One-on-One
Sponsorship And Hospitality Insights From SportsMark’s Keith Bruce
SportsMark managed Sony’s Twilight Football program designed to promote low-light digital cameras.
: With a client roster that includes The Procter & Gamble Co., Visa Inc. and other blue-chip companies, SportsMark Management Group has earned a reputation as a leading sports marketing firm with a specialty in corporate hospitality.
IEG SR recently spoke with Keith Bruce, SportsMark president, about the state of hospitality, challenges faced by sponsorship, and the impact of the upcoming Olympic Winter Games and FIFA World Cup, among other topics. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation.
IEG SR: SportsMark does a great deal of business in hospitality. What trends are you seeing there as 2010 gets underway?
Bruce: One good trend is a cautious re-entry by companies. We are seeing an uptick from businesses that parked corporate hospitality because of the optics of conducting hospitality amid reduced budgets.
Hospitality will grow in 2010, but while the number of companies conducting programs will grow slightly, the size of the programs will be smaller than in the past. Instead of bringing 100 guests to the Super Bowl, Final Four or FIFA World Cup, it may be 50 or 60. Companies will still use hospitality, but on a smaller, more strategically focused scale.
Another trend that we are seeing, and where we are trying to lead the way for our clients, is brand and product integration into the hospitality experience. How can we create an opportunity for our clients’ guests to touch, feel and see their brands and products in a way that stands out?
IEG SR: Do you have an example?
Bruce: It could be a client like Olympic sponsor Omega showcasing its products in a retail format at an on-site hospitality venue. Omega did a great job of showcasing in Beijing, and will do it again in Vancouver, by demonstrating the value of timekeeping at the Olympics, the history of timekeeping, innovative new products, and doing things that create share of mind with the different customers they bring to the Games.
IEG SR: Can you share what’s happening around the upcoming Games and World Cup from SportsMark’s and your clients’ perspectives?
Bruce: Those two properties are great platforms for product and brand integration based on the size, scale and multinational makeup of our clients’ guests. They are fantastic venues to expose customers to different types of goods and services that our clients provide.
We are trying to work with our clients on providing better analysis in determining which of their clients to invite and why. In the old days, it was a matter of pulling out a database, putting a checkmark next to several hundred names, sending out invites and hoping for the best. There needs to be more strategy around the invitation process based on the value clients may bring to the company and the potential business lift they could provide.
We’ve created a guest invitation management system that is tailored to each of our clients based on the type of B2B customer they want to invite and engage with. It’s a consulting tool to help determine the value set of each customer segment, whether it’s C-level execs or mid-level managers. It’s all about being strategic in who they are inviting, why they are bringing them, and what they expect to get in value creation and return from these guests.
We are providing strategic operations consulting and corporate hospitality programming for eight sponsor and venue clients around the Vancouver Olympics. We work with Visa and Omega on the TOP level; Bell, Sun Microsystems, Vincor Canada—the official wine of the Vancouver Games—Weston bakeries; and Procter & Gamble, a new USOC sponsor.
We are operating on two tracks around FIFA World Cup. A year ago we were appointed to manage the commercial hospitality program for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
We are the official sales agency for North America, so if corporations want to use FIFA World Cup as an incentive or send VIP customers to South Africa, they need to go through SportsMark. We provide official ticket and hospitality packages, as well as accommodations and transportation. It’s a fully turnkey program.
We have also recruited a few new clients as a result of the program, notably Univision and Major League Soccer. On the sponsor side, we are handling global hospitality programs for FIFA global sponsors Visa and Sony.
IEG SR: In addition to hospitality, SportsMark works with some clients on other elements of sponsorship activation. What is happening on that end?
Bruce: One of the things we are proud of is our work with Visa. We’re helping them roll out a FIFA guest experience platform around the world.
We have worked with Visa to develop a strategy that enables their global regions to run promotions with their bank clients allowing Visa cardholder winners the opportunity to see their country’s team play in the World Cup.
In the past, winning a trip to the FIFA World Cup was good enough. Now people want to see their team play. That has been very complex to do in the past; we’ve made it work, and look forward to working with Visa on site and managing their global program.
IEG SR: Any other notable activation examples?
Bruce: In September ’09, we executed a global program for Sony called Sony Twilight Football that promoted a new low-light digital photography camera. Sony challenged us to manage seven amateur soccer matches in seven priority markets around the world on the same day at sunset. It was based on the fall equinox, when summer turns to fall—and in the southern hemisphere the vernal equinox when winter turns to spring.
Sony leveraged the program with a promotion for photographers and journalists: Sony offered them the chance to win a trip to play in these football events and photograph the journey with Sony’s low-light digital products. The event markets were fantastic backdrops for photographing these football matches at twilight—places like Venice, Italy; Perth, Australia; Iguazu Falls, Brazil; and Cape Town, South Africa.
It was a great product integration story. SportsMark provided all the global event management and logistics, and Sony captured these events with photos, which it used in an above-the-line ad campaign and a contest to send the winning photographers to the FIFA World Cup.
The program also speaks to the trend of business and product integration to reach multiple audiences. Sony leveraged its relationship with FIFA World Cup through the entire program, which allowed them to target consumer football fans as well as professional photographers and journalists. That allowed them to promote products and services to specific audience segments.
IEG SR: Overall, what sponsorship trends are you seeing?
Bruce: I see a couple of trends. The first is more business integration as part of a sponsorship. Companies are conducting more analysis when evaluating a sponsorship to see how it delivers value in more than just brand and promotional marketing.
As CEOs and CFOs look at their investments, they want sponsorship to impact other areas of the company, such as distribution, operations, public relations and employees.
The second trend I’m seeing is more corporate social responsibility. That is a big one. How do companies with CSR programs integrate those into their event marketing platforms?
That’s a challenge for many of our corporate clients: “How do I link our philanthropic and sustainability initiatives through a sponsorship?” That is another massive trend that will continue to take shape in the coming years.
IEG SR: What do you see as the biggest challenges in sponsorship?
Bruce: I see three challenges. The first is improving our value chain as an industry. Many companies have downsized the use of sponsorship over the past two years because they weren’t always seeing the value, and we have to improve our value chain.
Globalization is another challenge. More and more multinational companies are getting into sponsorship at all levels, especially companies from China, Russia, Mexico and Brazil. FIFA used to be dominated by American-based companies and now its sponsorship roster is very global, with only have a handful of American-based sponsors.
You have an incredibly diverse multinational corporate approach to sponsorship, and properties that can deliver value in more than one geographic area are going to carry the deal many times.
The third challenge is positioning sponsorship as more than just a brand and marketing vehicle. I recently sat in a meeting with a new client: There were the usual suspects—people from marketing, promotions and communications. But this meeting also had people from legal, corporate social responsibility, the chief information officer and the general managers charged with overall business operations in the company’s different regions.
That shows how the role of sponsorship is changing. It’s all about how companies look at sponsorship and try to inject it into different areas of their business. The challenge is to get the sponsorship industry to better position how a sponsorship can work for an entire company.
Sources
SportsMark Management Group, Tel: 415/461-5801