Brand Marketers Are Missing Out

I have always found impressive individuals selling sponsorship, the level of knowledge I find usually greatly impresses me.

Certainly there are a percentage of people selling sponsorship in a way that has turned off brand marketers so much that they sometimes will pay tens of thousands of dollars per year on software and/or agencies to avoid talking to them. The reality is however, there are many smart people with good ideas and value to offer that never get a hearing. Brand marketers miss out on them all the time because they just don’t take the time to really understand the market and what is out there.

The main problem I see is that many brand marketers don’t know the difference between sponsorship and advertising or media buying. And more importantly, they don’t recognize that not all properties require the same activation and leverage to create value.

There are essentially two factors that determine a property’s value, irrespective of size. The first is the loyalty fans / supporters have toward a property. This loyalty is available to be transferred to sponsors of the property. The second factor is how dependant the property’s supporters know the property is on a sponsor’s support to exist.

A Premier League Football sponsorship may come with a lot of media exposure, but it is expensive and requires up to 3-4 times the cost of the rights fee to activate because although it reaches a lot of people, the Premier League is not going away if I don’t bank with Barclays. I need additional incentives to move my account (aside from the fact Barclays is a sponsor), and those incentives need to be communicated to me. This drives cost and the need for more Premier League based sales to make the investment worthwhile.

It is far less expensive and requires a much less complicated approach to leverage a property that couldn’t function without sponsorship support with a high fan loyalty base. If Barclays sponsored this property, the property manager could directly tell all supporters why they should bank with Barclays, and see purchase, loyalty, and advocacy, I’m guessing in much higher numbers relative to what the Premier League returns on a pound per pound basis.

Has anyone ever done the research and compared the value per pound spent that a portfolio of small properties with a higher fan sponsor loyalty might return vs. major ones with smaller fan sponsor loyalty? If so please let me know.

Recently, J.W. Cannon of UPS said brands must start sharing more information in order to get better results from sponsorship. That is a market driven approach. A need someone says they have is disclosed and a good / service provider tries to fill it. What I am advocating here is allowing a more product-driven approach to also be considered. This means brand marketers taking time to talk to different people selling different properties to learn what is out there. Think of it like how you didn’t ask for an iPhone, but when you saw it you thought “wow, I need that!” There are “iPhone sponsorship properties” out there. Brand marketers just have closed their minds to learning about them.

My suggestion is to take an hour, maybe even just 30 minutes a week to have a conversation with a sponsorship sales professional from a property or consultancy. Learn about some properties out there you didn’t know about. Discover just how knowledgeable these people selling really are.

Tags: activation, advertising, brands, engagement, leverage, marketing, sponsorhip

Comment by Keith Grover, Copywriter on March 30, 2011 at 13:25: Interesting article Dean - and I've learnt that things (and people!) that are sponsored are called 'properties'... So I guess Networking in Surrey is a 'property' too!