They seemed smart enough...

Everyone loves a fall from grace. It's human nature. A mixture of relief - for those of you who never have; reassurance - that we're all human, regardless of endorsement value; and fascination - at how far our emotions can betray our rational selves.

The non endemic media, indoctrinated in the lore of brand value transfer, always jump to the conclusion that sponsors will suffer immediate irreperable brand damage. But of course, that's not the case.

Consumers builds relationships with brands over years, like friends - although soap characters is a better analogy. Unless we are ourselves quite strange, we don't drop friends quite so abruptly: even when Fred West's neighbours found out it wasn't party games he was playing in the cellar, the quotes were, more or less: i'm really shocked, he always seemed nice enough.

So the impact on Accenture - from the perspective of brand image - will be minimal. Clients, prospective clients and staff won't walk away in shock. They won't even be quoted: it always seemed like a nice place to work.

The impact, and there will be an impact, looks different.

In terms of corporate self-image, and confidence, they've been weakened. Their positioning around Tiger was leading performance. But, despite running the best (non sports industry) athlete sponsorship for the last six years, their performance has been shown to be flawed. The association has turned out to be ... slightly ridiculous.

Tiger's adventures in the rough were known on the circuit: what does Accenture's apparent ignorance say about its market intelligence?

Their management integrity has to be questioned: if they did know, why didn't they act?

Given their reliance on Woods, where can we see evidence of the risk mitigation and management that would be appropriate in these circumstances? How can Accenture of all companies, be caught with it's metaphorical pants down?

What this points to is internal management failings at Accenture that are not uncommon with much business handling of sponsorship. The essence of the potential damage to Accenture's seven year campaign is that their management of Woods has not lived up to their messaging

From a brand and management perspective, the fact that this is 'just sponsorship' is not a defence. An organisation whose entire proposition is about excellence simply can't have blind spots. A mismanaged sponsorship begs the question: what else?

That said, Accenture won't be paying the price in lost customers, but lost voice.

When you've run an exemplary comms campaign, as Accenture has, what do you say next? Tiger came to represent Accenture's entire positioning. Their association with Tiger, in many ways, has stood for the immense power that sponsorship has to build a brand in the mind of consumers.

To replace Tiger is the challenge. Not the person, because no person can replace Tiger. There are plenty of people who could stand for performance as well as Tiger - albeit without quite the same level of celebrity. But that's not a place Accenture can easily return to. The same strapline, the same corporate positioning, is not an option.

So the challenge is an entire corporate positioning. Which takes money, and energy, and management time. So in the interval, Accenture will find it hard to deliver anything but tactical messaging. Its outdoor and ambient media presence will be placeholders. And when their new campaign, aggressively promised for 2010, emerges - will it stand comparison? So what Accenture have lost - and this plays to the heart of brand communications - is a voice, and a momentum. And like Tiger, their next appearance in public will be closely watched.

If Accenture manage to produce a campaign which begins to rival the punch, the relevance and the simple accessibility of Tiger - a sponsorship, let's not forget - both they and their agency will richly deserve the epithet of leading performance. As a huge fan of what Accenture has done for the past six years, I'll be surprised.

Is there more to sponsorship than the rights market?

Does ESA wants to represent the past or the future?

Ever since Patrick Nally corralled the global TV and stadia signage rights together on Coke's behalf for the 1974 FIFA World Cup, sponsorship has been dominated by rights. And, with the IOC’s announcing it expects to reach the mythical figure of US$1 billion for its TOP programme, rights certainly aren't going away.

Ultimately, the contractual relationship between a ‘sponsor’ and a ‘rights-holder’ will always described in terms of rights. But to understand, to conceive of sponsorship in the same terms - as comfortable as it might be - doesn't begin to equip us to understand how brands are beginning to think - and act. More damagingly, the emphasis on rights restricts our ability to represent the real value sponsorship can bring to business. And, ultimately, it limits the value of sponsorship for both sponsors and rights-holders.

The big question for the sponsorship industry, as represented by ESA, is do you want to represent the past, or the future?

Unless we’re prepared to discriminate between good and bad, more clearly; unless we’re prepared be self-critical, to own up to the bad sponsorships, the duds, the errors of judgment, the wastage and the idiocy; unless we define what to us as an industry represents the best, the optimum model, the reason to believe which is uniquely ours, we'll remain powerless to defend ourselves and advance the very real cause of sponsorship as a serious, credible and increasingly appropriate response to brands’ needs to build deeper relationships with consumers.

Patrick Nally, speaking at Future Sponsorship, said: 'I watched the model we created continually being replicated - almost with disbelief. The ‘rights package’ was never intended to be the definitive answer – every brand’s needs are different.' Patrick drew a distinction between agencies which activate and agencies which sell sponsorship: 'The influence of the sales culture was incredibly formative on thinking of sponsorship at this early stage of development.' The rights package was a sales package.

