Authenticity in Sponsorship: Does Keeping it Real Need A Reality Check?
Posted: 4/28/2010 9:01:35 AM by
Diane Knoepke | with 0 comments
This past Saturday night, my husband bet me 15 bucks to ask Anthony Bourdain whether his Chase Sapphire product integration deal cost him his soul.
He needn't have made that bet. Tony launched into it within the first five minutes of his storytime/stand-up/Q+A concert Saturday night at The Chicago Theatre. (For those who don’t know his work, Anthony Bourdain is the chef/author/badboy foodie/world traveler who has a great show on Travel Channel called No Reservations emphasizes finding the authentic experience of a place.)
His attitude about the product integration deal is best described as an eyeroll with a side of shrug. Basically, the new boss (Travel Channel owner Scripps Networks Interactive) made him do it. So when Tony asks for the check after a meal in Istanbul or Vietnam or wherever, and the camera zooms in on his shiny blue card, he practically winks at the camera. In the midst of playing along, he oh-so-subtly lets us know that he’s with us and in on the joke. But what financial services marketer wants their product integration to be a joke? And what of the considerable online backlash the deal has caused over the past few months?
During his two-hour live gig, Tony, in his own charming, expletive-laden way, asked the questions we all are asking right now—especially of product integration deals, cause marketing campaigns, and social media tie-ins—and yet can’t quite satisfactorily answer.
- What does “keeping it real” mean?
- When do the ends justify the means? When do they not?
- If it’s measurably successful, does that give back some of the credibility?
Brand, image, mission, strategic plan, message and even culture are each falling short to truly frame the complexities of the authenticity issues in corporate sponsorship. And “gut” is in the eye—er, gut—of the beholder.
I’ve long held on to my version of the Jane Goodall philosophy. My interpretation: there aren’t so many bad pairings as there are bad deals. In other words, Dr. Goodall can work with “environmental offender” companies as long as the money goes to advance her mission and the corporate partnership has some positive effect on how the company does business. The deal reigns supreme—it’s lazy to say just because two partners make sense together that the work is done. I’d rather see an active, complex partnership that brings two disparate partners together to do something cool than two obvious peanut butter-and-jelly partners doing the predictable or safe thing that produces a yawn (if it gets noticed at all). A lot of you would agree, until that active, complex partnership offends your sensibilities or misses the mark with the target audience.
Certainly the answers are as intangible and unique as the sponsorship opportunities themselves, so how does your organization approach this? Does your company have a litmus test for partnership authenticity?
Or, like Tony Bourdain, do you just do what the boss says and take your lumps when they come? As a Tony fan, I’d like to see his team fight for a better solution; instead of the one-note integration, there are so many ways Chase Sapphire could access this audience without ticking people off or taking a serious chunk out of Tony’s street cred. What if Tony had done the uber-authentic thing and actually talked about the deal on film, acknowledged the forthcoming criticism and then worked with Chase to make it more than media?
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Filed under: branded content, cause marketing, digital media, entertainment, new media, non-traditional categories, product placement, backlash