We’ve used survey data from CROP to sketch a portrait of the relationship between Canadians and cultural and sports entertainment. Learn about consumer trends and preferences according to various demographic groups and Canada’s different regions.

Hockey is the undisputed winner as our favourite national sport, with 76% of Canadians attending a game in the last two years (all leagues combined). Coming in a distant second—a full 40 point behind—is football at 36%, with baseball taking third place for attendance with 31%.

Despite the growing popularity of soccer playing among Canadian youth, attendance of the sport—which ranks 4th at 16%—isn’t following suit. British Columbia leads the nation in soccer attendance with 33%, followed by Quebec at 23%, placing both provinces well above the national average.

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We’ve used survey data from CROP to sketch a portrait of the relationship between Canadians and cultural and sports entertainment. Learn about consumer trends and preferences according to various demographic groups and Canada’s different regions.

Canadians who attended events in the last two years did so an average of 3.6 times.

The type of events Canadians attend generally goes hand in hand with their discretionary household income. Food festivals are the most popular in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, the three wealthiest provinces.

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We’ve used survey data from CROP to sketch a portrait of the relationship between Canadians and cultural and sports entertainment. Learn about consumer trends and preferences according to various demographic groups and Canada’s different regions.

Overall, music events are the biggest hit with Canadians, with 29% having attended an event of this kind in the past two years.

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Science of Sponsorship Series

This series takes a look at the academic literature on sponsorship and offers a condensed summary and managerial implications.

By Hakim Azrour, M.Sc.

For the past few years, morality clauses have been cropping up in a lot of endorsement contracts, enabling companies to end their association with a celebrity and distance themselves from a negative event should it occur. That’s how endorsement contracts came to an end between McDonald’s and Kobe Bryant, Kate Moss and Chanel, and H&M and Burberry, not to mention Tiger Woods with Accenture, Gatorade and Gillette.

Because of the extravagant nature of celebrities—or maybe just because they’re human—endorsement scandals are inevitable. Unfortunately, such scandals are also totally unpredictable, and a company generally has no advance warning when its highly paid spokesperson decides to stray from the script. The one thing a company can control is its reaction when the media is in an uproar about its association with an offending celebrity.

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Social sponsorship is no longer a bland vehicle for corporate social responsibility or philanthropy. Brands use it more and more to achieve marketing or corporate communication objectives. In that light, the authors discovered that social sponsorship, like its traditional counterpart, is most effective when strategically planned and executed. To achieve desired results, it is paramount for a strong natural fit to exist between the brand and the selected non-profit. Managerial implications are covered below.

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A sponsorship is a sophisticated and complex marketing tool; it entails an entire strategic process of solicitation, negotiation, and customer service. What’s more: professionals who are responsible for sponsorships must fully grasp both traditional and non-traditional marketing communication channels as well as the inner workings of several different markets. Sponsorships can be leveraged to achieve many objectives and reach different target audiences. It is therefore important to understand the basics before launching a full-fledge sponsorship campaign.

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Shiny and new

With the advancement of digital innovations, marketers are increasingly seeking new technologies to enhance their sponsorship activations and efforts. From mobile to geotargeting to geofencing, we are seeing a major shift in the sponsorship industry away from stationary tents and sampling to more sophisticated digital activations. To capitalize on this new technological landscape, marketers are re-evaluating and changing their approach to sponsorship and events.

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When it comes to evaluating a sponsorship package, pulling a number out of a hat is not enough. That’s where the Elevent report can serve you well. We’ve collated the latest data on the market so you can have a fair and independent assessment of sponsorship plans.

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Interview with Christiane Rochon, creator of the campaign

Q. – The Save Mai Duong campaign was anything but traditional. What were the objectives? C. R. – The objective was both simple and complex: to find a donor for Mai. The “collateral benefits” were to increase awareness of stem cell donation and to conduct a successful blood drive campaign. But the real objective—the only one—was to find a match for Mai in the Vietnamese community.

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Special Report — Daniel Juillet, vice-president, CROP

Let’s say you wanted to spend every weekend attending a festival in Quebec. Well, guess what: you’d need five years or more to take them all in. In fact, Quebec has over 250 festivals (and even more according to certain sources). Why so many? Why do Quebecers flock to them? And what opportunities does this create for brands?