And as Helen Day, Vice President of ESA explained, the International Chamber of Commerce'sdefinition of sponsorship which ESA still uses embraces the contractual nature of aponsorhip for a very good reason: 'The ICC's definitions are used by governments around the world as a foundation to underpin legislation. Sponsorship had to be defined contractually, as an exchange.'

But is that any reason - or excuse - for sponsorship to stay there?

For Lucien Boyer, CEO of Havas Sport and Entertainment, the rights are just the beginning: 'The rights often don't represent the real value for the sponsor. What is important is the creativity. A smart brand - or smart agency - can build a campaign out of almost nothing if it successfully identifies a powerful emotional insight.'

Nike and Red Bull of course are everyone's favourite paradigm busters. In Nike's most memorable campaigns - Scorpion, Joga Bonita - the endorsement talent is simply the supporting cast for Nike's vision. These are activations in the classic sense: multi-channel, multiple touch-point, driving sales.

But look at Saatchi and Saatchi’s work with T-Mobile's for its recent 'Life's for sharing' Trafalgar Square spot: multi-channel, multiple touchpoint, driving sales, with Pink the backing singer to TMO's world brandview. Pure Nike with a difference - the spot did not sit in the centre of a web of endorsements and team sponsorships. But it could have done.

As Lucien Boyer argued, the ability of a business to derive value from sponsorship demands immense creativity. But for as long as rights remain the dominant framework for this industry, sponsorship’s ability to demonstrate its full potential will be restricted to the few brands comfortable thinking outside of the rights box.

Sponsorship should be arguing its case as intelligently and as forcefully as digital or experiential. And to do that, we need a more meaningful foundation for the industry. Defining sponsorship is one logical place to begin the debate - but it's not the only place. What if ESA were to publish an unequivocal set of best practice criteria, standards which begin to make it clear we, the industry, view sponsorship as an absolutely accountable business practice? What message would we send about sponsorship to brands, the media and CMOs, if ESA publicly recognised that:

• evaluation budgets on sponsorship spend over, say, £50k

• independent evaluation

• disclosure of commission arrangements to client brands

• a standard business case template for sponsorship investment above £50k

- were considered best, no, just good practice. Or that Equivalent Advertising Value, from our perspective, deserves a standard valuation at 1%?

There are challenges, obviously, to standard-setting: challenges of making them practical, and workable. But at the very least they would create some firm foundations, and give us collectively a base from which to lever the greater accountability we all want and need.

Come on ESA, how about it?

2010, The Year Ahead

By Shaun Whatling, published in Sports Business November 09

2010.

So what does the year ahead look like for sponsorship? Very interesting indeed.

How else would it be possible to feel from the perspective of a year which has seen Carling end one of the longest-standing brand relationships in UK sport - only to be replaced by a record-breaking £80m deal with Standard Chartered?

A year ushered in by perhaps the most explicitly negative publicity for sponsorship since the mainstream press started using the word.

A year which has seen the entry of three new teams into F1, which, combined with the virtual rout of the financial and automotive sectors, and a new breed of investors into the sport, has given unexpected teeth to the Resource Restriction Agreement.

A year which has seen all the major agency networks realising that 'experiential + digital + TVC' is a powerful combination (even if they still don't dare call it sponsorship); that branded content is capable of sustaining a brand narrative and consumer relationships over time (even if they still don't dare call it sponsorship); and broadening their agency offering to embrace entertainment, fashion, community, and even the 3rd sector (even if...).

A year in which Corporate Responsibility has found an unexpected ally in sport (and the credit crunch) to help it transcend the marketing community's narrow perspective on cause-related marketing.

And a year in which the IOC has finally, perhaps, achieved its defining moment - ignoring, for a second time, America's increasingly strident invitation, and taking a gigantic step towards the fulfilment of its Olympic vision.

A year which, for me, has seen more fundamental shifts in the foundations of the industry of sport and sponsorship than any year I can remember - for the better; shifts which reflect a changing world order, at the macro-economic, but also - in developed markets - at the level of the individual.

2010. Two years to 2012. A very interesting year indeed.

Can't wait.

Convenient Fiction

By Shaun Whatling, published in Sports Business September 09

Convenient Fiction

Redmandarin are great believers in definition, as a foundation for planning, creativity and accountability. It underpins the thinking we apply to the challenges facing our clients. We published Defining Sponsorship to articulate Redmandarin's vision of sponsorship’s essence and potential.

And along the way, we had some fascinating conversations. Respected figures from the industry – Tony Ponturo, Patrick Nally, David Wheldon, Simon Lowden, Simon Thompson and many more – saying things we didn’t expect them to, showing the ‘party line’ of the sponsorship industry to be a convenient fiction.

Patrick Nally, for example, believes the rights package is dead. Clearly, the rights package remains the prevailing sales paradigm and is quite well actually, but a statement like that from the founder of rights packages demands consideration, especially when read alongside Tony Ponturo’s forthright statements about ‘official’ sponsorship – you’re not special, you’re just the company that ponied up the money, another extraordinary admission from an industry veteran with one of the largest budgets on the planet.

