Sponsorship Blog
Campus-wide sponsorship – or the sophistication of centuries-old properties
Traditionally, college sponsorship was the domain of college athletic programs – what we call in our industry the university’s “front door” – but, over the past years, this model has been shifting to now encompass the whole academic ecosystem. This new trend is often referred to as campus-wide sponsorship.
5 steps to making sponsorship more impactful
Sponsorship measurement: Why the industry is still talking, but not doing much, about it.
Under Armour Sponsorship: A look at the 2018 SXSW activation and sponsorship strategy
What started as a small music festival in Austin, TX in 1987, is now a massive event, conference, festival, trade show and everything in between, with a declared attendance of 432,000 people for 2018.
Digital Sponsorship Activation
We sat down with Samantha at the 2017 Relevent Conference to discuss content creation and the world of digital marketing.
Project Pabst: A Brilliant Activation
Sponsorship Risk Management
While we don’t want to overstate this issue, it is a sad realization that both event promoters and brands need to take new security threats into account. Promoters and local police forces have been quick to make adjustments in the wake of recent events. We saw that at South by Southwest, where police cars blocked street access near pedestrian areas, and in Europe, where giant (branded) sandbags were set up to prevent vehicles from entering crowded areas.
The Expertise Problem in Sponsorship
Sponsorship is the Swiss knife of marketing communication. Great sponsorship programs usually leverage multiple activation channels, which requires broad knowledge. While communication professionals tend to be experts in one channel, sponsorship experts must think across multiple platforms. And yet sponsorship is seldom taught in school, or only in passing, and a lot of people working in the industry landed there largely by accident and had to learn things on the spot.
Finding your brand space in sponsorship
Just a few years ago, standard, and often rigid, sponsorship structures set most sponsors on the same level. But as brands get better at crafting their own narrative, generic platforms with properties are no longer working to create goodwill. Brands need to find a clear positioning for their sponsorship portfolio as well as within each property.
Sponsorship Trends Updates (2015-2017)
For this third edition of our Sponsorship Guidebook, we decided to take a look at our ability to predict trends. Here is an update on our 2015 and 2016 predictions.
Technology changing the revenue landscape
Rights holders have built empires selling broadcasting rights, tickets and sponsorships, with some held by private interests driven by a strong vision, like Ecclestone and Formula 1 or the France family and NASCAR. Changes in media are affecting these structures, both in terms of consumption habits and technologies used for display, which challenge the established revenue and sponsorship models.
2018 Sponsorship Trends
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.
While Toronto celebrates, snow spoils the party for sponsors
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.
DHL x Formula E: sponsorship case study
Sometimes it pays to make the first move.
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.