Gone are the days when sponsorship was just about exposure and awareness (and invariably a large component of a CEO’s passions!). Brands that currently invest in sponsorship but only go so far as to splash their logo across the event are missing out on the tangible opportunities.

Think about the last time you attended a sporting event or a music festival. How many logos were you exposed to? How many do you remember now? And most importantly, do you recall why they struck a chord with you?

Chances are, the brands you remember were the ones who reached out and engaged you on an emotional level and did something memorable. These are the brands that have been clever by investing budget to activate.

There is always an opportunity to engage emotionally with audiences and leverage sponsorships so that a brand’s activity will create a tangible memory.

Follow our simple tips on how to activate a sponsorship effectively:

Louise Walker,
Campaign Director,
Impact

(1) Leverage:
Brands who don’t invest the extra dollars effectively to activate their sponsorship and ensure maximum R.O.I aren’t spending smart. The industry rule of thumb is that for every dollar spent on sponsorship, spend another $1 to $3 to activate and promote it.

(2) Key questions:
A brand needs to ask itself several simple questions when choosing which property to sponsor:
• what are my customers interested in?
• what do I want to get out of this sponsorship?
• will I have enough budget left over (after paying sponsorship fees) to implement an effective sponsorship activation?

(3) Keep it simple:
After ensuring the sponsorship opportunity works for both the brand and your budget, the next step is working out the best way to activate at the event. The activation needs to enhance the consumer experience at the event, not hinder it.

Car parking can be one of the biggest time wasters for consumers when attending an event. As part of Ford’s sponsorship of Geelong football club, the first 100 Ford drivers to enter the car park at Skilled Stadium on match day parked for free.

(4) Keep it nice:
To further maximise opportunities at events, brands should build a close relationship with the event organisers to help ensure the best activation possible. You can maximize the opportunity by negotiating the best site, finding out about other brands involved to assess if cross promotional opportunities are available, as well as pushing the boundaries of what can be activated at the event.

(5) Connection:
Sponsorship should be all about consumer engagement. The events themselves provide a fantastic platform to engage consumers while they are in a relaxed and open state of mind and receptive to brands engaging with them.

Nokia kick-started conversations with an activation to trial its new 5300 handset. ‘Silence booths’ were installed at music festivals for consumers to shut themselves inside to make a free phone call. This allowed them to totally experience every aspect of the handset, making it a much better selling tool than picking up a dummy version inside a mobile phone store.

(6) Tap into the excitement:
Look at what the favourite components of the event are and see how a brand could become part of this.

For the masses that attend Australian Open every year, the best part is of course watching the tennis itself. Nintendo tapped into this, creating further excitement when legends of the game Pat Rafter and Henri Leconte played Wii tennis endorsing Nintendo’s sponsorship as Official Gaming Console of the Australian Open.

(7) Anticipate your consumer needs:
Consider what the worst components of the event could be and how your brand could lend a helping hand.

When Red Rooster sponsored ‘Moonlight Cinemas’, branded mini torches were included in a goodie bag for its VIP guests. This meant that the embarrassing mission mid-film to the toilet in the park, and in the dark, was made a little easier (and fewer feet were trodden on all round!).

(8) Tailor your activity to your audience:
It’s of vital importance to deliver an activation that is appropriate to and inspires your target audience, offering them an experience they want to get involved in.

Cricket fans are predominantly male, have a fierce love of the sport, their players, and of course a competitive streak, which is why 3 mobile’s activation at the cricket worked so well. Fans were invited to a branded zone to test their cricket skills by bowling at a cut-out of Gilly and attempting to get the ball to pass through a hole in his hand, with a range of prizes on offer.

(9) Promote loyalty:
Sponsorship activations also work brilliantly for brands that want to reward loyal customers.

When ANZ sponsored the FINA World Swimming Championships, it offered VIP entry for ANZ card holders to beat the queues. ANZ customers were able to walk straight in through a special entry with ANZ branded promo staff directing them. All of the people stuck in the queue got to watch the special treatment the ANZ customers got from their bank. ‘Priceless’ as Mastercard would say.

(10) Face up to it:
It goes without saying that if your activation involves using promotional staff, use the most experienced and relevant personnel you can get your hands on. It’s vital to get this right as an activation can succeed or fail based on the quality of staff that deliver it.

So the next time you attend an event or festival make a mental note of which brands are ‘activating’ their sponsorship successfully by making an emotional connection with you.

A successful sponsorship should be measured by not only the value received from the investment (e.g. how many times the logo appears) but also by how the sponsorship is activated, the way the brand engages the senses and how it leaves a lasting impression on the consumer.

Thanks to: Louise Walker, Campaign Director, Impact, Ford, Nokia, Nintendo, Red Rooster, 3 mobile, ANZ.
Posted by: Louise Walker