Sponsorship: 1495-2007?

 

The roots of sponsorship stretch far back into history. Mark Palmer, founder of Maverick Planet and chair for the day, plucked an example from 1495 – the patronage of Duke Lodovico Sforza that gave rise to Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper.

 

But 500 years on, is ‘sponsorship’ an adequate term to describe the increasingly sophisticated and wide-ranging partnerships betweens brands, media and events?

 

He suggested not. And, on the evidence from the day that follows below, I’d be inclined to agree.

 

 

Panel session: what can sponsorship do for a brand?

 

O2 and the O2 London Arena

 

O2’s marketing director Sally Cowdrey preferred “interactive partnerships” to encapsulate the mobile brand’s involvement with the London O2 Arena.

 

The tie-up has certainly been a success, with metrics such as “brand love” rising 12% and “brand consideration“ up 20%. But it was a brave decision to ally the brand with the former Millennium Dome and its inglorious connotations of failure.

 

She distilled the recipe for success down to three essential ingredients:

• Customer focus: always start with the customer and ask how they will benefit from it. As an example, she explained how O2 customers got the option to buy tickets for O2 Arena events 48 hours ahead of their general release.

• Cultural fit: O2 soon realised that AEG, the US company that bought, renovated and now runs the venue, shared its own commitment to customer service. O2’s involvement from the inception of the project has created a true synergy.

• Be creative: execution and creative integration are key, and the venue shares a close resemblance to the O2 brand. It’s no coincidence that the lights and seats are blue – or that Tutankhamen in the current exhibition there is protected by a glass bubble.

 
Lloyds and London 2012

 

In the same session, Stuart Beaver from Lloyds TSB gave an inside account of the bank’s plans as one of the headline sponsors of London 2012.

                       

So what has led a financial institution with no experience of sponsorship on this scale to pay top dollar for association with the globe’s most high-profile sporting event?

 

For Stuart, it’s all about how an Olympic tie-up can enhance the Lloyd’s brand:

• Self-belief: Lloyds is a brand with a proud heritage that’s confident of its future. And with 2000 branches in the UK and face-to-face relationships with many of its customers, it arguably has the biggest and best distribution footprint of all the sponsors.
  
  
• The fit: Lloyd’s core brand proposition is “for the journey”, which matches the Games on many fronts, from athletic races to the UK’s national preparation over the next 4 years.
  
  
• Advocacy and responsibility: it’s not about “potato stamping” the Olympic logo on its literature and leaving it at that. The bank has a core team of 6 to produce a framework in which to co-create with each of Lloyd’s separate business units and bring the sponsorship to life.
  
  
• Internal benefits: most importantly, Lloyds is seeing the sponsorship as the opportunity to bring together and motivate its 60,000-strong workforce.

 

On the psychiatrist’s couch

 

David James from HenleyManagementCollege dealt the sort of reality check to the audience that academics love to deal: there is no empirical evidence or model to show that sponsorship works.

 

Moreover, he said the cluttered commercial environment in which brands compete for attention made it hard for sponsorship to work. And this is exacerbated by ever-dwindling levels of consumer trust towards brands, which is being replaced by online-driven word-of-mouth (or mouse?) networks. Ironically, he never offered any firm research to back up his forthright claims.

 

But he did describe Henley’s current development of a Sponsorship Efficiency Index model, which includes the following elements:

• Brand experience (pre and post)
• Media mix
• Halo effects
• Brand personality match (of sponsor and event)
• Event relevance
• Sponsorship mix
• Reputation effects
• ROI metrics

   

Sponsorship through the box: the TV producer’s perspective

Christian Schneider-Sickert directs the operations and strategy for Fremantlemedia, the largest independent TV production company outside the US and creator of the global TV talent show phenomenon Idol, that’s now exported to more than 10 countries.

 

He described how the programmes they produce offer sponsors opportunities on three different tiers:

• On-air : an aspect controlled by the broadcaster, and often subject to heavy regulation.
  
  
• Off-air: events and promotions, for example, controlled by the producer but with much more flexibility.
  
  
• New platforms: channels such as online, controlled by the producer but with massive commercial flexibility.

In the UK, Carphone Warehouse’s sponsorship of the Idol-liketalent show The X-Factor well illustrates the breadth and depth that such sponsorships can reach, going far beyond the well-trodden (and tightly-regulated) on-air promotion of bumpers between the ad breaks.

 

In signing up for seasons four to six, Carphone Warehouse implemented a 360 degree strategy that encompassed:

 

• Traditional advertising
  
• Web activity, including a microsite where people could upload own performances
  
• Point-of-sale materials in its retail outlets, plus in-store performances by contestants voted off the show
  
• Customer dialogue with direct marketing
  
• Sponsorship of the press launch, in-studio VIP area
  
• Sponsorship of the live tour to maintain momentum between seasons
  
• Internal staff communications and competitions

 

Managing the mix

 

Millward Brown’s Peter Walshe unveiled an array of research into the sentiments of the people without whom sponsorship is meaningless: the fans.

 

So whilst sports fans in America see the Superbowl as king, the French prefer rugby, the Chinese the Olympics, the Fins Formula 1 and the Indians cricket.

 

Globally, music is top of the pops in the passion stakes, followed by film, TV, sport, gaming, good causes and, finally, arts.

