Sponsorship Blog

Nielsen Research Shows Consumers Trust Sponsorship

In case you missed it, findings from the Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey released earlier this month show that 64 percent of consumers “completely” or “somewhat” trust sponsorship as a form of advertising.

That is a giant leap from the 49 percent who said the same in the first Global Online Consumer Survey two years ago.

It also puts sponsorship ahead of all other forms of company-generated advertising except for brand Web sites, which 70 percent of respondents found trustworthy. Specific forms of traditional, digital and mobile advertising were all ranked below sponsorship.

More details from the survey of 25,000-plus consumers in 50 countries here.

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Filed under: research

What Will Sprint’s Purchase of Virgin Mobile Mean for Sponsorship?

It will be interesting to see what Sprint Nextel does once it completes its just-announced acquisition of Virgin Mobile USA. The purchase gives the company two prepaid wireless brands: Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile, which it already owned.

Both brands have been active and inventive sponsors (IEG Sponsorship Report subscribers can read our article on the prepaid category here, so I hope that combining forces will bring more spending, additional innovative programs and continued creative excellence in activation. But of course there are no guarantees.

Virgin Mobile’s conversion of its ticketed Virgin Mobile Festival to the free Virgin Mobile FreeFest, which was announced last month, was a brilliant stroke. It recognizes the impact of the recession on consumers and also rewarded Virgin Mobile customers by giving them first shot at the free ducats for the August 30 music event.

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Filed under: festivals, music, telecommunications, activation

RadioShack Sponsoring Lance: Thumbs Up or Down?

Prior to yesterday’s announcement, if I had been asked to guess the name of Lance Armstrong’s next major sponsor I probably would have gone through at least a couple of hundred other companies before getting to RadioShack. I mean let’s face it, RadioShack isn’t a major blip on most folks’ radar screens. I still think of it as “a Tandy Corporation company” even though my just-completed tour of the Web site informs me the Tandy name disappeared nine years ago.

So what to make of this new alliance? As with all sponsorship speculation, those of us outside the parties to the agreement are at a disadvantage without knowing the specific deal points, the company’s business priorities, etc. But that hasn’t stopped us before, has it?

I’m coming down on the side of this being a good deal for the sponsor. The RadioShack brand is currently pretty irrelevant. Whether you admire Lance for his amazing accomplishments and comeback from cancer, or think he and/or his sport are not on the up-and-up, he is most certainly relevant. The association with him will bring attention to RadioShack in a way that spending probably twice as much on a NASCAR or other pro sports league would not.

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Filed under: sports

Sponsorship and the Stock Markets

The U.K.’s Press Association news service sent out an article yesterday headlined “Stock Markets: Samsung Electronics Riding High on Back of Chelsea Deal.” Reading the piece left me with mixed emotions. I’m always happy to see sponsorship get credit for positive results, however there was not one shred of evidence that last week’s renewal of Samsung’s shirt sponsorship with the Barclays Premier League football club was the reason for the company’s share price rise. In fact, the only factual information provided in the article indicates that the recent gains are part of a trend of the last two months in which Samsung stock has “rocketed.”

Such flimsy reporting and writing infuriates me because it allows critics of sponsorship to point to such articles as proof that measures of sponsorship success are fluff. The good (factual!) news is that there is research that proves major sponsorship announcements do positively influence stock value. Read an IEG Sponsorship Report article on the research here.

The upshot is that Samsung’s Chelsea extension likely helped boost the stock price a few points higher than it otherwise would have risen this week, but an article that misleadingly credits the deal as the primary factor for shares reaching their yearly high doesn’t do anybody, including the sponsorship industry, any favors.

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Filed under: research, sponsorship measurement, sponsorship ROI, international

Is It Time for Sponsorship’s “Back to School” Sales to Begin?

This is about the time of year when the first Back to School ads start running, another example of the retail industry’s annoying—but understandable—need to jump-start a selling season (holiday displays in September, anyone?), not to mention a crushing reminder of the fleeting nature of summer for both kids and kids at heart.

Not to throw a wet blanket on sponsorship sales professionals who may be trying to enjoy a few days in the sun, but this also might be the time to get a leg up on the fall sponsorship selling season. Although sponsorship sales is a year-round activity, we know from our annual IEG/Performance Research Sponsorship Decision-makers Survey that the largest percentage of sponsors make their decision in the fourth quarter, and thus many properties seek to get proposals out in September and October.

But given the tightened budgets and increased scrutiny that every new opportunity and renewal faces this year, those who get their proposals in early may stand the best chance. So folding up the chair, putting the book down and getting to work may sound like a Cruel Summer (yes, a Bananarama reference, deal with it) but it could make for a much happier winter for those who do.

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Filed under: selling

D’oh!

The current issue of IEG Sponsorship Report (available to subscribers here) has an article on Fox Broadcasting signing sponsorship of five fall beer festivals on behalf of the 20th anniversary of The Simpsons.

Apart from being a 40-something fan of the show who was somewhat surprised to find out that The Simpsons needed to market itself to younger viewers (not to mention irked that this reminded me I was no longer one myself), I couldn’t help thinking of the irony of a show whose writers have brilliantly skewered our beloved medium becoming a sponsor itself.

For years, I have found myself guffawing at The Simpsons’ send-ups of stadium naming rights, rock concert sponsorships, cause partnerships, etc., before the “sponsorship-industry-spokesperson” part of my brain would kick in and I would furtively glance around my living room to make sure none of my colleagues/industry friends was lurking behind a chair with an accusatory “aha” waiting to spring from their lips.

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Filed under: non-traditional categories, festivals

Naming Rights: More Bad than Good?

The local news in Chicago has brought another example of how the negatives associated with venue naming rights deals often outweigh the positives. The Daily Herald newspaper reports that the village of Hoffman Estates, Ill. is in talks to take over the struggling Sears Centre arena.

Other media outlets quickly jumped on the story, with many using the company’s association with a venue that is having trouble meeting its financial commitments as the latest example of how the once proud retail giant has fallen.

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Filed under: venues, naming rights

Adventures in Sponsorship

My colleague Shelley Fasulko’s recent blog post about companies forging relationships with “ordinary citizens,” as opposed to celebrities, put me in mind of a new book written by veteran sponsorship pro Jeff Blumenfeld and published by Skyhorse Publishing (www.skyhorsepublishing.com).

Titled You Want to Go Where?: How to Get Someone to Pay for the Trip of Your Dreams, the book shares Jeff’s expertise from his 35 years in what he dubs “adventure marketing.” As the head of his own PR and marketing firm (www.blumenfeldpr.com), Jeff has linked companies and brands such as Du Pont, Coleman, 3M Thinsulate and Lands’ End with adventurers and explorers, including Will Steger’s North Pole and Trans-Antarctica expeditions.

To be sure, the scientific angles and life-and-death situations of the adventures discussed in You Want to Go Where take them into a different realm than the more down-to-earth exploits that Shelley talked about, making the reasons for sponsoring them certainly much different as well.

The book shares information on grants and sponsorships available for expeditions from brands such as W.L. Gore, Land Rover, Polartec and Rolex.

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Filed under: how to get sponsorship, agency