Making the most out of a sponsorship
Published August 10th, 2006 in GeneralThis year’s Ryder Cup is taking place in Ireland and it’s the biggest sporting event in the country for many a year. Needless to say there’s countless euro tied up in its sponsorship.
The funny thing about sponsorship though, and what many people don’t realise, is that you’ve got to spend as much activating the sponsorship as you do on actually becoming a sponsor. If not then people will probably never remember your association.
On the other hand, it is becoming more difficult than ever to get real cutthrough given that numerous companies are turning to sponsorship as a means of leveraging their brand. Take the Ryder Cup for example, it seems like there’s golf ad after golf ad on TV.
On Saturday though, when walking into a shop on Grafton street to checkout a MacBook, I suddenly realised who one of the sponsors of the Ryder Cup was - O2. When I walked into the store, the floor felt strange so I looked down to see fake grass. The entire shop floor was decked out with it. Absolutely fantastic idea because when you look around to see the other Ryder Cup paraphernalia, you draw a clear association between the brand and their sponsorship. For some reason though the fake grass isn’t being replicated across O2’s other stores.
This falls in line with recent research from Amarach on sports sponsorship which states the success of a sponsorship “will depend on the impact of the association forged between a sporting event and a particular brand or company.”
Technorati Tags: Piaras Kelly, o2, Ryder Cup, Sponsorship
11 Responses to “Making the most out of a sponsorship”
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piaras - interesting you should be turning your mind to sports sponsorship in light of your recent post on the tour de france cyclist floyd landis. he does rather show the potential downside of sports sponsorship. as did cian o’connor for waterford crystal a couple of years ago.
for the major events - the world cup, the ryder cup etc - a lot of sports sponsorship seems something between an ego trip and stopping your competitors getting in there. the illogical conculsion of this has been the rules brought in to stop sponsorship hijacking (fans with branded t-shirts and caps etc) at these major events - such heavy handedness often reflecting badly on the major sponsors and potentially damaging the event itself.
minor events though do seem to offer better returns - consider the amount of free publicity b&q got in the press when ellen mcarthur was doing her round the world cruise. and, of course, there was that whole spat between the gaa players and rte over what they could and could not be drinking when being interviewed.
Piaras,
The ryder cup could very easily backfire on many of the sponsors. I don’t know how many people have told me that they’re sick of the event already. They’ve a real interest in Golf and while they might get behind a Ireland/GB team, they’ve no interest in Europe winning or losing.
AIB have a lot of questions to answer with that daft ad that cost so much…
The interesting point fmk raises about sports sponsorship is how companies go about selecting their sponsorship. Do you go with an a single athlete, a team or an entire sport? I’ll touch on that at a later date to discuss it further.
In fairness to the likes of the World Cup organisers, although their actions may seem like an ego trip at times, they are trying to protect the interests of their sponsors. If they didn’t , then the value of their property would seriously be devalued. There is a fine line though which organisations often overstep and come across as overzealous. In terms of the Dutch fans who were were forced to take off their branded clothing they wore to a stadium, the only reason why we know about them wass because they were banned. If the wore the apparel it’s unlikely that they’d even have been heard of.
I don’t think there’s a difference between major and minor events, I really think it comes down to how you activate it. Just look at the likes of Guinness and Irish rugby. The Keith Woods mask is just one example of fantastic activation.
Edward - Don’t even remember the AIB ad
piaras - as you’ll be returning to this story, you might be interested in the news that floyd landis’ cycling team, phonak, is to fold, after its sponsors pulled their funding and no new sponsors could be found. you’ll find the news in most good sport sections.
Was discussing the topic of sports sponsorship as it happens on The Persuaders Marketing Podcast most recent edition with John Trainor of Onside and John Redmond of Slatterys who do a lot of work in this area. Both agreed that sponsorship contracts are tightening up with regard to get out clauses in the case of prospective scandals. I think sometimes PR agencies are sometimes guilty of trying to be too cute by far and alienating the sponsors - does anyone recall the Coors sponsroship of the boots of a couple of the Cork footballers a couple of years back?
Hey Piaras! In the time it has taken me to read all this Derval O Rourke would have been able to do her grocery shopping in Spar!
Wasn’t it Corona?
Piaras,
Well I was right - no one did recall the Coors sponsorship because it was in fact Corona
Re your comments on fake/synthetic grass for the ryder cup we decked out louisa bridge railway station in grass and did 2 double decker buses covered in grass!!(for Titan international for O2).didnt know about the shops.pity.
Any pics Mark?
hi, how much does it cost to sponsor the Ryder Cup?? Need to find out for a project in college.. Cheers! PLease get back to me asap