Category: Blog

My 15 Minutes of Fame on the London Hotspots Blog 7th March, 2011

I recently was interviewed for the London Hotspots Blog with Executive Offices Group. The London Hotspots blog has the best of business advice, entertainment, travel, food and drink from across the capital so make sure to check it out.

My interview was a great experience and gave me an opportunity to talk more about the great things we are doing with Slingshot Sponsorship and our newest client campaigns.

They asked everything from the best piece of business advice I had ever received down to what we are planning for 2011 and beyond. I thought I’d give a little sneak peek on our blog with one of their questions on what our average week is like, but you can check out the entire interview here.

What is an average week like for the MD of Slingshot?
There is no average work week for me. Things change all the time and we constantly have to be flexible to meet the needs of our clients and our business. This is one of the best things about what we do. Some weeks involve attending a lot of client events – anything from black-tie balls at the Grosvenor House Hotel to high profile breakfast events in the City. Other weeks can involve white board strategy planning and briefing in creative work for new sponsorship proposals.

As we typically start working with clients at integration stage – with them having little experience in sponsorship – and then taking them to delivery, we can be at many different stages with different clients. This means that one day might be spent tweaking copy for benefits in a sponsorship proposal for one client and the next day spent on the phone setting up meetings to discuss how brands can get involved with our client’s media assets. The variety of our day to day work makes working at Slingshot Sponsorship exciting.

Fanatic.fm – a new sponsorship model for music 3rd March, 2011

As the social media channel becomes increasingly important for brand communications, brands need to find creative ‘story-telling’ elements in their communication contents that people can easily and readily share with their friends. As music is one of the most widely shared content on social media, brands are discovering that association with music and musicians is a great way to create buzz and deliver customized/branded messages.

fanatic .fm is a platform that allows brands to select music albums to sponsor. By sponsoring music albums on fanatic .fm, brands can benefit in various ways:

● Brands can establish and express their identity through music. Starbucks, for instance, can be the #1 Jazz station while Red Bull can be the #1 Hard Rock station.

● Sponsored musicians co-promote the branded campaign to their fans because 1) they directly monetize each time their music is played, and 2) 5% of the sponsorship is donated to charities of their choice. It creates a unique message that the “brands-bands-fans-charities” relationship forged changes the world for the better.

● Fans of the sponsored musician appreciate the sponsorship in a whole new level, forming an emotional bonding to the brand. Not only can they enjoy free music thanks to the brand, but also they know that their favorite musicians are being fairly paid by the sponsors.

Samsung Case Study

Samsung has recently partnered with fanatic.fm and is currently sponsoring Sydney Wayser, an emerging artist from New York. They wanted to promote their programme called “Imagelogger” and thought that associating with emerging artists would be more engaging than going the traditional route of buying media inventories. As expected, Sydney Wayser is spreading the word to her fans through her social networks including Facebook and Twitter. In regards to investment, Samsung pays only when the music is played alongside Samsung’s marketing campaign based on detailed analytics reporting.

Premier League Football is an excellent example of how fan engagement creates a strong brand association and awareness than consumer marketing. When speaking to Manchester United fans, almost all of them would be able to recall previous sponsors: beginning with Sharp in the early 80’s, to Vodafone, AIG and Aon today.

If football fans were simply consumers of the entertainment each team provides, these sponsors would have absolutely no meaning to them. However, becoming a fan is different. It creates an emotional bond that forms between their favorite football team and those brands that support it.

fanatic.fm is aiming to create the same emotional fan engagement by providing brands an opportunity to step beyond product-consumer relationships and leverage the affinity between musicians and their fans.

Is Barcelona Football Club Selling Out? 1st March, 2011

In a season where we have seen Torres leave Liverpool for Chelsea (not before he had ‘You’ll never walk alone’ tattooed on his arm) and Rooney demand a transfer only to reconsider once he had an upgrade, football fans would be forgiven in thinking that the game had finally lost its soul.

With all the cash being pumped into the Premier League and numerous new owners buying their way into the hype, as a fan you can’t help but feel less engaged with the game.

Barcelona Football Club is a great example of the shift in football sponsorship funding. For years, Catalan purists raved about 111 years without a sponsor. The positioning showcased their love of the game and created fan loyalty to their brand. This year, they provided the main shirt sponsorship spot to UNICEF – providing this charity a fantastic opportunity to drive awareness and raise much needed funds to the cause. Through this sponsorship, Barcelona was able to create an emotional response from their fans by supporting UNICEF in this way – further increasing their fan loyalty. It also provided a stepping stone for the club into brand sponsorship ensuring that they didn’t isolate their die hard supporters.

