Distance yourself from advertising

With the formation of a more developed advertising market in Russia, the sponsorship segment has distanced itself from the concept of “advertising” and now includes greater opportunities for a company with the right choice and implementation of a strategy in this direction. The sponsorship “industry” itself is also developing – expenses on sponsorship support of sporting events make up to 10% of the marketing budget of large companies and firms.

Sponsorship is a broader concept than just advertising, it combines not only advertising opportunities, but also the so-called image component, and is also part of the social activities of companies. From the point of view of advertising technologies, sponsorship is considered as a planned communication to disseminate information among target audiences of consumers, influencing the attitude towards the sponsor brand.

Sponsorship combines ATL and BTL communication channels and effectively uses the associative link “event – product” to form the image of a brand or company and position it in the target market segment. Naturally, sponsorship also performs purely advertising functions – such as increasing brand awareness and informing consumers about its qualities. Competent use of the entire set of channels makes sponsorship an effective marketing tool.

The need to conduct an extensive advertising campaign forces us to turn to sponsorship for the reason that a large volume of direct advertising, with rare exceptions, causes rejection by the audience, which needs a more subtle approach - the integration of advertising opportunities into events that are significant to them, including sports.

The main strategic directions for supporting sports events:

sponsorship in its pure form, i.e. partial financing of a sports or other project with the aim of acquiring additional advertising opportunities, in which the advertising and commercial aspect predominates;

media sponsorship – funding of broadcasts to cover TV audiences, quite narrow, but easier to implement;

targeted support of a specific team or sport, development of own events that effectively increase the company’s prestige;

solving socially significant problems in the form of supporting youth sports, a sporty lifestyle and attracting attention to sports and sports activities.

In all areas of sponsorship, there is undoubtedly an advertising aspect. But the main task of sponsorship is not just to place advertising, but to effectively influence the external environment of the company in all its manifestations.

Sponsorship Strategy

Implementing a sponsorship strategy involves four main steps:

The first step is choosing a strategic direction. It depends on the company, its mission, budget, as well as the tasks it sets for itself in terms of image formation and solving social issues.

Step two: The choice of events for sponsorship is influenced by the product itself and the branding strategy.

Step three: at the level of each specific project, its effectiveness is determined in terms of advertising returns, solving image and social problems.

Step four is the implementation of a sponsorship project taking into account the selected program with maximum use of all marketing opportunities.

The main question that arises for the marketing department when forming a sponsorship strategy is where to invest funds and how much. The answer is given by the strategy for developing the company's brand or brands. The necessary conditions are the correspondence of the event audience to the target audience of the product and the interest of this audience in the product.

Example: a brand of skates and hockey – the product is functionally interesting to those who play this sport (both professionals and amateurs), spectators and fans are not interested in skates. Beer and football – the product is interesting both to fans (to have a good time at the match) and to amateur players (to quench their thirst). Let's say we produce Arsenalnoye beer. We say that it is a "beer with a masculine character". It is interesting from an emotional point of view to the male audience, fans of strength sports, etc. By buying Arsenalnoye, I show what values are important to me.

Football is in some ways the perfect choice for a sponsor. It has the highest level of entertainment, it is popular, and our products are valuable to both groups of consumers.

Spectacularity and popularity

You can understand how much a particular sport attracts an audience by analyzing the attendance of the event itself or the ratings of the TV broadcast. The latter is much more important in terms of sponsoring TV broadcasts and ensuring advertising presence on TV.

The popularity of a sport, i.e. the number of people who play it, differs significantly from its entertainment value. It is difficult to give an exact answer here. But the first places are held by skiing and alpine skiing, football, running, cycling, sport dancing, etc.

Brand positioning is the second aspect. The brand's belonging to a particular category and its positioning in a particular target group determine the choice of the competition format.

An example from the beer industry: “Klinskoe”, “Doctor Diesel” are youth brands. They support youth disciplines – freestyle, snowboarding, extreme games. The brand image is youthful, modern, fashionable.

Sponsorship has a direct advertising return, but it is most effective to use it as one of the integrated methods of brand promotion in the overall marketing strategy to increase consumer loyalty and give the brand a sensory image, to establish associations.

Let's return to the example of football and beer: empathy, "rooting" for a favorite team, is essentially relaxation; beer consumption, in turn, is also inseparable from relaxation. Here a clear associative connection is built: football - relaxation - beer consumption. That is why careful selection of strategy, events, competitions, formats, their integration into the marketing strategy is the basis for the actions of an effective sponsor.

Another issue is the social significance of the company's actions. Sponsorship can very effectively shape the public's attitude to the company and its actions, cementing its image in people's minds. With the right approach, clients and consumers will understand that by purchasing the company's products and services, they are actually supporting their favorite sport.

Sponsorship tactics

In the case of organizing and holding events, the concept of effectiveness is primarily associated with brand awareness and loyalty to the company, with the extent to which an advertising event encourages purchase, and with the consumer's attitude toward the brand before and after the event.

If we can determine the advertising return from an event quite accurately, using such indicators as the cost of alternative direct advertising placement (taking into account the reduction factors), audience reach, cost per thousand contacts, media ratings, then the share of the company's image is something that is more dependent on the specific parameters of the event: participants, team level, venue, etc.

The image component can be quite definitely assessed through the system of its dependence on specific event parameters. For example, we can build the following dependence: the closer the parameters of a certain event correspond to the interests of the company, the greater the image component of the project and the more funds the company is ready to spend on the event with the same advertising opportunities.

We managed to build an algorithm for determining and calculating the coefficient of image attractiveness of an event by creating a system of calculations of individual, most important positions in the conditions of the event. Using the method of expert assessment and having surveyed Baltika specialists in the field of marketing and advertising, we created a system of indicators characterizing the image attractiveness of a particular event with a sufficient degree of accuracy. Among these indicators are the conformity of the brand position, the level of the event, its duration and location, participants, media coverage, government support and a dozen more indicators, elevated to a scoring system. At the moment, this innovation is undergoing active testing.

The advertising events department processes up to a thousand sponsorship proposals per year. Using our approach, it is possible to quickly and objectively characterize not only the degree of attractiveness of an event and its sponsorship package in each specific case, but also to determine the amount of sponsorship participation that is truly effective for the company.

PLAYERS: Sponsorship Rules