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!

Creating Fans: Budweiser & the FA Cup Final Sponsorship Activation 8th May, 2012

This weekend’s FA Cup Final was a fantastic platform for headline sponsors Budweiser with global media exposure and 80,000 loyal fans in attendance. Brand exposure at such a high level is not a new entity, but what stood out the most with Budweiser’s sponsorship campaign was the key focus on audience engagement and interaction – building a stronger personal relationship with their target demographic.

Budweiser launched various social media campaigns in order to build on their audience relationship and including:

A Mobile App – the “Bud” was created to make the players feel a part of the team (and part of the win!) by posing with replicas of the FA Cup trophy. This was activated through the app by fans pointing their smartphone at a Budweiser beer mat, meaning fans could experience the sense of victory for themselves.

Man of the Match on Facebook – Budweiser utilised their strong social networks and created value to the fans that were already supporters by involving them with the Man of the Match. Of the Facebook activation, Jason Warner, Global Vice President of Budweiser, said, “We’re looking forward to sharing our passion for the beautiful game, bringing The FA Cup closer to fans around the world through an exciting programme of activity. For example, in an FA Cup first, Budweiser will give football fans the opportunity to vote for the official ‘Man of the Match’, a role usually reserved for the broadcast commentating team.”

Events can be a hugely effective platform for brands to reach out to an audience. However, to simply place branding at an event with the assumption that it will have the intended effect on its participants is not necessarily the answer to a successful sponsorship campaign. It is vital that a brand takes into consideration factors such as their target audience, the message they want to get across and what exactly it is they want to achieve from a partnership with an event.

Budweiser’s sponsorship of the FA Cup is a great example of truly engaging fans to create brand advocates through the combination of social media, audience participation and innovative thinking.