How to Assess What to Sponsor in Your Marketing Mix

An increasingly common form of promotional activityeven at local and grassroots level is sponsorship.

However there are many kinds of sponsorship:

• Television and radio programme sponsorship (e.g. Cadbury’s sponsor broadcasts of Coronation Street). The increasing fragmentation of television in the UK through new digital channels is providing many more opportunities for sponsorship of this kind

• Sports sponsorship: major sporting events have the advantage of being attended and (more importantly) watched by large numbers of people. They also attract significant media coverage.

• Arts sponsorship; arts events or organisations are not as well attended as sports events but are often regarded as more “worthy” and more in keeping with the image of certain businesses and brands.

• Educational sponsorship; this can take several forms from the sponsoring of individual students at college through to the provision of books and computers nationwide using the redemption of product or store-related vouchers (e.g. Tesco’s Computers for Schools)

What is involved in developing a sponsorship promotion?

At IML we suggest a six-stage process to decide what and how to sponsor:

(1) Analyse the current situation: look at which other businesses are sponsoring in the target area. Are competitors already doing this and is it providing them with an advantage?

(2) Define the sponsorship objectives: e.g. raise awareness of the brand; build an image; promote a new product

(3) Agree the strategy: how does the sponsorship fit in with any other promotional activity?

(4) Develop the tactics: agree the details of what to sponsor, price, timing etc

(5) Define the target audience

(6) Consider what resources are needed to make the sponsorship a success.

Are you making the most of sponsorship to make your company and brand stand out and interact with your customers and potential customers?