SPONSORSHIP IS QUALITATIVE
AND NOW a word from our sponsor? No: some words about sponsorship. There’s been phenomenal expansion, largely because sponsorship enables you to target niche areas of new business cost-efficiently. Advertising is considered quantitative. Sponsorship is qualitative, often making significantly better use of promotional resources.
Not only might your budget benefit from sponsorship, more importantly by far – sourced, planned and performed professionally – it offers the chance of achieving several objectives at one time.
It can create or change customer attitudes, cement customer relations, boost staff morale, heighten public awareness, differentiate you from the competition, drive sales. It can also be fun.
Of course, when considering sponsorship opportunities, keep clear of the chairman's weekend sports dalliance, or his wife's favourite charity, or the chief executive's passion for whatsoever. This is serious business. It is determined investment, designed for bottom-line payback.
Sponsorship can be thought of as mega-money logos on Formula One racing cars, shirt deals with the likes of football’s Real Madrid, name association with international arts prizes: and so on. But sponsorship does not have to be elitist to be successful.
WELCOMED
As an example, consider that lifeblood of so many business sectors, the trade exhibition. Most of these events welcome sponsorship, which might relate to the press office, the VIP or international lounge, special awards ceremonies, or name exposure on the paraphernalia such as exhibition guides, badge holders, shuttle bus tickets, drinks cups and napkins.
Trade show organisers will have statistical information on the event's history. They can tell you about likely exhibitors and attendees, strategies for media coverage and the kind of support they can offer in return for your sponsorship money.
You should enquire about future sponsorship plans. Often, the same companies support the same exhibitions year in and year out, creating a show-long brand that people begin to count on and expect, then reflect in their buying decisions. Choose well and you will reach precisely the market that you need to inform and impress.
A further example is radio. As far back as 1925, Radio Paris transmitted a fashion programme from the Eiffel Tower, sponsored by the clothing department in London's Selfridges.
Coming up-to-date, the deregulation and growth of local radio has been accompanied by a veritable explosion in sponsorship, as an alternative to buying advertising time. Just about everything is open for negotiation: not only programmes, but peak-listening items, including news bulletins, weather forecasts and traffic information. Tune into: “This traffic update has been brought to you by the TakeTheTrain consortium."
Similarly, television is rife with opportunities, albeit at higher production and placement cost.
UK media watchdog Ofcom has issued a code to cover radio and television sponsorship, working alongside the regulatory Advertising Standards Authority. Aims include limiting advertising messages within sponsorship credits and endeavouring to keep it clear for listeners and viewers that broadcasters maintain editorial control of their output. There are similar procedures in many countries.
HUGE BUSINESS
Sponsorship is a huge business, now estimated to be worth about 10 billion euros per year across Europe. There is even a European Sponsorship Association (ESA), formed in 2003 and purporting to be the voice of the industry, promoting best practice, improving standards and providing training.
To quote the chairman of the ESA: "The most significant development in recent years has been the realisation and acceptance by marketers that by committing extra funds and resources to their sponsorship programmes they not only increase awareness but also sell more of their products and services.
“In terms of growth, sponsorship has consistently outperformed all other marketing disciplines."
There can be no doubt that planned and well-handled sponsorship is a weighty promotional tool. It is a powerful complement to the rest of the marketing agenda. Quite simply, it works.
Where it fails to deliver, expect the reasons to include an absence of strategic direction and accountability, resulting from a lack of professional guile.
