Chelsea understands marketing

In a case that perfectly illustrates the old axiom, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” Chelsea has formed a unique partnership with the video-sharing service YouTube.

It is a tremendous understatement to say that this is brilliant marketing from Chelsea. Instead of fearing the future and threatening to sue, they formed a deal whereby footage will appear on a specially co-branded page.

The net result is that consumers/viewers won’t be bitter about having videos pulled; instead, they’ll be happy to find them all in one convenient location. At the same time, Chelsea will maintain positive control (rather than negative control by way of suing or pulling videos) over their content and will do so while promoting their brand.

Following is the video welcoming viewers to the Chelsea FC YouTube channel. They’ve still got a bit of work to do to properly optimize (YouTube has ruined our expectations of quality, by the way) the video but it’s a great start.