In Depth
Sponsorship As A Dirty Word: Can Public Opposition Be Overcome?
Sponsorship money should be used to…
Source: 2003 Greater Harrisburg Region Parks and Recreation survey
: Let’s face it: Outside of marketing departments, development offices and boardrooms, nobody really likes sponsorship.
Consumers may love their favorite properties and can even come to love sponsors when they understand that those corporate partners make events and programs possible or enhance their experiences. But given the option to live in a world where sponsorship was not necessary–where their favorite teams, causes and organizations could thrive without commercial relationships–most would happily choose to do so.
So the goal for most properties and sponsors is to have stakeholders understand, accept and appreciate the role that sponsorship plays, with the reasonable expectation that sponsors will be recognized and rewarded with loyalty to their products and services. And that goal is indeed achieved by a wide variety of property types from pro sports to membership organizations to causes.
However, there remains a set of properties for which the public seemingly has a no-tolerance policy when it comes to sponsorship; where even acceptance can be too much to hope for. Most often these are schools, parks and other types of properties held in the public trust–both literally and figuratively.
“Consumers are rooted in history and heritage, and changes to what people know and love can be traumatic,” said Tony Schiller, partner, Paragon Marketing Group, pointing out that anti-sponsorship backlash can extend beyond government-financed properties to privately owned institutions that the public feels some proprietorship of.
“Imagine the uproar if the Chicago Cubs tried to sell naming rights to Wrigley Field,” Schiller said.
Rick Jones, president of Fishbait Marketing, faced public concern over his efforts to sell sponsorship to last weekend’s National Veterans Day Celebration in Charleston, S.C.
“People couldn’t believe we were ‘making money’ off of Veterans Day,” Jones said. “The alternative, of course, was that without sponsorship, there wouldn’t be a festival. Someone has to pay for bleachers, tents, bands and transportation.”
Illustrating the difficulty of gaining consumer buy-in for sponsorship of so-called “sacred” properties, the government body that oversees the Golden Gate Bridge last month killed a plan to sell sponsorship to the historic span due in large part to negative public feedback.
“I urge the board to squash for once and for all the selling of the Golden Gate Bridge’s soul for a couple of million bucks,” said an area resident at one of the district’s public outreach meetings. “(We) need to discuss an employee pay cut instead of how much to pimp the Golden Gate Bridge for.”
Although the district did not plan to sell naming rights or post logos on the bridge, most consumers perceived that was the plan, said Kellee Hopper, the district’s marketing and communications director.
“People associate the words corporate sponsorship with naming rights of a stadium. That’s not what this program was about.”
Below, IEG SR examines why that message didn’t get through in the Golden Gate situation, and offers ideas on how other rightsholders can address similar issues.
Lessons Learned: The Golden Gate Bridge Case
Looking to offset an $80 million, four-year deficit, the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District late last year hired Bartram Sponsorship Strategies to identify salable assets and determine if a sponsorship plan was feasible.
Working with an advisory committee that included nine district board members, the agency created a program modeled after the National Park Foundation’s corporate partnership program. The Partnership to Preserve the Golden Gate Bridge program would have directed sponsors’ funds to cable restoration, enhancing the visitors’ center, and supporting the bridge’s ongoing operation and maintenance. The program also encouraged financial contributions from consumers.
In exchange for an annual rights fee between $1 million and $1.3 million, each of the program’s three to five lead sponsors would have received exposure on a dedicated Web site, integration into interpretative signs in the visitors’ center, ads posted on ferries and buses operated by the district, plus other off-site benefits. The plan also called for several lower-level partners that would have received much less visibility.
“We knew it was going to be hard selling the idea to the public, so we needed to create a vehicle that allowed companies to associate with the bridge without directly affixing corporate logos to the bridge itself,” said Kevin Bartram, BSS president.
This spring, members of the advisory committee reached out to the San Francisco Chronicle and other local media outlets to explain the program and the reasons behind it, as well as pre-empt concerns that the plan would include naming rights and signage on the bridge.
The challenge with proactively getting the word out in the early stages, Bartram said, was that district representatives could not answer some specific questions about the program because it was a work in progress that had not been finalized and approved by the district’s 19-member board of directors.
“We provided piecemeal information to the media, and they interpreted it the way they wanted,” he said. “Some got it right, and some didn’t.”
To further educate consumers and solicit feedback, the district held three public meetings in San Francisco, Marin and Sonoma, Calif. over the summer. The meetings were attended by a total of about 30 people, Bartram said.
Those who attended meetings in Marin and Sonoma were receptive to the program, he said, while the San Francisco meeting was dominated by members of San Francisco Beautiful, a nonprofit whose mission is to protect and enhance the city’s urban environment, and one of the program’s most vocal opponents.
In the end, those communication initiatives failed to gain public support for the program. The district late last month abandoned the program due to public outcry, concerns over “advertising creep” and because the plan’s $3-million-to-$4-million annual revenue goal would not have made a significant enough dent in the $80 million deficit.
