Sponsorship involves companies using marketing dollars to invest in promotion of events, teams, or individuals. While most sponsorship is commonly seen in sporting events, other forms of sponsorship supports performing arts, culture, entertainment, and cause marketing. The primary marketing outcomes of sponsorship are to make the audience aware of the company brand by portraying an image of the company that is linked to the event being sponsored. Sponsorship is associated with brand recognition, image transfer, congruence marketing, and establishing goodwill. Since sponsorship has not been as widely studied in comparison to other forms of marketing communication, it is therefore helpful to look at factors that may impact sponsorship and related outcomes.

Common examples of well-branded sponsorships include:

Want to see more sponsorship examples such as other stadiums with company names? The first step when considering sponsorship is to determine why your company is interested in sponsoring the event  Is it for naming rights, signage, award presentations, hospitality, product promotions or publicity? There are several free resources available to get started with sponsorship. For example, this sample template provides information on taking the first step to sponsorship, including understanding the format that is needed, and perfecting  content.


Let’s now look at five factors that impact Sponsorship and related outcomes:

1) Link to Business Goals:  The ultimate goal of any for-profit business is to create value for its shareholders. This value may be reflected in company profits or stock price, but part of the goal remains the need for brand recognition and brand enhancement. The main purpose of sponsorship is therefore to create brand awareness, improve brand image, develop goodwill and position a brand. The ultimate goal in sponsoring an event is to reach a mass audience which in turn can influence attitude, behavior, and purchase intention. When used effectively, sponsorship can be strategic in nature which can result in competitive advantage because the brand is exposed to a large audience in a relatively short period of time.


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2) Sponsor-sponsee relationship: The main goal of sponsoring an event is for companies to demonstrate a symbiotic association with the event. The goal is to achieve image transfer and brand recognition. Although this works most of the time, there have been examples recently that has raised caution among companies in case of negative publicity associated with the event. Case in point is the recent FIFA World Cup, which was watched by an audience of one billion people worldwide but was mired in controversy that happened off the field. Issues related to human rights, labor rights, financial impropriety, politics, and bribery were brought to the forefront during the investigation. The corruption scandal tainted not only the World Cup soccer event but by association affected the companies which had sponsored the event. Although the implication of the FIFA scandal and its impact on company sponsors is yet to be researched, many sponsors are being proactive in calling for a change in the way the World Cup Soccer event is organized. For example, Coke and McDonald’s who were the primary sponsors of the world cup event have asked for the FIFA chief to resign.

3) Differentiation: Companies sponsoring events are looking for their target audience to identify the company with a particular lifestyle. For example, luxury car companies like Lexus and Mercedes consistently sponsor Grand Slam Tennis Tournaments. These companies are interested in achieving media exposure through not only events that are watched live by large audiences, but also such events are usually televised to a larger audience which helps showcase the brand using unobtrusive advertising. This passive advertising has been shown to create an emotional link with customers that is usually not possible by using traditional marketing channels.

 

 

The purpose of Sponsorship is to improve consumers attitude towards the brand – it is not to directly drive sales. The measure in success should be driven by whether consumers are more aware and knowledgeable of the brand and how well they like and prefer the brand. This improved attitude towards the brand should subsequently drive sales.
Dr. David Nickell

Professor of Marketing

 

4) Focused Marketing Traditional marketing communication has used direct channels for outbound marketing. Sponsorship attempts to impact areas such as consumer behavior, marketing strategy, advertising, and psychology as part of the marketing mix. The media environment has become saturated where it is difficult to differentiate one company from another. Focused marketing is therefore needed to improve brand image. In an effort to establish goodwill, companies are using celebrity endorsement that are associated with their brands. The focus placed on the celebrity is indirectly associated with the company that sponsored the athlete. For the celebrity to be recognized and associated, it is crucial that the sponsor should be able to find an event that is attended by its target market segment where there is possibility of instant recognition and recall of the brand.

5) Interactivity & Engagement Being passive observers of marketing communication from a company may not be enough to entice the audience to feel an emotional attachment towards the brand. There needs to be interaction and engagement with a product for consumers to feel a bond. For companies who have decided to sponsor an event, the next logical step is to determine ways in which consumers would be made Aware of the brand which would cause Interest at the event. As mentioned above, the goal of sponsorship marketing is not to make a sale immediately, but use a subtle and less dominant approach to create goodwill to result in image transfer and brand association. Examples of activities that would promote interaction and engagement would be display models, giveways of products that can be used at the events (e.g. branded sun visors in outdoor events), an ability to experience the product (e.g. late model luxury cars being displayed), invitation to sign up for promotions/sweepstakes etc. The goal of such interaction and engagement is to establish a congruence, enhance the event experience, and build a favorable attitude towards the sponsor.


Conclusion: As can be seen from the above information and examples, the goal is sponsorship is to present a passive advertising message that stimulates recall of a brand. There are many opportunities for sponsorship and by using the right strategy companies can influence outcomes related to consumer behavior towards a product or a brand. Sponsorship can be therefore used as a vehicle to generate customer value and brand affinity by using media exposure to trigger recall and recognition.

Sponsorship Marlboro

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