Yes, the Quebec joie de vivre is often served up as an explanation for the festival frenzy. We’re pleasure seekers. We like to party. We like to laugh, sing and dance. But that’s not the whole story. As part of CROP’s Panorama/3SC research program, we looked into the personal values of participants at some of Quebec’s biggest festivals and discovered that Quebecers’ legendary hedonism isn’t the only thing drawing them to festivals. Going to a festival also fulfills a need to be part of a collective, to share experiences with the people around you. In Europe people take to the streets. They fill up the coffee shops. In Quebec we go to festivals.

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Some marketing stunts become overnight successes. Some are easily forgotten, while others stick. Here are some of our team’s favourite partnership activations and celebrity endorsements.

10. Kmart and Joe Boxer: A match made in heaven

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Sponsorship valuations have always been the specialty of a handful of agencies or consultants because it requires media knowledge and a thorough understanding of sponsorship. Sponsees and sponsors alike have very little information on how sponsorship evaluations are actually done. Today we open the black box and share some of the practices. As the old saying goes, knowledge is power.

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What is ambush marketing?

Ambush tactics are used when a non-sponsor tries to associate itself with an event by using communication techniques that will lead consumers to believe the company acts as an official sponsor. There are many different sponsorship ambush tactics. The most notorious involves buying media during air-time of an event, or around it, with out-of-home advertising. Others involves promotion using a theme similar to the event’s or even sponsoring a similar event to create confusion. Has this morally disputable practice been diminishing due to the increasing legal protection granted to property and its sponsors (which is the case with the Olympics)? Somewhat, but the ambushers are finding even more creative ways to do so within the boundaries of the law. The upcoming Sochi Olympics will tell us if ambushing boundaries will be pushed once more.

10. 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games – Kodak (Actual sponsor: Fuji)

The Origins of Ambush Marketing

During the 1976 Montreal Olympics, there were 628 official sponsors, which meant the dilution of the Olympic brand: smaller impact for, and awareness of, official sponsors. The Los Angeles Olympic Games saw a complete overhaul of the sponsorship structure in order to increase private funding of the event. The restructuring of sponsorship rights and the implementation of exclusivity was indeed an overwhelming financial success with a surplus of more than US$250 million in sponsorship revenues, making it the first Olympics to be funded entirely privately. This new strategy saw many companies frustrated of being left out and it paved the way for marketers to try to associate their brand with the event, even illegitimately. In the camera sector, Fuji won the bid, leaving a frustrated Kodak sponsoring the US broadcast. The tactic worked as the public did consider that Kodak was an official Olympic sponsor.

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On one hand, a precious tool in the sponsorship arsenal; on the other hand, a fundamental—and sometimes harsh—element of the reality of supply and demand.

In fact, sponsorship valuation is key to establishing a pricing strategy, estimating market value and managing your sponsorship portfolio.

Why do I need to evaluate sponsorship proposals?

For properties:

As each new proposal you build is customized to the sponsor’s specific objectives, you need the sounding board of evaluation every time. First, you do not want to put yourself in a bad place pitching a ridiculous amount to a brand: they will evaluate the true value of your sponsorship (read further)! Moreover, each package being different, you don’t want sponsors with similar levels to have a disproportionate amount of assets for the same rights fee. It’s a tool that will keep fairness, and maintain harmony between sponsors. As a general rule of thumb, you want the value of the proposal to be at least at par with the asking price. Sponsors are looking at a 2 to 1 or even 3 to 1 ratio, due to the uncertain nature of sponsorship. Evaluating your proposals will ensure that you get the right value for your proposal.

For sponsors:

Sponsorship valuation is an essential part of acquiring a new property. In this day and age, all marketing expenses can be under scrutiny. This is especially true for sponsorship because of its very nature: the presence of hospitality and the entertainment aspect attached to it might raise suspicions that the decision to sponsor was motivated by top managers’ appreciation of a particular sport more than by sound market insight. John Kerry, secretary of state, raised the issue in his now infamous quote about sponsorship being wasteful. He tried, to no avail, banning companies that received bailout money to pursue such a marketing strategy. In other words, the process of sponsorship selection and evaluation must be extremely thorough. A strong business case must be put in place because folks from the finance department, external controllers, or even stockholders will ask questions about the sponsorship value and how the decision to sponsor was made. After all, sponsorship is a marketing investment, not a donation; thus you need to assess the value of your buy as you would do with any media campaign.

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