Secret #3: Activation matters
A good partnership requires buyer and seller due diligence and a strong understanding of how the relationship is to be integrated before the sale is made. Insuring that everyone is involved in understanding their roles in activating a successful sponsorship is key to success.
And, it’s just as important to connect with the right event as it is to try and attempt to activate the wrong one.
Gerard Prendergast and Derek Poon's study appearing in the International Journal of Advertising (Vol. 25, Issue 4) discovered the importance of product relevance with a sponsorship. How a company or product integrates with an event has a direct affect on consumer response. Little relevance equals little audience connection. So, your ROO is just as important as your ROI, if not more so.
A successful sponsorship requires three things:
1. The corporate partners internal buy-in so that all parties within an organization BELIEVE it's a good fit.
2. A level of creative engagement to insure that sponsor products/services can be intelligently activated with some relevance to attendees.
3. Corporate partners plan spending an additional $1.50 for every $1 spent on rights fees to activate the relationship in and out of the event. (This is the average according to IEG/Performance Research March 2008).
Sponsors and rights-holders focusing on each other's needs and objectives throughout their partnership insures greater returns and better yields for renewals.
Up next: Defining Sponsorship
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Actually, the "best kept secret" in sponsorship leverage is that the best sponsors in the world spend the LEAST incrementally on leverage.
ReplyDeleteThe high degree of buy-in, integration, and creativity mean that sponsorship leverage activities replace or augment existing spends. Best practice sponsors around the world - including many of my own clients - spend between 10-20% incrementally, but get exceptional, and even award-winning, results. Of course, the aggregate value of media impacted by the sponsorship is many times the fee, but it isn't incremental budget.
There is always the exception that proves the rule, and that is mega events, particularly quadrennial events. For those, the platform is so much bigger than these sponsors get at other times that it makes sense to war-chest some cash and amp up all marketing - using the sponsorship as a catalyst to give it resonance.
Kim Skildum-Reid
Power Sponsoship
Co-author, The Sponsorship Seeker's Tookit and The Sponsor's Toolkit, author, The Ambush Marketing Toolkit
www.powersponsorship.com
Thanks for your great comments Kim. Best practitioners such as yourself are providing the blueprints for others to follow. Your comments coincide with the recent acknowledgement that 25% fewer dollars are being spent on activation. It’s because companies are finding ways to leverage their sponsorships more ‘creatively.’
ReplyDeleteWe need to insure “Main Street” companies that foray into sponsorship understand that buying into property-rights isn’t necessarily “the end,” but rather just the start. Many times, partnerships don’t make their mark because the partnership’s underutilized. It’s a reflection on the entire industry when one person claims ”sponsorship just doesn’t work,” because the company or the property failed to forge avenues to make it successful.
Keep those “secrets” coming, Kim! Make sure to read Kim’s Blog and catch her during North American workshop dates this summer.