The fight for brand awareness

Dubai-based Transguard sets out to improve brand awareness - and it isn't pulling any punches.

When UAE-based security firm Transguard needed to ramp up its presence in the market and increase awareness of its activities, the company decided to organise an event that would pack a real punch.

Event organiser John Mamea-Wilson was brought in two years ago to oversee all of Transguard's promotional events and help boost awareness of the brand.

 

"The first priority was to grow awareness about Transguard and the second was to make money out of the events; I have budgets and targets to look after," he told MIME.

"The first thing I wanted to establish was to have a flagship event. I have done white collar boxing before in Australia and I thought bringing it here would improve the white collar brand and raise the profile of the company, just because of the corporate audience here."



White Collar boxing was created in New York's Gleeson's gym in the late 80's, when two non-professional boxers - Dr Richard Novak, an attorney and veterinarian, and Dr David Lawrence, a PhD in English literature - climbed into the ring together.

Since then the sport has developed into a more glamorous affair. A White Collar Boxing event includes a number of bouts made up of three two-minute rounds.

But there are no winners or losers in White Collar - every contender is considered a winner and no victory is awarded.

The most recent event, which took place at the Habtoor Grand Hotel on June 15, included a black-tie gala dinner attended by some 800 guests.

"We sell ourselves on the back of being a black tie dinner and then you have boxing in amongst it as well," Mamea-Wilson adds.

The first hurdle when Mamea-Wilson organised the inaugural event in June 2007 was finding a venue, due to the fact that few hotels wanted to be associated with boxing.

Transguard finally settled on the Habtour Grand Resort and Spa Hotel, which has proved to be an excellent venue, Mamea-Wilson explains.

"Jumeirah turned us down the first time, but now they come to the event and are asking us to have it with them," he says.

Attract fighters - a mixture of senior executives including managing directors, vice presidents, and consultants - also proved challenging to begin with.

Since then the popularity of the event has grown and June's event was expanded to allow room for eight bouts; six men's bouts and two women's.

Competitors in the latest event included Holiday Autos managing director Nazar Musa.
 

Transguard's motives for organising the event were to increase awareness of the brand, which it did through ring-side branding and product placement, but the fighters are also given the opportunity to have their own corporate branding at the event.

"Their nominated boxer could wear their brand in the ring and there was lots of verbal branding from our ring announcer," he explains. "Then there is backdrop branding and banner branding."

But Mamea-Wilson is not convinced that the fighters are in this for the branding opportunities for their companies.

"If you speak to any of them, whatever answer they tell you initially, that is not really the right one or necessarily true," he said.

"Stress levels are pretty high here in Dubai, whether you're a stay-at-home mother or a CEO. It is an awesome outlet to let go of a few frustrations and let go of some stress.



"They say it is for charity or for their companies, but I don't think it is. I think the real reason they do it is to do something that they have never ever done before and will probably never do again. Everybody watches boxing and everybody wishes they were a boxer at some point in their lives; to put the gloves on and go in there without losing face."

Mamea-Wilson said he now planned to take the event to Abu Dhabi and eventually Qatar, but the lack of awareness of White Collar in those markets means attracting the fighters and the audience would be tricky.

He therefore invited some key corporations from Qatar and Abu Dhabi to the recent event, and plans to hold a Dubai versus Abu Dhabi contest in November.

White Collar Boxing

John Mamea-Wilson explains the history of White Collar Boxing.

"White Collar Boxing started at Gleeson's Gym in New York City in 1988.

The gym occupied a bit of prime real estate right in the middle of town, but back then, everyone that came to train at the gym weren't the guys that were paying the rent, so the owners had to come up with a way to keep their facility.

They decided to attract some of the corporates in the area to make some more money and then sold them memberships.

That meant they could keep training their champion fighters (Mike Tyson was trained there) and keep the gym open.

So they sold the corporate memberships on the back of the boxing training.

Then the next step was that the corporates wanted to get into the ring, but they didn't want to become professionals and they didn't even want to fight amateur, so the gym came up with a concept where they can just fight each other and there white collar was born.