Management: Planning and Control (Samuel Grace Limited)

Albion City’s CEO, Mr Neil Doncaster has been approached by the MD of a local
sports car company, Samuel Grace Limited, about the possibility of the Club and
Samuel Grace being involved in an affinity deal involving Samuel Grace’s range of
sports cars. Mr Doncaster’s response was: “Of course, no problem, I’ll get my
marketing team to come up with something that works – something that will benefit
you and us.”
You are tasked by Mr Doncaster to put together a presentation that will be made
jointly to both the Club’s Board of Directors (including Mr Doncaster) and the
Chairman of Samuel Grace Limited (Mr John Goddard), recommending an affinity
partnership between the two businesses.
Samuel Grace is an independently-owned company that designs and manufactures a
range of sports cars very similar to the Lotus Elise – including Samuel Grace’s
recently launched new model, the SG1, which has a list price of £25,000.
Samuel Grace have indicated that they have the following objectives from an affinity
partnership with the Club:
• greater awareness of the Samuel Grace brand generally;
• greater awareness of the sporting heritage and dynamic driving characteristics of the SG1 model;
• higher sales of the SG1, locally and nationally;
• linking the SG1 in the mind of the public with sporting success, glamour, safety and high performance.
To that end, Samuel Grace are willing to provide the Club with five SG1 cars over a
three-year period as part of the partnership. Samuel Grace are also prepared to spend
up to £100,000 per year over the same period in order to provide marketing support
for the partnership (either with the Club or other parties), as long as their four
objectives above are met.
As with all football club affinity deals, Mr Doncaster’s sole priority is to generate
additional cash to support his ambitious player budget and has said that while he is
happy in principle for the Club’s brand, logo, stadium and staff time to be used to
support the partnership, there is no budget available for any marketing spend by the
Club whatsoever.
You are specifically asked to provide a business plan which should cover as a minimum the
following areas:
• the inventory (if any) which you will suggest Samuel Grace purchase
from the Club, duly costed to reflect market rates;
• any other expenditure and resource to be spent or used by either party;
• innovative win/win ideas that will generate additional cash for the Club;
• a brief marketing plan to launch and establish the affinity deal;
• a separate SWOT analysis for each of the Club and Samuel Grace, outlining the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of your proposals for each business
• any online activation by either party
The business plan must include robust, realistic, costed and practical proposals that identify the
potential issues involved in an affinity deal of this sort and that explain how
the proposals will meet the stated objectives of both Samuel Grace and the
Club. You must also include evidence of tightly argued logic, justification for any recommendations,
commercial realism (particularly in any numbers presented), imagination,
and innovation.
Presentations information must be used as a base for the business plan as all relevant information needed is included. Flyer at the end of the presentation was slightly incorrect as it was mainly due to be about the SG1