2 within the music space.
It’s well documented that the live music side of the industry in terms of venues is facing some challenges at the moment to stay open. And what we do in that space is we help a lot of venues stay in operation by investing in sponsoring the venues. We also add value to the spaces internally, we do branded areas, we also invest in back of house making the dressing rooms nicer, the artists rooms. For us as O2, it’s about trying to improve the experience for everybody that comes to the venues, but making sure that the O2 customer gets the special layer of treatment on top which is where priority comes in.

We try to improve it for everybody. We work with all different areas of the music industry and we’ve taken time to understand what their challenges are and how we can serve a purpose and help them with that.

Why is music important to the O2 brand?

Going back again to the start of O2, we made a decision that we wanted to be able to connect with people on their passion points and the two core passion points that people have are music and sports. Arguably music is more of a passion points than sports is. We know that over 50% of the population considers themselves to be a music fan. The reason the brand invested in music sponsorship is because it wanted to be able to connect with customers and with prospective customers on an emotional level and create that deeper meaning with the customer or prospect.
We decided that we wanted music to be a core part of the O2 brand and we didn’t want to just dip our toe in the water and walk away. We were committed to it, we wanted to invest in the long term, which is why the deals that we have are all long-term deals.

How does O2 communicate about its sponsorship?

Over the years we’ve created a lot of content, O2AcademyTV is our YouTube channel and it’s there to bring the artist to those people that couldn’t get to the venue themselves. There is a range of backstage interviews and livestreams. There’s a huge amount of content out there online. The challenge is to be creating content that is unique and really relevant to that fan and give them something they couldn’t get elsewhere.

If you look at the old days of sponsorship where it was just about badging and then it kind of evolved to be about an experience but more of a physical experience with free stuff given away or structures built inside venues or at festivals.

And now the next thing is obviously digital engagement and making a fans experience better through digital means. We’re a digital telco and we’re constantly looking at ways that we can evolve what we do in terms of sponsorship and making it more interesting, exciting and reach more people with everything that we do.