Big Brands Do Small Sponsorship 11th June, 2012

Brands become involved with sponsorship for a variety of reasons – to create awareness, to raise credibility, or to improve people’s perceptions of the brand as a whole. The most notable sponsorship deals grace the front covers of our national papers providing the appearance that global brands only sponsor large properties such as the Olympics, UEFA, and Premier League Football. However, this is not always the case.

Brands such as Adidas and Orange supplement their larger sponsorship properties with community partnerships helping them solidify their positioning and also strengthening the potential for advocacy through closer engagement.

Adidas Women’s 5K Challenge

The Adidas Women’s 5K challenge although still a relatively large event with 20,000 participants is a great example of a smaller partnership intended to raise perceptions of the brand through focusing on the female consumer. Although unisex, Adidas as a sports brand is more readily associated with a male audience particularly because of its association with male-orientated events highly publicised in the news such as UEFA.

For this reason, Adidas’s sponsorship of the Women’s 5K Challenge was a successful sponsorship strategy for the brand for a number of reasons:

The focus on a solely female audience helped position the importance of women as consumers
It created an emotion tie-in, touching on the heart strings of the female audience through the event’s charity support of Breakthrough Breast Cancer
Exclusive naming rights ensured that Adidas stood out from its competitors

Orange Sponsors Swanswell’s Football Kit

Swanswell is a charity that works to help people overcome drug and alcohol addiction. Quite different from sponsoring one of the days a week – Orange Wednesdays – Orange supported the Swanswell five-a-side tournament by sponsoring their football kit for the season.

Trevor Bedford operations manager for Swanswell in Birmingham said:

We’re delighted that Orange has been able to sponsor our new kit, giving people an added incentive to do well and feel well.

Orange’s support for a charity such as Swanswell is beneficial to the brand for various reasons:

Small gesture, but creates association with Orange as a brand that cares about the individual as well as community
Larger issues that are important and relevant to society as a whole through affiliation with the national charity Swanswell
Orange becomes a more approachable brand from a consumer’s perspective – not just focused on targeting a mass audience
Brand differentiation and a change from their typical film sponsorship

Orange and Adidas are a few of many examples of big brands doing small sponsorship well. We hope to see more of it!

Women's Sport Draws Fraction of Sponsorship Investment, But Not for Long 18th November, 2011

Having read the recent articles from our most successful Paralympian ever, Baroness Grey-Thompson, I was saddened with how little revenue is generated through sponsorship in women’s sport in the UK. With some very successful elite teams based in the United Kingdom including football, hockey, and netball, I wrongly assumed this would also draw large sponsorship funding to the sport and players.

Perhaps I have been tainted. I have always gone out with women who play sport and whether it’s been pretending to understand the rules of netball or be enthralled with a sublime left foot penalty, female sport has been nearly as big a part of my life as their male counterparts.

So why is it that the rate of interest has gone up but sponsorship hasn’t? Between January 2010 and August 2011 sponsorship of women’s elite sport in the UK contributed just 0.5% of the total market. Shocked? If not, you should be when you compare it to the 61.1% for men’s sport. It is clearly time for a change.

A contributing factor for the significant difference in sponsorship investment is the amount of media coverage that women’s sport receives. As audience awareness is a key benefit for sponsorship rights, this decreased media attention in women’s sport significantly affects the total sponsorship able to be retained.

However, it is possible that this is changing around – if even ever so slowly. On a recent trip to Marrakesh, I was elated to be able to watch the women’s World Cup quarter final live! (albeit via the red button). Also to note that this was due to an unprecendented 700,000 people who had watched England’s final group game.

When looking at the situation from a different angle, it becomes apparent that women’s sport is offering the rare opportunity for brands to associate with sporting athletes, teams and associations without having to compete with a plethora of additional sponsors and advertisers.

These opportunities also come at a heavily discounted price in comparison to the fees generally associated with sports sponsorship. With the London 2012 Olympics on the horizon, there has never been a better time to get involved with this relatively untapped marketing resource.

It seems to me that as long as the general public continue to be attracted to women’s sport in greater numbers, sponsors would be foolish to miss out on an ever growing opportunity as the cost of investment is sure to grow!