Opinion
The Global Gap, Sponsorship Willpower, and News and Notes
10/12/10: I just returned from Sao Paulo, where I addressed a media and marketing conference and met with a number of brand marketers from Brazil’s largest companies. As happens whenever I travel to places away from North America or Western Europe, sponsorship practitioners I talk to bring up “how far behind” their country is compared to the “advanced sponsorship markets.”
I always find this conversation problematic for a number of reasons. For one, it usually comes with an assumption that nearly all the sponsors and properties in the U.S., Canada and Europe are exemplars of best practices when it comes to selling, valuing, activating and measuring sponsorship. While certainly the leading sponsorship practitioners on both the buy and sell sides do come from these areas, North America and Europe are still—unfortunately—chock full of marketers and rightsholders who cling to outdated notions and ways of doing business, whether equating sponsorship with nothing more than exposure or believing that it cannot be measured.
For another, it raises the bigger question of why there should be such a gap at all. When we are talking about places like Brazil or China or South Africa, we are talking about full-fledged business markets populated with large global and local players, vast media infrastructures and fully developed sales channels. Although there are important differences and distinctions in media and marketing practices from country to country, when it comes to advertising, retail promotions and other communications, there isn’t this “underdeveloped market” mentality that exists with sponsorship.
So where does it come from? I believe it is simply a convenient excuse disguising a lack of willpower to make things better. If the major sponsors in a country such as Brazil want the sponsorship marketplace to become more sophisticated, offer them more relevant benefits that meet their objectives, and base rights fees on fair market value, they have the power of their checkbooks to demand it. They also have the ability to hold their colleagues internally to a higher standard of selecting the right properties for the right reasons, leveraging each partnership fully and evaluating return in a meaningful way.
This is not a gap between haves and have-nots, nor is geography really relevant. Rather, this is the same gap that exists between those companies and properties in North American and Europe who “do sponsorship” right and those who don’t. It’s not that the latter group
can’t do things right—they have the resources and the knowledge—it’s that they choose not to, typically because priorities lie elsewhere.
News and Notes
Aon Corp. has hired Allstate sponsorship manager—and my former IEG colleague—Patrick Pierce to oversee its
Manchester United global sponsorship. Could it be that with its recent $4.9 billion acquisition of HR consultancy Hewitt that the company will also look for a domestic sponsorship platform? Pierce, who will be based at the company’s Chicago headquarters, begins his new job November 1.
I hear the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Assn. is about to announce a new three-year deal with Toyota, replacing former auto sponsor Ford. The conference and its Charlotte basketball tournament continue to grow in popularity among companies marketing to African-Americans. Toyota’s estimated high-six-figures-per-year deal is set to include title sponsorship of all CIAA broadcasts, the CIAA Fan Experience and the CIAA Mobile Marketing Tour. Micah Fuller, senior vice president of sales for Cornelius, N.C.-based Urban Sports and Entertainment Group, sells CIAA sponsorships.