Heading off Piste – Solving Platform Issues With Sponsorship 31st March, 2016

Fresh from the success of Snowboxx 2016 just this month, we thought this would be a great time to shine a light on how Snowboxx has utilised sponsorship to develop the event.

Snowboxx is a week long snow escape combining the perfect ski holiday by day with the excitement and hype of a festival hosting world renowned DJ’s by night. Based in the picturesque resort of Avoriaz in France the festival has grown year on year, welcoming over 4,000 attendees to this alpine getaway. However when planning the 2016 event, Snowboxx faced a number of challenges which it felt were creating barriers to the event’s growth & customer experience.

In order to overcome these challenges Slingshot worked with the sponsors to ensure all activation was curated to create a positive contribution to the identified areas, whilst supporting the on-point brand activity. This allowed sponsors to not only project their desired messaging but to also provide meaningful engagement to the festival and attendees alike.

Sponsorship Solutions

The four sponsors of Coors Light, Rockstar, Jungfrau & Dare2B all brought brand activations and expertise to the event, highlights include:

Social Media & Content

A key challenge to rights-holders is social media, the management of content and how to engage with the attendees in an engaging manner. As such Coors Light, the brand for ‘Damme cold’ refreshment had a huge focus on amplifying their sponsorship outside of the festival boundaries of France. With a thirst for content and social interaction Coors Light developed a social media centric campaign to support their sponsorship including the curation of a unique Coors Light Igloo Party, a Twitter competition to win tickets for the Igloo Party, in addition to the chance to win a trip to Snowboxx courtesy of Coors Light – now that’s refreshing!

New Audience & Reach

Ensuring an event is reaching new audiences and providing unique experiences are key to growth and attendee retention. With a platform seemingly made for Rockstar who embody the spirit of music and adrenaline fueled activity, Snowboxx was able to benefit from the launch of the new Freeze product variety and the supporting campaign. Launching with striking point of sale creative across a number of key retailers both inside and outside of the UK, Rockstar offered customers the chance to win the ultimate VIP experiences at Snowboxx including accommodation, lift passes, flights and even onstage viewing during the acts. In addition to this Rockstar was onsite throughout the festival providing the added revival to all the attendees for the long slope days and late nights at the main stage.

Customer Experience

In a unique development for winter festivals, Snowboxx 2016 introduced a festival village within the heart of Avoriaz in addition to hosting bars and clubs across the resort. Due to the sprawling site it was imperative that the customer experience wasn’t impaired by the cold or misdirection. As the official clothing partner of Snowboxx 2016 Dare2B wanted to align with the youthful winter sport market and be seen as the equipment of choice for the slopes. By providing the clothing for all onsite staff Dare2B had over 70 branded customer service reps roaming the resort.

Retaining Momentum

Captivating an audience outside of the core entertainment schedule is a challenge not only restricted to the festival scene. Highlighting the periods of most downtime for attendees Jungfrau hosted activity from the Jungfrau Igloo atop the main festival site, to be the saviour for all those forgotten, hats, hip flasks and shot glasses. Through the festival Jungfrau provided refreshments throughout the down days with sampling whilst providing attendees with branded merchandise including glasses, bobble hats and the ‘piste’ de resistance, the Jungfrau branded shot ski’s revered by all the attendees’ onsite. This coupled with an engaging social team to support and interact with all captured content allowed Jungfrau and Snowboxx to connect with the attendees outside of the core entertainment times.

Results

Snowboxx 2016 was met with roaring acclaim from attendees, with one group describing it as “the best week of their lives” whilst on the final chair lift. No doubt with the increasing allocation of tickets next year the event is sure to sell out once again.

So much emphasis is focused on alternative revenue when right-holders initially look to secure sponsorship, rarely are the other benefits spoken of until this topic is exhausted. However when looking at the challenges or weaknesses in your own platform you can utilise sponsor expertise to help upgrade this thinking much below the initial surge in the bank balance.

Should Alcohol Sponsorship be Banned? 26th November, 2012

The level of irresponsible drinking amongst young people in the UK is an area of constant concern for many with statistics reporting 945,000 hospital admissions a year related to alcohol abuse or injury. Following the ban of tobacco sponsorship in 2005 arose the debate as to whether alcohol sponsorship should follow suit and whether partnerships between alcohol brands and sports events influence young people to drink in excess.

At the Think!Sponsorship Conference on Wednesday 14^th November leading sponsorship professionals and representatives from alcohol brands considered the increasingly important topic of whether the alcohol sponsorship ban should be bought into place within the UK. With alcohol sponsorship banned in France, this prompted me to consider whether the UK will be next to follow suit and what impact this could have for the sponsorship industry.

The Argument

There is little doubt that sporting events have a strong association with alcohol. Sports such as rugby and football in particular lead people to view alcohol consumption in a negative light with fans often rowdy and drunk. Alcohol sponsorship could be said to reinforce the association of alcohol with events that are often considered family days out whilst watching sport for many comes hand in hand with enjoying a drink. With this connection already firmly in place it is argued that alcohol sponsorship only encourages young people to view alcohol brands and excessive consumption of their products in a positive light.

However, the opposing argument is that the problem with binge drinking amongst young people in particular at sporting events is as a result of cheap drinks deals and the traditional macho sporting culture rather than the presence of alcohol sponsorship. Furthermore, alcohol sponsors place a strong emphasis on drinking responsibly. The European Sponsorship Association has put numerous guidelines in place to introduce a notion of best practise with alcohol brands, for example, rights holders are advised to only allow sponsorship from alcohol brands if the audience are assumed to be older than the legal alcohol purchase age.

How Would the Alcohol Ban Affect Sponsorship in the Future?

It is estimated that £800 million a year is spent by alcohol brands on sponsorship, if this money was no longer channelled towards sponsorship what would this mean for the sponsorship industry as a whole? Sponsorship agencies could lose key clients and rights-holders would lose a vast amount of revenue and the ability to hold events to the scale and quality they currently are at.

However, through dynamic and creative thinking this could also be an opportunity for new brands to get involved with sport sponsorship.

Whatever the future holds for alcohol brands, I believe the sponsorship industry will have no problem continuing to thrive as seen previously when we encountered the ban of tobacco sponsorship. If anything it will only force sponsorship professionals to continue to drive innovation forward.