Below, with the benefit of hindsight, Bartram shares ideas for how he would adjust the strategy for communicating the plan to residents of the Bay Area:
Engage the public in the initial stages of developing the program. “If I did it again, I would involve the public in focus group discussions and have them participate in designing the program,” Bartram said.
That includes San Francisco Beautiful and other opposition groups, he added. “Generally speaking, there are usually some benefits in a program that allow opponents to accept and support the overall plan. We needed to identify what that benefit was and build it into the program.
“The ultimate problem was that people didn’t understand the program. If we worked more closely with the public, we would have had a different outcome.”
Nail down specifics before taking the plan to the media. When district representatives first approached the media, they shared a preliminary report that detailed the bridge’s potential salable inventory, including logo exposure on the bridge and other controversial benefits.
While the district did not plan to sell all of those assets, the report’s details provided fodder for newspaper stories.
“Looking back, we should have defined the program in more detail before we went public,” Bartram said. “It looked like we were recommending all of these benefits, which was certainly not the case.”
In addition to presenting a more finalized plan, Bartram also would have placed more attention on the program’s preservation angle.
“I would focus the media and public on the need for funding to support preservation projects and talk about how these potential partners would help preserve, celebrate and promote the bridge,” he said.
Gain buy-in from all internal stakeholders. In addition to the advisory committee’s nine board members, Bartram reached out to three other board members who were perceived to be the project’s biggest opponents. But he did not sit down with the additional seven members of the board.
“We did not meet with the other board members, and they became the swing votes,” he noted. “It might have helped if we had met with every board member, but that’s very time consuming and politics can make it difficult for someone outside the system, such as a consultant, to navigate through the minefield.
“In the end there were enough votes to approve the program, but leadership wanted a solid mandate before approaching potential partners. It was determined the approval margin would be too narrow, so the board chose to reject the program unanimously.”
Best Practices: Additional Ideas For Gaining Acceptance Of Sponsorship
IEG SR spoke with others in the industry about how to sell the concept of corporate involvement with institutions of public trust.
Direct funds to addressable needs. Market research indicates that when developing a sponsorship program, “sacred” properties should allocate funds to provide new programs or enhance existing ones.
According to research conducted by Andrew Mowen, assistant professor of recreation, park and tourism management at The Pennsylvania State University, rehabilitating existing structures is considered the most viable use of sponsorship funds by the public, with three-fourths of consumers agreeing that it is a proper place to allocate corporate dollars (see chart).
“The public supports sponsorship if fees are used for capital investment or to rehab structures, but they hate seeing sponsorship dollars used for operational expenses,” Mowen said.
That is why Snapple Beverage Corp. makes sure that dollars from its vending rights deal with New York City’s public schools go to supporting athletic leagues and physical fitness and other health-oriented programs.
“That’s the kind of thing that Snapple can point to and say, ‘we’ve done something that’s benefited a lot of students,’ ” said Bryan Knust, account director with Octagon’s municipal marketing division, which brokered the deal.
Municipal and similar properties should commit to their partners that their funding will not be lumped into operating budgets, Knust added. “Brands are often concerned about their dollars getting lost in a general fund.”
Hire a PR firm. Properties or those who are selling for them should consider working with a public or media relations specialist with an expertise in public affairs.
For example, municipal marketing agency Civic Entertainment Group hired Chicago-based D + T Communications to educate consumers, parents, politicians and other stakeholders about its plan to sell sponsorship on behalf of the Chicago Public Schools.
“You have to use a community relations program to educate people why this is being done, how the revenue is going to be dispensed, and how it will benefit the community,” said Desiree Tate, D + T president.
Develop an integrated communications strategy. The message of how a sponsorship program benefits stakeholders needs to be communicated through multiple channels, including newspaper articles, ads and public outreach efforts, Tate said.
“You will always have your naysayers, but you can get enough people to understand the benefits and be on your side. It works like a political campaign–you need advocates to market your message.”
Open your books. To help the public understand financial realities, properties should be transparent and share their line item budgets, said Jones. “You have to let people know what is funded by government organizations and what isn’t funded.”
Anticipate objections and have factual data to address them. Prior to pitching naming rights to Toronto’s Pantages Theatre, sponsorship sales agency Wakeham & Assocs. Marketing expected there would be concerns from a watchdog group that monitors historic buildings.
Expecting the group to question the deal, the agency presented research that showed the building had gone through 13 names in its 82-year history.
“We were prepared to defend the naming rights if they thought the building was always called Pantages,” said Hugh Wakeham, the agency’s president, who subsequently sold naming rights to Canon Canada Inc.
Sources
Bartram Sponsorship Strategies, Tel: 415/382-4300
D + T Communications, Tel: 312/337-5135
Fishbait Marketing, Tel: 843/557-0535
Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District, Tel: 415/921-5858
Octagon, Tel: 203/354-7400
Paragon Marketing Group, Tel: 847/676-6550
The Pennsylvania State University, Tel: 814/865-2102
Wakeham & Assocs. Marketing, Tel: 866/593-0040