Fashions come and go, but there are always some trends that run deep and tend to stick. Here are nine of them (yes, nine and not ten!) from our editorial desk that are influencing our industry, from measurement issues to tech changes to broader advertising trends that affect how we plan and execute sponsorships. Read our Nine Sponsorship Trends for 2018, an excerpt from our latest annual Sponsorship Guidebook.
WHITE OUT CONDITIONS AT THE 105TH GREY CUP HINDER SPONSORSHIP VISIBILITY
All eyes may have been on the game Sunday night, but they certainly weren’t seeing all the logos that paying sponsors intended, as an unexpected snowfall covered the field – the most coveted branding real estate for the CFL Grey Cup. According to data analysis run by our SPOT tool that assesses and values on-screen logo and branding visibility, some major sponsors didn’t get what they paid for.
Formula E was launched in 2014 as the world’s first electric street racing series, attracting attention from traditional manufacturers like Audi, Renault and Jaguar, as well as curiosity from many former Formula 1 drivers. With the overall aging of motorsports audiences, Formula E provided a fresh opportunity to gain new audiences for the sport as a whole, and as with the launch of any new series, there was tremendous potential for innovation without any red tape, pre-existing agreements or politics.
Many brands still limit their sponsorship programs to promotional or tactical activations. They focus solely on the experiential side of things instead of having a program that uses many channels and dedicated messages to communicate the associations between the brands.
Don’t get us wrong. Experiential tactics serve a purpose and can be a lot of fun. But investing in an effective overall sponsorship program is another beast entirely.
By Samantha Phelan
You wouldn’t sponsor a live event and not have an on-site presence; you wouldn’t buy a banner and not ask for its measurements or placement to ensure optimization of space and exposure; you wouldn’t buy title partnership of the Super Bowl and then sit back and expect the sales to come in on mentions alone. And yet, here we are in the digital space with seemingly complete complacency and no shame in our game.
Although sponsorship has really taken flight over the past few decades as an important marketing communication tool, it has been in existence for much longer than you would think. We retraced the origin and history of sponsorship, and it might surprise you. In this first post, we will focus on sponsorship before the 19th century.
Sponsorship can be extremely effective at reaching communications and business objectives. However, building the equity of a partnership requires a lot of time, mainly because audiences need to naturally associate the brand with a property, especially if the sponsor is replacing another brand from the same category. The good news is that the positive effects will last as well.
Social sponsorship has proven to be a relevant tool to express a brand’s values and to add a social dimension to a brand identity. It has the potential to improve brand image, generate better attitudes toward a brand and increase purchase intents. Besides, it is a more powerful lever for brand image than commercial sponsorship.
The IEG sponsorship conference held in Chicago this past March 26 to 29 remains the biggest event of its kind, bringing together over a thousand sponsorship professionals from all over North America, plus South America and Europe. This 34th “Pivot” edition was classic IEG, with its tried and true formula. In general, I feel that the audience is getting more property and non-profit heavy than when I started attending in the early 2010s, but the content from keynote speakers was very diverse and, in my opinion, better than 2016.
Using Tech to Empower Decision-Making
How do you know if you’re making the right sponsorship choices? This is a hard question to answer because sponsorship is a complex industry with lots of moving parts. But when you start with the data and use tech to track your progress, it empowers you to make better, more informed decisions.
After visiting the massive Sony space (post 1), I was eager to see how Panasonic played it. The brand used the time at SXSW to showcase its spinoff “Game Changer Catapult, an initiative to transform your ideas into reality regardless of where or how you work and live.” Taking advantage of flexibility and start-up mentality by using top talent outside of Panasonic is part of a broader trend for big corporations seeking to generate new ideas—like when the giant accounting solutions Intuit launched Mint, the personal finance management tool.
Cause sponsorship is of great interest, regardless of its relatively small size. That’s because corporate social responsibility has become an indispensable tool for brands looking to set themselves apart from the competition.
As I’m writing this in a coffee shop that just yesterday was the M&M Lounge, I can’t help but marvel at the high quality, ephemeral productions I’ve seen. Brands are paying top dollar for pop-up activations in the hopes of reaching a one-of-kind audience of brand marketers, advertisers, creators and the like.
One of the most popular articles on the Elevent sponsorship blog is a piece called “Top 10 sponsorship ambushes.” This always makes us wonder: how is THIS still a thing? Many of the examples in that article are dated, with the most blatant cases of ambush marketing perpetrated by Nike in the 90’s (though they remain the bad boys of sponsorship to this day).
Top Sponsorship Series
The website creation platform Squarespace surprised us all with the witty and original ad it aired during Super Bowl XLIX. The absurd humour of the concept cut through the Super Bowl clutter, and
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