Typically, when a company decides to sponsor a major event, they are trying to increase awareness of their product to a wide range of consumers. So it came as a bit of a surprise when TCS, the technical services arm of the Indian conglomerate Tata Group, little known in the United States, first announced that it would be the title sponsor of the New York City Marathon in 2013. head scratcher.
After all, TCS sells services to businesses, not individual consumers, and is not doing business. But on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the first race under the sponsorship, which has since been renewed until 2029, TCS chief marketing officer Abhinav Kumar said the sponsorship had been a huge success. “This is a phenomenal, phenomenal event for engagement,” Kumar told Fortune in a Zoom interview from his office in Brussels. Citing statistics from an organization called Brand Finance, Kumar said TCS’s brand value is now $19.2 billion, an increase of almost nine times since 2010, largely due to increased name recognition. He said it was thanks to
When TCS announced its sponsorship with New York Road Runners, organizers of the New York City Marathon, it already sponsored the race in its headquarters in Mumbai and the Amsterdam Marathon. However, as it also sponsors events in other sports such as cricket, TCS realized that it would be better to focus its efforts on one sport. (It still sponsors F1 events, but other than that it’s road racing.)
TCS, which spends $40 million a year on sports sponsorships, has since started with the New York Marathon, featured the London and Toronto Marathons, and recently added Sydney, Australia. TCS sponsors a total of 15 road races around the world, of which all but two are marathons. (Most of these races are the title sponsor, but the Chicago Marathon and Boston Marathon only have technology sponsors, not title sponsors.)
By consolidating sports sponsorship funds into one sport, TCS can achieve more regular visibility and marketing impact throughout the year, rather than sporadically at unrelated events, Kumar said. he adds. So this sponsorship is unusual in that it’s not by brands like New Balance, Brooks, or Nike aimed at selling to consumers, but very much in order to reach as many people as possible from a few. This will strategically increase TCS’s profile. The New York City Marathon is the world’s largest marathon, with more than 50,000 finishers and hundreds of thousands of spectators lining the 46.2-mile course through the city’s five boroughs.
“Our industry, our products, are invisible,” Kumar says. Therefore, given that running has penetrated deep into the professional ranks, it is extremely important for TCS, which is part of the corporate giant Tata Group, to get in front of many executives by focusing on running. It has become. “We engage with 4,000 corporate executives using our running platform, but we’re also seeing the rise of sport and the corporate sector is also getting into fitness in a big way,” he says.
TCS’s commitment to leading marathon sponsors goes beyond just putting its name on a race. For the 2014 New York Marathon, TCS built an app for both athletes and spectators. (TCS’s predecessor as New York Marathon sponsor was Dutch bank ING, which planned to use the sponsorship to develop a larger retail banking business in the United States, but has since withdrawn from this business. did.)
The New York City Marathon app has become more sophisticated over the years, aiming for what Kumar calls “the most technologically advanced marathon.” We have been providing athlete tracking for many years. And two years ago, TCS added live broadcasts to its app, now available in 150 countries, bringing racing to a new audience.
TCS is currently tinkering with augmented reality, and last year it created what it calls the first digital heart of a pro runner, the famous female marathoner Des Linden. This means we helped build a digital twin that can measure her health and performance and transform her training. . Kumar said he hopes the technology will eventually help runners break the two-hour marathon barrier. But perhaps more importantly, this aspect of the sponsorship allows TCS to showcase its technology in a way that captures the interest of customers such as healthcare providers and medical device manufacturers.
“This is an opportunity for us to connect more people with the brand in an experiential way,” says Kumar. Still, given the sponsorship costs, don’t expect TCS to participate in more races. The marathons that TCS likes to sponsor are usually gateway cities or large-scale events where the company has a large business presence.
There’s also a personal side to this story, Kumar said. Former TCS CEO N. Chandrasekaran started running after health concerns. To promote the value of running for health, he created a health app for employees several years ago. Currently, of the 600,000 TCS employees, around 200,000 are runners of various distances, Kumar said. Despite his nickname as TCS’ Chief Marathon Officer, a play on the title CMO, Kumar does not run himself.
“It became part of our identity and we unleashed a wellness revolution within the company,” Kumar says.
