MAM
Toyota inks deal with ESPN for Asia X Games sponsorship
MUMBAI: Toyota has inked a deal with ESPN Star Sports for sponsoring the Asian X Games Qualifier and the ESPN Junior X Games in 2003 and 2004 in Kuala Lumpur, along with the Asian Xtour.
The two-year sponsorship agreement will have Toyota enjoying regional association with the Asian X Games Qualifier and ESPN Junior X Games through a combination of multi-level integrated benefits. This includes on ground and on-air entitlements around the event as well as marketing and on-line benefits. Toyota’s renewal also extends to its presenting sponsorship of the Xtour, a series of pre-qualifiers organized to select competitors for the Asian X Games Qualifier. The Tour is the only avenue for entry into the regional competition for the respective host nation’s athletes.
ESPN will televise the Asian event to more than 140 countries and territories around the globe from March 10 onwards.
The Asian X Games Qualifier, the multi-sport competition for action sports in Asia, was first held in 1998. Between 1998 and 2000 it took place on Phuket Island, Thailand. The move from Thailand to Malaysia is part of the X Games tradition of holding the event at a new location every few years. This transition brings the X franchise to new markets around the region, developing the sport and the athletes across Asia. The recently concluded Asian X Games Qualifier IV and ESPN Junior X Games III presented by Toyota was the inaugural Kuala Lumpur event and will run through to 2004.
Showcasing nearly 300 of Asia-Pacific’s best action sport athletes the event served as a qualifier to the summer X Games VIII to be held in Philadelphia in August, the pinnacle of global action sports competition. Athletes competed in aggressive in-line skating, bicycle stunt, skateboarding, sport climbing and wakeboarding. The Junior event, inaugurated in 1999, brought together 70 children aged 14 years and under in the spirit of fun competition modelled after the senior Games.
The success of the inaugural games in Kuala Lumpur demonstrated the popularity of action sports. The event attracted athletes from more countries than ever before and saw over 90,000 visitors over its 6-day run. This is expected to rise again in 2003 and 2004.
The Asian X Games Qualifier will see the addition of one of the most popular events next year within the Summer X event – the Moto X. Although not a competitive category, it will be the first step in its inevitable inclusion into the Asian X Games Qualifers.
Announcing the continuation of the sponsorship agreement, ESS Managing Director Rik Dovey said: “We’re excited to see the continuation of Toyota’s support for the Asian X Games Qualifier presented by Toyota for the next two years, and of the Asian Xtour presented by Toyota. Their already strong involvement with action sports through sponsorship of the event this past 3 years makes this a fitting extension to a long and healthy partnership”.
Mr Dovey added: “The popularity of action sports is now at an all-time high and the Asian X Games Qualifier has quickly established itself as the ultimate goal for Asia’s action athletes. Sponsors have been quick to see the benefit of associating with the event, and we are thrilled to be able to provide them with a way to leverage its potential. Whether they are looking at an on-ground sponsorship or advertising on-air, they understand the power of the X Games in capturing the imagination of both males and females, not only between the ages of 14 years and 35 years, but of all ages.”
Explaining the importance of the partnership to Toyota, Katsuyoshi Tabata, General Manager of the Overseas Marketing Division, in Toyota Motor Corporation said, “Toyota is excited to announce its continued support for the Asian X Games Qualifier, ESPN Junior X Games and Asian Xtour. Together these three events provide Asian action sports athletes and spectators alike with the ultimate opportunity to enjoy top level competition for their chosen sports. Providing such opportunities to athletes and communities around Asia where the Toyota brand is so loyally supported is at the core of our corporate strategy; one of commitment to communities globally demonstrated through our support of action sports events, cultural and musical events or the launch of our new Formula One team.
Digital
GUEST COLUMN: How AI is restructuring distributor and retailer motivation models
From incentives to intelligence, AI is redefining how brands engage channel partners
MUMBAI: Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming how brands engage with their most critical yet often overlooked stakeholders: distributors, retailers, and last-mile influencers. For Abhinav Jain, co-founder and CEO of Almonds Ai, this shift marks a fundamental departure from traditional, transaction-led incentive models toward behaviour-driven, data-intelligent ecosystems. In this piece, Jain examines how AI is enabling brands to decode partner motivations, predict engagement patterns, and deliver personalised, scalable experiences—ultimately redefining channel relationships from transactional exchanges to long-term growth partnerships.
Across many sectors, there is increasing recognition that motivating those who bring products to market (distributors, retailers, last-mile influencers) poses a growing challenge.
Brands continue to invest significant marketing and digital resources to consumers, yet in many countries and the vast majority of emerging economies, these types of consumer-focused investment areas have had little impact on ultimate product delivery. Rather, it is still the case that traditional retail continues to make up most products sold.
So why is it that the systems built around motivating these channels have yet to evolve?
For decades, distributor and retailer engagement revolved around static schemes – quarterly targets, volume-based rewards, and occasional trade promotions. These programs were designed around transactions, not behaviour. The assumption was simple: if incentives increase, performance will follow.
Now, with the advent of artificial intelligence, the definition of performance is being challenged.
With the development of artificial intelligence, businesses can move beyond simply creating loyalty based on transactional-based models and toward models built on behaviours, the behaviours of channel partners that are intrinsic to their motivations in engaging with particular brands. As a result, the means by which businesses develop relationships within their distribution network are starting to evolve; thus, ultimately changing how brands interact with those within their distribution network.