The introduction of UNICEF’s sponsorship has helped pave the way for the Qatar Foundation to come on board as an official sponsor through a 5 year deal for a total cost of £125 million. The non-profit foundation funded by the Al-Thani family, has splashed out on one of the most lucrative sponsorship opportunities available. This raised further issues with the winning bid for the 2022 World Cup with many of the rival bids believing the deal was in place before, as the Barcelona team had such an influential part to play in their selection.

Speculation indeed, but whatever the answer this is certainly one of the most far reaching and eye catching sponsorship deals this year. Manchester United’s sponsorship deal worth £80 million over 4 years with AON in 2009 now seems like a distant memory.

Charity Sponsorship: Top 5 Reasons Why Companies Get Involved 24th February, 2011

With the current economic downturn and the critical financial issues of the market, it is vital that companies find new ways to differentiate themselves against their competitors and increase brand awareness amongst their target audience. There are a number of ways to do this, but one of the best ways to increase brand awareness is through sponsorship – specifically sponsorship in relation to charitable work and activities.

Brands have been involved with charities as part of their corporate social responsibility positioning for decades. However, a recent occurrence that is increasing is linking brand support of charities through marketing campaigns and sponsorship activation. Associating charitable support through sponsorship rights is an effective way to create an emotive response alongside the goodwill already built through their sponsorship activation.

But what are the reasons that drive a company to sponsor a charity? Although there are many reasons, here are our top 5:

1. Increasing brand loyalty: sponsoring a charity is a business deal rather than a charitable donation. Companies choose to sponsor a charity in order to align their PR activity with a cause-related issue that enables them to build or increase their reputation amongst their target market.

2. Brand differentiation: sponsoring a charity has the potential to differentiate their brand against other competitors who don’t support charities.

3. Awareness and visibility: as charities typically rely on volunteers to run their business and have small marketing budgets, social media plays a vital role in their marketing strategy. Brands who are involved with charitable work can typically work with the charities to utilise these social networks in order to promote their association providing a greater reach into a different audience.

4. Highlighting corporate social responsibility: supporting a charity enhances a company’s credibility in a way that can spread a positive attitude amongst their audience and help them reach a new market.

5. Client entertainment: this can form a key part of a brands strategy, especially in regards to cultural or athletic events in which brands can activate their experiential marketing campaigns and/or meet with key individuals.

Need a Sponsorship Sales Consultant? Top 10 Things to Ask Yourself 21st February, 2011

The need for sponsorship sales consultants is apparent everywhere. On almost every LinkedIn Group, Twitter feed, and on numerous email requests I see people looking for someone who can sell their property rights. Considering money can be hard to come by, I understand the reasons why this is now one of the most sought after positions. However, there are things that you should consider and things you need to be aware of before you take someone on.

In this blog, I’ll explain the Top 10 Things You Should Ask Yourself before considering hiring a sponsorship sales agency or consultant. There are variations of sponsorship consultants – those that work on commission-only, those that work on tactical, those that work with sports personalities, and many more variations.

In this first blog of a series, we’ll start by looking at whether you even need one and if you do, can you support one?

Do you need a sponsorship sales consultant? If you have enough resource and staff with a good knowledge of both your property and an idea of what sponsorship can achieve, then you might not even need a sponsorship sales consultant. If you don’t have this, then…
Can you outsource sponsorship sales to another sales department? Sometimes this can be disastrous – most often when the media ad sales team tries to take this task on. However, sometimes all it needs is a bit of sponsorship sales training and the right sponsorship proposals for your media ad sales teams to hit the ground running.
Do you understand sponsorship strategy? If you are unsure about what sponsorship assets you own and how to package them, typically you will need more than just a sponsorship sales consultant, you will need a sponsorship agency to valuate rights, put together a strategy and do the research.
Do you know if your property rights can be sold? History is a great way to understand what rights you have and if there is a market for them. However, many rights owners are just starting to integrate these strategies and are unsure of whether it can be done. As such, you really should determine the evaluation of the rights first before you waste time and resource in outsourcing sales that haven’t been strategically developed in the first place. You should evaluate your sponsorship rights before even considering hiring a sponsorship sales consultant.
Is sponsorship an organisational goal? Sponsorship takes a lot of time and effort (even if sales are outsourced) within an organisation. If it is not an organisational goal, it will often get left behind and sales (whether done internally or externally) will not be successful. It takes a whole organisation to support this activity and the resource should not be underestimated. However saying that, sponsorship can help drive organisational change and innovation – we just suggest that everyone is behind the idea before you get started.
Are there politics within offering sponsorship? Sponsorship can sometimes be a tricky thing to integrate due to politics. Sponsorship sales consultants who are not involved with the strategy may not appreciate these constraints without having a more long-term approach to working with your rights.
Do you have senior staff and/or board members who will be against new sponsors coming on board? If this is the case, it will be difficult to get sponsors involved and those that do get involved with have difficulty activating their sponsorship and will not renew, making your sponsorship unsustainable.
Do you understand your objectives with integrating sponsorship? Sponsorship not only can become a new revenue stream, it can also reduce costs. This is a great avenue, especially for new property rights and needs to be considered when approaching brands. Understanding the objectives and all the benefits you can achieve through sponsorship is important before hiring consultants so you can measure performance against KPIs.
Do you have enough time? Sponsorship tends to be an afterthought when budgets haven’t been met. This creates a situation of distress sales and can often be detrimental to the rights owners. This needs to be communicated carefully and sales need to be strategically thought out.
Do you know who to go to? Putting out random messages on social networks is not the best way to find sponsorship sales consultants. You need recommendations from people who have worked with them or have done the research. As mentioned, it is quite easy to call yourself a sponsorship sales consultant because so many people are in need. However, you need to do due diligence to ensure your programme is not dependent on people who cannot do the job.

