How to sponsor like a Rockstar 15th April, 2016

How buying rights is half the battle

There are many persuasive reasons why sponsorship is worth the money. Notably, sponsorship gives a brand a dominant platform for leverage however, if you want to invest – you have to make your investment work. Buying sponsorship rights is only the half of it. When you buy any sponsorship package you are buying an opportunity – not results. It is leverage that provides the results. A great case study in how to leverage rights and effective sponsorship can be seen with Rockstar Energy’s recent sponsorship of Snowboxx 2016.

The weeklong winter event is set in the heart of the Alps in one of France’s premier skiing resorts, Avoriaz. The event plays host to some 4,000 adrenalin junkies who turn up for great powder and equally great music artists. With top performing DJs and live artists such as Stormzy, Sigma, Paul Woolford, Mella Dee and Grandmaster Flash – everything from the heaviest grime, hip hop and house could be heard at over 1800ft.

When you think of rockstars, your mind is instantly drawn to The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and Gun’s n Roses! The definition of partying like a ‘rockstar’, as stated by the Urban Dictionary – is where ‘someone can stay up and party hard all night long’ – so when you see Rockstar Energy sponsoring a winter music festival offering consumers the opportunity to party like a ‘rockstar’ you wonder why and how they can do so?

Rockstar Energy, the third biggest energy drink brand in the world and the last non-corporate owned energy drink on the market – chose to sponsor Snowboxx 2016 in order to give its consumers a taste of what it’s like to party like a Rockstar. Here is how they attempted it:

Customer Experience

The most important aspect of the sponsorship opportunity for Rockstar Energy was customer experience, the energy drink took VIP to a new level by offering 26 competition winners the ultimate experience for any music lover, the opportunity to party like a rockstar! The lucky winners were treated with a week’s holiday in Avoriaz, including flights, festival ticket, ski passes and the best VIP access to stages and artists. Now that’s a rockstar experience!

POS

In order to drive excitement and interest, Rockstar created bold and exciting structured POS to be used through key retail partners. This was effectively achieved with the use of a competition to win VIP festival tickets to support the customer experience and was present in the UK, Finland and the US providing a reach much greater than the festival itself.

Branding

Throughout the festival site, Rockstar Energy was seen as ‘the’ energy drink. Branding on and around the mainstage framed every artist’s epic performance, whilst POS encouraged purchase throughout the resort. Rockstar became a significant part of the visual elements of the festival.

Customer touch points

Ensuring maximum exposure to the captive audience, Rockstar was stocked exclusively throughout all bars onsite. In addition, Rockstar made use of the key times of pre and post piste to activate a sampling campaign in order to revitalise the festival attendees. This meant the only way to regain your energy to party like a rockstar, was to drink a can of Rockstar Energy. On top of this they hosted their own DJ (Bunch of Deckheads) to play at an intimate gig in the Avoriaz stash park (freestyle area) based on the side of one the breath-taking mountains.

Content

Keen to amplify the onsite activity to the 90,000 social media followers outside the resort, Rockstar hosted exclusive supporting content across all digital platforms. This included images and videos of sweeping mountain landscapes and high adrenaline action shots from some very talented freestyle skiers – on top of all this, Rockstar even interacted with other sponsors – Coors Light and Jungfrau, ensuring no possible social news feed was left untouched.

Conclusion

Having set out with a clear sponsorship plan, with clear ideas of success – Rockstar Energy were able to leverage their key assets on a number of platforms to ensure an effective delivery to their captive audience.

The VIPs may well have lived like rockstars, but Rockstar Energy sure do sponsorship like one!


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