Assessing engagement: Transitioning from transactional- to behavioural intelligence
Traditional loyalty systems refer to transactional activity (sales data). Although this data is valuable and important, it only provides a partial view of engagement across the channel partner.
For example, a retailer may have a high frequency of sales of a product, but their lack of engagement with the manufacturer would not reflect that they have true loyalty toward that brand. Conversely, a retailer who actively participates in training programmes, acts as brand advocates, and is engaged in learning with the supplier would exhibit more profound levels of loyalty but would have been invisible based on historical incentive programmes.
Artificial intelligence allows for the identification of behaviours that help to address this gap. Brands are able to use a variety of engagement data points, participate in learning programs, respond to communications, redeem behaviour and track platform use behaviour in order to identify motivation through behaviour.
McKinsey has stated that companies that leverage advanced analytics for their sales and distribution functions can achieve as much as a 15-20 per cent increase in productivity due to increased awareness of their behavioural trends throughout their networks.
This visibility of behavioural patterns within channel ecosystems can be transformational to brands as they can now view how partners engage on their path to purchasing products, instead of just measuring the sales revenue generated by those purchases.
Predicting motivations, not just measuring performance
Possibly, the largest contribution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to helping brands engage with partners via channel ecosystems is its ability to predict future engagement versus simply measuring past performance.
Traditionally, brands only realised that a partner was disengaged (not likely to purchase products) once their sales performance had already declined. By then, the brand would have to use significant amounts of incentives or aggressive promotional activities to recovery their partner’s engagement level.
AI models can help organisations to detect early signs that a partner is becoming disengaged, such as declining participation in learning modules, declining interaction via the platform, or slower reward redemption rates. These indicators can help organisations to proactively engage with their partners before their sales performance begins to decline.
The practical application of AI and predictive analytics gives brands the ability to re-engage with their partners prior to their sales performance declines. For example, instead of developing and implementing broad-reaching incentive programs that provide a “one size fits all” incentive to all partners in an ecosystem, brands are able to develop targeted, engaging re-engagement programmes. This is how personalisation can be done on a large scale, such as across global distribution and retail networks.
The vast majority of distributor and retailer channels have thousands, if not millions, of individual channel partners. Historically, providing personalisation to such a large number of businesses has not been feasible.
However, with the advent of AI, personalisation at scale is becoming a reality.
Brands can now create tailored engagement journeys for all their partners, based on their partner profiles, through some combination of machine learning models and behavioural segmentation. For example, high-performing distributors might receive higher levels of leadership-based recognition and greater incentives to continue to grow. Emerging retailers, on the other hand, might be supported with training, onboarding rewards, and measurable performance milestones.
The shift towards personalisation of partner engagement echoes the direction that consumer marketing is already moving towards.
According to Salesforce’s report, over 70 per cent of customers expect personalisation in the way that brands engage with them. As such, there is a growing expectation for B2B ecosystems to have these same types of expectations from their channel partners.
Gamification and continuous engagement
AI is also radically changing how brands will engage with their channel partners through the use of gamification.
Many traditional incentive-based contests and leaderboards would spark temporary engagement among their participants, but they struggled to sustain engagement over time. With the use of AI, gamification mechanics are evolving dynamically based on historical and evolving participation patterns by their channel partners.
Challenges, rewards, and recognition structures can be modified continuously in order to sustain engagement with all of a brand’s partner segments. This will provide a greater opportunity to move away from episodic campaigns towards ongoing, continuous engagement experiences.
When channel partners receive motivation as part of their daily business activities through recognition, learning, and tracking their performance, long-term loyalty will be achieved.
Aligning motivation to broader impact
There is a growing trend within the channel ecosystem to integrate sustainability and socially responsible behaviours into the channel partner programmes of brands.
Increasingly, brands are motivating their partners to use sustainable practices in their operations, participate in sustainable practices like sustainability-related knowledge programmes, or promote products that are in line with their sustainability objectives.
Brands can use AI to monitor and measure these types of behaviours and incorporate them into their incentive frameworks so that brands can align their commercial objectives with broader social and environmental outcomes.
A shift in the way brands view their channel partners
AI is having the most significant impact on the way that brands are now viewing their channel partners, as it relates to the underlying philosophy of those fundamental relationships.
For the past several decades, many brands have viewed their channel partners as intermediaries in the supply chain. More and more brands are now beginning to view their channel partners as key ‘partners-in-growth,’ and their actions can have a direct impact on market performance.
In fact, all the channel ecosystems are using behavioural engagement platforms to design new models that reward not just transactional behaviour, but also create continuous engagement journeys for their partners, where their partners can receive recognition for their participation, learning, and continued engagement, thereby reinforcing long-term loyalty to the brand.
The future: Intelligent channel ecosystems
As we consider what the next phase of channel engagement may look like, many believe that it will be based on intelligent ecosystems, using AI to continuously monitor and adjust the engagement strategies used to engage their channel partners, in real time and based on the behaviours of those partners.
For brands operating in complex distribution networks, the ability to perform well will be determined both by whether products are available to their customers, as well as by the enthusiasm, expertise, and loyalty shown from each channel partner that represents the brand each and every day that they are working on behalf of the brand.
While AI clearly does not eliminate the human aspect of a brand’s relationship with its channel partners, it does allow brands to better understand and nurture that relationship.
In markets where the last mile will determine whether a sale is made, how one leverages the intelligence gained by using AI will ultimately be the difference between gaining a new, sustainable competitive advantage versus losing one.
