Friday, September 14, 2007

Vodafone and McClaren Core Values Aligned?

At the end of 2005, Vodafone switched allegiances from Ferrari to McLaren, taking with it sponsorship thought to be worth £160m. "The new agreement delivers a fantastic marketing platform" said Peter Bramford of Vodafone at the time. Does this still hold now McLaren are sitting on a $100m fine for spying on the previous benefactors of Voda's largesse?

The fine is of course only one dollar for every Voda customer - well within the sort of sum that could be raised using the old "double Premium SMS charge" trick in theory, though overcharging has a nasty habit of coming back and haunting you.

However I think it unlikely that Voda will appreciate the parallels with the recent Vodafone Greece phone tapping scandals and they appear to have no qualms in dropping sports teams who no longer meet their marketing goals, so there could be more bad news in Woking before things start getting better...