A year as the Official Performance Partner with HTAFC

A year on board with Huddersfield Town as Official Performance Partner, the season has come to an end. Now with Neil Warnock and Ronnie Jepson agreeing to one more year with the terriers, and next seasons fixture release imminent, Millers Oils takes the time to reflect on the year and how it has worked for us as a business.

Why Huddersfield Town?

When Millers Oils initially announced the partnership with Huddersfield Town, there were many comments of why would an Oil Company ever partner with a football team… and what is the relevance?

For us as a company, it was initially to support our community – Huddersfield Town is the local team to Millers Oils HQ and when we met the commercials team, it just felt right. Never before had we been involved with partnerships outside of Motorsport but the opportunities for us to be the Official Performance Partner coincidentally tied in with our EE Performance Range of Engine Oils and it felt like the perfect fit.

Initial start to the partnership

Performance matters, on and off the pitch was the perfect tagline for us to go with for our key messaging for the partnership. Millers Oils prides itself on producing engine oil that maximises performance and with HTAFC potentially going up to the Premier League when we signed the contract, performance mattered. Because of this, we made that our initial message from the very beginning of the partnership, aligning to the fact that the commercial partnership made sense even though Oil is not directly related to Football, performance matters to all businesses. Millers Oils even controversially renamed the training ground famously and more well known to fans as Canalside, to the Millers Oils High Performance Complex which brought a lot of attention and brand awareness to us as a business- maybe not for the right reasons but any press, is good press, right?

A few things to consider

As with most things in life and business, not everybody is going to be happy with the decisions you make. Partnering with a football team that our customers may not necessarily be a fan of was a huge risk for Millers Oils to take. However, the hospitality aspect of the partnership proved that it can bring huge networking opportunities for us to engage and relate with our customers.

Our personal experience

Throughout the first year, we had the honour of inviting guests to the hospitality suite to give them an experience, as well as boosting the morale internally for staff with standard tickets available for every home match! The positive feedback we have received from existing and new customers proved that as a business, we made the right decision!

The training ground, was and still is such an achievement for the team involved internally and the company as a whole. It has not only provided us with brand awareness within the local area, but is a venue that we use for training sessions, customer visits and content shooting – all in all, an all round benefit to the business in many different aspects that we would not have had, had we not have taken the partnership with Huddersfield Town AFC.

Sales within the area of Huddersfield increased as a result of the partnership, we ran set campaigns alongside the partnership – such as bus advertising and roundabout advertising which not only promoted the partnership and Millers Oils but promoted our products and highlighted us as a key partner and player in the local community.

The community involvement aspect was highlighted further through our sponsorship of Pedal4Pounds in which we were the title sponsor. The annual cycling event, which saw fans and members of the community cycle over 200 miles from John Smith Stadium to the last away game of the season in Cardiff- in which a member of our team participated, shone the light on the amazing charities the cause raises funds for and

Final overview after a year with HTAFC

The football in itself was a rollercoaster of emotions for fans and partners alike, a turbulent season to say the least, however, Huddersfield managed to stick their ground and with the impressive leadership of Neil Warnock, stayed up in the championship. As a performance partner, Huddersfield Towns performance was the starter of many business conversations, albeit not always the most positive of ones, however, their performance towards the end of the season improved considerably which was music to the ears of fans and partners alike! We are proud as a company to partner with Huddersfield Town and are excited as to what next season will bring for Millers Oils and for Huddersfield Town. We will continue to work in great partnership with the commercial team at the terriers to achieve great things together – UTT.

To find out more about partnering with HTAFC visit https://www.htafc.com/club/partners/