Full episode with Amar Singh , Senior Vice-President, Content & Creative at MKTG out now! 🎉 🎙
Amar is the Head of Content and Comms at MKTG_UK and the owner and presenter of the Sports Marketeer podcast.
He has over 20 years experience in print, digital media, broadcasting and documentaries.
Amar’s previous employers include West Ham United FC, the London Evening Standard and Budweiser, where he was the Senior Brand Manager in Europe, leading on their football strategy around the English Premier League and Spain’s La Liga.
Amar on The Olympic Games of Paris 2024:
“It was a brilliant Olympic Games. First of all, the meme’s around it were fantastic. I’m always interested to see what captures the imagination of people, what garners conversation, what triggers people talking online.
I feel we are at a place now where people are looking for entertainment, people are looking for humour and looking to share that and I think even though some social media platforms are are not in the healthiest state right now, the conversation and the interest around the games was fantastic.
I loved the fact that you had Snoop Dog, who was there as NBC’s Correspondent and just seemed to be popping up everywhere, that was brilliant. He was this constant presence during the games, which unlocked a new angle for the IOC and NBC, the Olympics Broadcast Partner in the USA. And it just brought a lot of fun and a different attitude to the Olympics, which in the past has been quite stayed and quite strange as a brand.”
Amir on his move into Digital Content:
I was a print journalist for several years at the London Evening Standard, a fantastic newspaper to work for and sadly coming to an end as a print publication. At the time, because of its network of distribution across the London Transport system, it was perhaps slower than other newspaper groups like the Guardian and the Daily Mail, to embrace digital.
SO I found myself at an irganisation with great news values and brilliant people, but it wasn’t embracing digital in a way that felt quick enough and urgent enough, and this was at a time around 15 years ago when Social Media was really taking off. You could already see the game was changing, the goalposts were moving.
My instinct was to move towards something digital and I had the opportunity to move towards a start-up called Goal.com, which was very much in it’s infancy, but we went on to become the biggest football website in the world and by some metrics, the biggest single sport website in the world.
I guess I took a risk in my career, but I followed my instinct to move away from something with the great heritage and name, into something that felt more progressive and more in-tune with the way the world was changing.”
Amir on the Budweiser connection:
I left West Ham United for the opportunity to work at Budweiser. They had just signed a partnership with the Premier League and La Liga.
Budweiser is a brand with near unprecedented heritage and FMCG in terms of it’s connection to sport and it’s investment in sport over the years. If you watch great sporting events of the last forty or fifty years, tyou will often see Budweiser there as a sponsor. They have sponsored the FIFA World Cup since 1986.
But the Premier League and La Liga was new territory for them and they were very adamant to not just show up as a sponsor and have great advertising, but also to create content to bring to life the partnership.
We had a lot of success because we were able to create a platform, the Budweiser Football Programme, which I think to this day is still one of the most engaged social platforms and social channels in ABInBev’s entire network, through leveraging the contractual assets that we had got through partnerships with the Premier League and La Liga.”