 

Walshe’s concluding advice for would-be sponsors was five-fold:

 

1. Start with the brand and the problem it faces, other wise any success will be accidental.

 

2. Choose the brand moments. When should they be? How should they look?

 

3. Match media and communications appropriately. Does sponsorship really have a rightful place in the mix?

 

4. Executve it creatively. People won’t concentrate on your brand message, so you need to engage them with other means.

 

5. And, of course, measure it.

 

 

Golden planning

Adam Wylie from 23red concentrated his practical, agency-based wisdom into a series of golden rules:

• Understand the audience and look beyond the consumer to engage a broad church, including key constituents such as trade and other stakeholders
  
  
• Understand the rights holders’ needs – and prepare for tough negotiations.
   
• Measure beyond awareness, and look at brand consideration, engagement and preference.
   
• Ensure the association fits with your other brand communications.
   
• Consider the content to make it work from the outset – it might require the generation of proprietary material.
   
• Bring the association to life with bold, but accountable creative, and build a wide distribution network to maximise reach and impact.

He followed with case studies for Martini Rosso and Grey Goose vodka.

 

Martini: The challenge was to counter negative, dusty perceptions and reengage a younger audience with the brand’s “mass exclusivity” and joie-de-vivre positioning, via a platform that enabled global communications. The solution took the brand back into F1 racing for the first time in decades, via engine and track signage, supporting advertising as well as the production of “Martini Word Circuit”, a 26-minute TV show aired weekly through the F1 season and distributed to 40 markets worldwide.

 

Grey Goose: How could this 8-year old brand maintain and extend its super-premium position and pricing, and build the mythology that it’s the A-list’s tipple of choice? The sponsorship solution involved a strategic alignment with Soho House clubs and, in particular, a series of three exclusive parties at Soho House, West Hollywood, during Oscars’ week.

 

 

Panel discussion: deciding on the right vehicle 

 

Peter Draper of Iris Worldwide (and formerly marketing director of soccer club Manchester United) added to the chorus of voices saying sponsorship – and the traditional model it represented – was dead.

 

He described a “partnership model” that delivers what brands want based on common ground. Manchester United parted company with Sharp in 2000 in search of a company more aligned with new media and communications that would fit better with its corporate objective of expanding its global appeal (it chose Vodafone).

 

Samsung’s Max Bonpain provided another example of this partnership approach, describing its relationship with Chelsea soccer club as well as a co-sponsor and kit-provider, adidas.

 

Collaboration with adidas has included building technology into a mobile phone that monitors fitness and heart rate. In addition, both brands share information and plans every few months to see where integration and mutual benefit can be created.

 

                       

Getting the most

 

Rebecca Lisica from Bauer provided the perspective of a media owner – in this case, fashion magazine Grazia.

 

The title launched three 3 years ago into the cluttered and competitive fashion, shopping and beauty sector.

 

It needed to deepen its relationship with consumers, strengthen its credentials in the fashion industry and, overall, bring a paper-based brand to life.

 

Grazia chose sponsorship of “London Fashion Weekend” – a two-day shopping, fashion and beauty event involving up to 20,000 women – as the vehicle to pursue its objectives.

 

The ongoing activity, which it refreshes and updates each year, has cemented its relationship with its readers and the British Fashion Council, and opened avenues into the larger and higher profile London Fashion Week (for which Grazia now sponsors the timeline schedule for trade visitors).

 

 

Transforming perceptions

 

After a day of commercial stories, the refreshing joint presentation from Sam Conniff and Michelle Clothier of Livity – a company that partners with big brands for social objectives – showed sponsorship reaching new pastures.

 

They described the involvement of the NSPCC’s Childline service in Dubplate Drama, a multi-channel, interactive youth drama aimed at black and ethnic youth, designed to get them talking about the difficult situations many of them regularly face.

 

Each episode ended with a moral, plot-driving choice to be made – a choice made by audience vote – and was accessible via TV, mobile, web and Playstation Portable.

Here's a web-seeded trailer for series 2:

 

The immersive approach taken to sponsorship development involved the NSPCC from the outset, including script writing and on set. As a result, series 2 averaged weekly TV viewing of 500,000, online viewing of 1 million, and voting by 20,000).

 

Of this grouping, 85% were under 21 and 57% from the target demographic. And, most significantly, Childline’s association scored an unprecedented awareness of 86%.

 

Perhaps the biggest testament to Dubplate Drama’s success is the fact that versions are rolling out around the world, including New Orleans, Sao Paulo, Marseille and Berlin.

 

 

The digital difference

 

Jamie Galloway from Circus Street reminded an audience – of an average somewhere around the late 30s – that there’s a whole generation that has grown up with digital. So whilst it has traditionally been a marketing add-on, digital should actually be integrated from the start.

 

He also quoted Kevin Roberts from Saatchi & Saatchi on the massive shift that digital has caused: “consumers have all the knowledge they need and brands can no longer hide”.

 

And it’s a change that means money now talks to a much lesser extent - brand traction online often bears no relationship to that brand’s marketing expenditure.

 

So just because you can sponsor something and get potential access to consumers, it may not always be right to do so.

 

But when used well, digital can offer wide reach, identify niches, bring you closer to consumers and offer a two-way dialogue. He cited the case of men’s magazine FHM’s sponsorship of the Foster’s Pit Girls (who produced trackside content from F1 races for online distribution via FHM.com), the well-documented case of Nike Run London and Marks & Spencer’s Plan A corporate green programme.

 

   

Sponsorship: it’s not what you buy

 

Mark Palmer summed up contemporary sponsorship well when he said “it’s now what you make of it, rather than what you buy”.

 

And revisiting his analogy of 8 hours earlier, he suggested that sponsorship had moved on from patronage and was now all about communities.

Check back on Friday 23 May for a report of WARC's Sponorship Marketing 2008 conference.

Meantime, you can check out full event and programme details in the WARC Store.