Further to Question 10, we’ve had so many properties looking for consultants so we’ve put together an industry roster of sponsorship sales consultants. If you every need advice, please email info@slingshotsponsorship.com with your brief, property rights, and location and we will try and pair you up with a consultant that is most relevant to what you are looking to achieve.

For any sponsorship sales consultants who want to be on our roster, please check out this blog in order to qualify.

Ambush Marketing & the London Olympics 14th February, 2011

With the upcoming London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, brands have joined in the big race to bag top sponsorship slots. The London 2012 Games is expected to attract an unprecedented number of visitors and a worldwide viewership, hence the attraction for sponsors is evident.

However, there are brands that cannot afford an association with an event of this magnitude, as well as those that can, but choose not to. This brings us to the issue of guerrilla or ambush marketing.

A legal sponsorship involves purchasing rights to the use of a property for promotional purposes. Ambushing refers to using a property without a right in a way that deflects attention from the main sponsor, or creating an association with a person, an event or a team without the right to do so. Here, a brand takes advantage of a highly publicised event without paying any sponsorship fees. Regarded by many as immoral, this cost-effective and strategically valuable marketing technique continues to attract big brands and master-marketers.

Some interesting ambush marketing strategies by brands during past Olympic Games include:

Reebok was the Official Sponsor of the games in 1996, while Nike purchased billboard spaces in close proximity of the venue and handed out team flags with Nike’s logos on them to spectators, ensuring their visibility both on and off camera. Nike thus clearly stole the limelight and sabotaged Reebok’s sponsorship goals, without having to pay for the rights to do so.
In 2008, Li Ning, China’s sport-star was chosen to light the Olympic Torch, which he did so while wearing shoes from a sportswear line that he had founded with the official sponsors Adidas standing on the sidelines. The publicity that followed this stint got Li-Ning’s brand more coverage than the lighting of the torch itself.
During the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000, Official Sponsor Ansett Air’s major competitor, Quantas Airlines increased advertising under their slogan ‘The Spirit of Australia’, which was very similar to the Olympic Game’s slogan “Share the spirit”.
During the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, American Express launched a campaign that stated, “If you’re travelling to Lillehammer, you’ll need a passport, but you don’t need a Visa”. This was due in response to Official Sponsor Visa’s claims that American Express was not accepted as credit card at the Olympic Village. It will be interesting to see what else they come up with for the London Olympics.

The London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act have introduced the London Olympics Association Right (LOAR) which provides LOCOG with the exclusive right to authorise persons to use and exploit any visual or verbal representation (of any kind) which is likely to create, in the public mind, an association between the London Olympics and goods or services, or a person who provides goods or services.

Furthermore the Act sets out a variety of words such as “games”, “2012”, “Two Thousand and Twelve” and “twenty twelve” which must not be used in combination with any of the following words, “gold”, “silver”, “bronze”, “London”, “medals”, “sponsor” or “summer” in an unauthorised manner which will be likely to suggest to members of the public that there is an association with the London Olympics.

Official Sponsors and commercial partners can therefore be granted exclusive rights by LOCOG under the Act to associate themselves with the games.

