Area 2

93 Moreover, in 1994 the Barcelona Foundation was established with the goal of engaging the local community in social, cultural and sporting activities, as well as attracting corporate sponsors for the club’s non-profit activities. Although not having a charitable foundation under the club, Fenerbahce is well known for its CSR activities. In particular, each of its many brand extensions (e.g. the official shops

“Fenerium”, the “FenerKart” credit cards, the mobile operator “FenerCell”) carries out different CSR projects. Lately, the club donated all the revenues from a league game to earthquake victims in Eastern Turkey in October 2011.

The benchmark and association correlation analyses would suggest the necessity for FCK of strengthening the engagement of the club and its major personalities in social responsible activities aimed at the local community - as the club is in fact already planning to do. However, it is important for the club also giving visibility to those activities, mainly through PR and communication. Finally, the option of establishing a FC København Foundation should be taken into consideration, in order to provide higher credibility and visibility to the CSR activities of the club.

94 English, Chinese, Japanese and Indonesian. The club pushes most of its communication also through Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, presenting all contents in both English and Italian.

Although the FCK communication strategy seems to have been successful so far, especially through the Internet, the club should strengthen its focus on international supporters and website visitors. Replacing the English section of FCK.dk with a full version of the site and providing subtitles to multimedia contents could help the internationalisation of the FCK brand. Finally, also a refreshing of the website structure and design could be considered: although the current one seems to be appreciated by its users, its design dates back to spring 2006.

Brand mark (BMA). The main elements determining the brand mark (how the logo reflects the identity of the team, how meaningful is for supporters and the distinctiveness of the uniform) of FCK are slightly below but substantially aligned with the industry standard. One of the main elements of FCK’s brand mark, its crest, features the team’s colours (blue and white), the name of the club, the Danish flag and a lion, symbol and mascot of the team.

FCB fans show high consideration for the club’s logo, finding it very meaningful and reflecting the team’s identity (it has to be noticed that, besides the team’s colours, it includes Catalan symbols as the red and yellow flag and the St. Jordi’s cross). The uniform’s design, by Nike, is distinctive, combining tradition and innovative style. The logo is widely used in merchandising (including a wide range of licensed products).

Finally, the same logo and uniform are used in all the sports FCB has a team competing in.

The image and look of a team are an integral part of its identity that cannot be modified easily and risk free. However, FCK can try to further reinforce the power of its brand mark, in particular in combination with other brand associations and marketing aspects. As the association correlation analysis show, BMA is related to BEX: hence, merchandising and licensing can be powerful tools to reinforce the meaning the logo has for supporters – though, as discussed before, managers should be aware of the risk of over diluting the brand.

95 Relationship club-fans (REL). The level of relationship with fans is slightly higher than the industry average. FCK offers different membership packages to its supporters and generally affordable ticket prices. Although the club had some contrast with its hard-core supporters in summer 2011, this seems not to have negatively affected the relationship with the larger share of the fan base.

FCB and GAL are the two “best in class” teams for the relationship between the club and its supporters. The Catalan club has the distinctive feature, compared to other big international clubs, of being owned and operated by its fans. Besides participating in the election of the president and the yearly assembly, members benefit of a wide range of exclusive offers: preferential conditions for ticket purchase, discounts, newsletters, activities for members and their families (including supporters’ football leagues, FCB sport schools, etc.). Finally, the Oficina d’Atenció al Barcelonista (Supporters’ Services Office) offers personal attention to members.

Galatasaray, instead, has managed to establish a mutual relationship with fans. A bright example of it, as mentioned before, was gathering ideas from supporters and involving them in a poll to decide on several aspects regarding the construction of the new stadium. Similarly to FCK, GAL offers different membership options with different opportunities: classical, gold and premium.

FCK should try to make membership not only a source of pride among fans, but also integrate in their membership packages, besides tickets and special offers, social activities and special gathering opportunities. In other words, strengthening its brand community.

Stadium (STA). As previously discussed while dealing with GEX, Parken, the home ground of FCK and of the Danish National Football team, is considered outstanding in terms of services by FCK supporters, whereas the connection between the team and the stadium can still be strengthened.

Looking at the best cases in this category, the Juventus Stadium and FCB’s Camp Nou can both claim to be some sort of football temples, the real “home” of their teams. Black and white are dominating the architecture of the brand new home ground of JUV, whilst stands are named after past glories of the team. FCB stadium, the largest in Europe, includes the club’s museum and main official store, arenas for

96 other sports, supporters’ services bureau, restaurants and other services: every single corner of the area talks about the blaugrana team and their supporters. Both JUV and FCB offer guided tours of their stadium and museums.

Although the stadium presents the FCK logo all over its entrances, it hosts the club’s headquarters and SuperStore, and it is officially presented as “Parken – The home of FC København”, the double function of it as home ground of both FCK and the National team could imply some limitations (e.g. seats are red, the Danish team’s colour). Nevertheless, the connection between the team and its stadium can be strengthened by resorting to other brand associations: for instance, opening a FCK museum (and integrating it in the already existing tour of Parken), beside producing positive outcomes terms of HIS and revenues, can generate greater attachment between supporters and the stage of the FCK product delivery.