However, with increased restrictions comes increased use of creative marketing techniques in order to win market share through competitive brands. It will be interesting to see both how LOCOG will manage this and even more interesting to see how competitive brands will try and overcome it.

Slingshot Sponsorship Wordle & our 3 Key Terms 7th February, 2011

Although not shocking, I recently created a Wordle that highlighted the most commonly used words on our blog. Unsurprisingly, three key words outside of the word sponsorship came up: Audience, Brand, and Marketing.

Audience

Without an audience sponsorship cannot exist. An audience is the most relevant part of a sponsorship as it is the key reason why brands use the sponsorship platform as a marketing tool. Although the benefits and perks of sponsorship are always great – exclusive access to unique events, such as the pit at Formula1 and tickets to private concerts – these no longer are the key reasons brands choose sponsorship.

Sponsorship creates access to a brand and builds relationships faster than straight forward advertising through the built-in goodwill and association. The audience is typically already engaged with the platform and presents a prime opportunity to slowly enhance this through brand relationships or dramatically change brand perceptions through positioning.

The audience is key and should always be the core focus of how brands can cleverly positioning their marketing and experiential activity with their sponsorship rights in order to create an impactful campaign.

Brand

The brand fit is also crucial to a successful sponsorship. As noted, brands can utilise sponsorship for a number of reasons – launching a product, brand awareness, changing positioning and changing perceptions to name but a few. Depending on the rights and activation strategy, the brand health needs to be considered to ensuring that sponsorship doesn’t intrude on the rights purchased. Many consumers, especially in the charity or government sector, can sometimes view sponsorship as a commercial ‘sell out’ against the brand, which may turn into a lack of audience, which then negatively influences what the brand sponsor set out to achieve in the first place. These issues need to be considered from both parties when purchasing sponsorship rights and when bringing on board sponsors.

Marketing

Sponsorship is a form of clever marketing – or we think so at least! However, basic marketing techniques need to be applied when using sponsorship to ensure that value is delivered for both parties. One of the key things that I think the sponsorship industry continues to fail in comparison to the marketing industry is measurement.

Historically, sponsorship has been difficult to measure and therefore became an afterthought. However, with more red tape in the sponsorship industry, ROI and measurement is vital and needs to be built into sponsorship activation strategies at the outset. Measurement in sponsorship can be as simple as focus groups and surveys to as complicated as consumer purchase behaviour patterns with brands.

Whatever the strategy, it should be discussed and built into whatever sponsorship you are developing in order to comparatively show how sponsorship can truly outperform standard marketing campaigns.

Sport Sponsorship Rights for a Fraction of the Cost 31st January, 2011

London Irish Rugby Club, the legendary rugby team, will this year expand the popular St. Patrick’s Day Party to five big events. These include a total of five games with experiential activity known as The Big 5 – five games of world class rugby combined with live entertainment, creating a fan experience beyond ‘just another rugby game’.

Experiential Marketing: Creating the Experience

Slingshot Sponsorship came on board to help London Irish Rugby club take these events to the next level. We developed an experiential sponsorship offering for brands which created value for both the brands involved as well as the fans. Not only did this create an experience, it also helped London Irish create synergy of marketing activity, a new revenue stream, as well as some exciting experiences. By providing flexibility and a low entry cost, London Irish enabled brands to leverage their best assets ensuring brand fit through their experiential activity.

Case Study: Global Action Plan

One partner involved is Global Action Plan, an award winning environmental charity based in London. Global Action Plan has created the Climate Squad with their wide-reaching environmental initiative Pump It Up. Pump It Up involves young volunteers pumping car tyres and explaining to car owners how keeping your car tyres pumped at the recommended levels can save money and the environment. As the Madjeski stadium car park is a prime location for car tyres, this provided Global Action Plan a fantastic opportunity to get involved in sport sponsorship, whilst also accessing a prime audience to their initiative.

In addition, the involvement of London Irish Rugby Club provides an incentive for Global Action Plan to recruit volunteers to both The Big 5 and introduce other volunteer opportunities with Global Action Plan in the future. And best of all, London Irish fans get their tyres pumped and learn how to start saving the environment!

Through these additional events running alongside the most well attended London Irish games, The Big 5 creates an unrivalled opportunity for consumer brands to engage and associate with London Irish fans and the London Irish brand. This can help current premier rugby league sponsors enhance their sponsorship rights as well as new brands to ‘get their feet wet’ with rugby sponsorship for a fraction of the cost of shirt sponsorship rights.

Sponsorship resurges in the Marketing Mix 23rd January, 2011

Sponsorship, once a symbol of corporate excess and indulgence, is resurgent as marketers find a new place for it within the marketing mix.

As sports fans will be all too aware, many leading companies and brands are pulling out of their sponsorship deals with major sporting events, high-profile teams and sports stars as they look to shore up their marketing budgets. Prominent sponsorship deals such as Honda’s Formula 1 racing team, Vodafone’s long relationship with the English Cricket Board and the Derby, and GM’s endorsement deal with Tiger Woods are just a few of the notable examples of the lucrative partnerships that have bitten the dust as embattled companies rein in their marketing spend.

The hundreds of column inches given over to these tales of woe has created the impression that the golden age of the sponsorship deal has been dealt a severe blow by the Credit Crunch. However, while many of these multi-million pound sponsorship deals are drying up, there is surging interest among marketers to find new sponsorship vehicles. This has seen the integration of brands that are not natural competitors, but nonetheless share the same target audience. Thomas Cook has just signed up to sponsor Kiss FM’s Saturday night ‘Kissalicious’ show, their very first media spend on their Club 18-30 brand in four years. The Co-operative is the new sponsor of the next instalment of the High School Musical franchise, their second deal with a Disney-owned series.

Why include sponsorship in the marketing mix?

Sponsorship is a powerful way to engage with consumers. At a time when people are constantly marketed to through an increasing number of channels, engagement is vital for marketers to get their message across to their target audiences. Sponsorship is a medium which can facilitate this by creating tangible ‘touchpoints’ for the consumer to come into contact with and interact with a brand. Entering into a sponsor partnership can give a brand access to a space outside the reach of regular marketing channels, as well as create unique touchpoint opportunities through which to build brand awareness.

Sponsoring a sporting spectacle, team or cultural event is also a way to foster within the target audience positive feelings towards a brand. Aligning a brand with something about which the target audience feels passionate can serve to create goodwill. It is an age old fact that people tend to favour others who like the same things as they do; this dynamic is no less true when it comes to forming a relationship between brand and audience.

This engagement between brand and audience is vital to engendering ‘receptivity’ in consumers, which is especially useful for a company trying to launch a new product or break into a new market. Even if a brand has been successfully established in one field, it can still find it difficult to penetrate a new market because of a lack of audience familiarity. Through sponsorship, the target audience can be ‘primed’ to be receptive to the brand, which means that they will be more likely to pay attention to specific marketing messages.

Finding the right sponsorship deal

Sponsorship is usually classed as an ‘above the line’ activity because of its mass engagement between a brand and a broad audience. However, while the essential marketing principles of sponsorship are common to every sponsorship deal, marketers are now unlocking its ability to deliver the benefits normally associated with ‘below the line’ marketing channels. Traditionally, the grand sponsorship deal was as much about the kudos of being seen to be a patron of prestigious sports and arts spectacles, as it was an exercise in engagement. Nowadays, finding the right sponsorship vehicle, as opposed to the most illustrious, is vital for measurability and demonstrating ROI.

Integrating sponsorship into the marketing mix means that the targeting strategy behind a sponsorship programme should be no different to that for any other form of direct marketing campaign. Outside of sport and entertainment, marketers are now turning their attention to sponsoring non-traditional vehicles that lack a broad public profile, but are nonetheless the right medium for reaching their exact target market. Recent sponsorship deals we have done for the Direct Marketing Association (UK) (DMA) with sponsors Royal Mail, ITV, Equifax, VisitScotland and other major brands, show how effective these partnerships can be.

For example, Equifax, a global leader in credit and business information, recently signed a deal to become the official data sponsor of the DMA to promote its ‘Heart of Data Intelligence’ campaign to the UK marketing industry. As many of the DMA’s 900 corporate members are prime users and suppliers of data, this was the exact market Equifax wanted to target. The sponsorship deal has enabled Equifax to engage with its target market through having a strong brand presence at the DMA’s 2009 and 2010 DMA Awards, regional and networking events, data-focused seminars, conferences and symposia, and the Young Spark Award organised by DMA Scotland. Equifax has integrated this sponsorship into its marketing campaign and reach potential customers in ways that are not possible through other channels.

As this partnership shows, sponsorship is a versatile marketing channel that is well suited to B2B brands, not just B2C brands. While sport and the arts may be the first sponsorship vehicles that come to mind, there are many more opportunities available for the marketer to consider. Sponsorship can actually work better for B2B brands than B2C as there is more flexibility to the relationship and the audience is highly targeted. If you have not yet thought about integrating sponsorship into your marketing mix, or felt it wasn’t useful to your type of business, take a look at your current market and what your competitors are doing – it may surprise you.

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