The commercial foundation for the industry rests on the complimentary concepts of rights packages and category exclusivity, and rights-holders around the world misguidedly take a lead from the Supertankers – the IOC, FIFA, UEFA and F1 – in creating their sales architecture and structure.

Category exclusivity, the ‘official beer’ story, is offered as a benefit: in fact, it is simply a hygiene factor. The truth is, the rationale for most category segmentations by rights-holders is no more sophisticated than: who is likely to buy this?

And most rights packages rely incredibly heavily on the media value of a logo on a sign in the background, despite the fact that many western brands, the brands with the scale to sponsor a Supertanker, do not, in reality, need that exposure. As Peter Franklin says in the book, Coca-Cola serves a billion helpings – spots, messages, soundbites, media – every day. True, the association - with a Supertanker in particular – communicates global stature, but, from a brand perspective… is that it?

What Coca-Cola needs even more than media (or associations of stature, it could be argued, in this time and age), is genuinely interesting content with which to emotionalise its existing media. And the question then is: how good am I as a brand in identifying relevant content?
Rather than, do I want to be the official soft drink?

Defining Sponsorship

By Shaun Whatling, published in Sports Business July 09

Defining Sponsorship

When I tell people we - Redmandarin - are publishing a book called 'Defining Sponsorship', I get one of two responses: great! or: why bother? Sometimes, it seems an academic exercise, even to me.

But it’s far from academic theory or semantics. Definitions are the start point for everything. A car’s a car – unless you can avoid road tax. People give their lives for their own definition of freedom, and often to oppose others’. Most of us rely on definitions to support our sense of identity, our ethical judgements, our place in the world.

Of course, defining sponsorship isn’t about social equity, life, death or justice. But it’s critical nonetheless for our industry. Two months ago, I wrote about the threat to the sponsorship industry from advertising. The reason why that threat is so real is – largely – because we’ve avoided definition.

Shapelessness has its advantages. Lack of definition enabled sponsorship to spread itself thinly across the marketing universe. And, regardless of definition, sponsorship - as a shorthand for ambient media buying in particular – is unstoppable.

Definition, on the other hand, can be limiting. But as anyone starting a business, writing an article, planning a campaign knows, self-definition can’t be escaped: it’s one of the first challenges of maturity.

And for many of the people we interviewed to produce the book, sponsorship is a lot more than ambient media. They were united by a number of shared beliefs, one of which being that sponsorship offers something very unique.

Surely such a sponsorship is worth defining. I, and everybody else at Redmandarin, share the belief that sponsorship, well done, can be the most magical and powerful of models for marketing. We also believe that a lot of what goes by the name of sponsorship is rubbish.
There are very good arguments why tactical sponsorship has a role to play. Unfortunately, unless we are prepared to be self-critical, to discriminate between good and bad; unless we define what for us as an industry represents our optimum model, the reason to believe which is uniquely ours, we’re powerless to defend ourselves and to advance the very real cause of sponsorship as a serious, credible and increasingly appropriate response to brands’ need to deepen relationships with consumers.

The Fate Of The Sponsorship Industry?

By Shaun Whatling, published in Sports Business May 09

The Fate Of The Sponsorship Industry?

The current model of the sponsorship industry was spawned by media sales, driven by the entrepreneurial realisation that the aggregated exposure available through major events had sizeable commercial value.

Everything else is post-rationalisation. I say this so clearly because of the huge absence of vision and any clear articulation by the sponsorship industry of what it represents.

The experiential movement, by comparison, comes from a vision which aspires to a depth of engagement with consumers beyond what is achievable in 2D. And this vision is articulated passionately and intelligently by agencies, predominantly in the US, for which Jack Morton is rightfully the spokesperson.

Advertising has its evangelists and its heretics, its apologists and its critics. Forever expounding, enthusing, spinning, suggesting. Sponsorship hasn't.
Our in-depth conversations are all about the rights market; rights inflation, leveraging your rights, carving up old rights, discovering new rights. It’s the same conversation on loop.

We’ve mistaken the medium for the message.

And what we've lost, perhaps forever, is the opportunity to understand and own the space of brands' relationships with people. Not that we could own it exclusively, but a very deep, very important slice - a slice that gives us the authority to frame the argument.

We’re surrounded. The experiential movement aspires to own customer engagement. Product placement has manufactured its own distinct space. Affinity marketing is reproducing the same model with brand partnerships. And Corporate Responsibility has finally come to the realisation that they often command more valuable assets than TV coverage.

None of this has passed by the advertising industry, which is retrospectively, cautiously absorbing the critical take-outs and starting to ask their own questions: “how do we remain the dominant conversational partner with brand clients?” “How can we assimilate the new communications models that sponsorship represents?” “How do we leverage what we do best - defining and articulating an emotional proposition - through other media?”

As it stands, the advertising industry is going to gobble us up. They’re going to deconstruct sponsorship and reconstruct it inside the conceptual framework of advertising.

And they will unless we, as an industry, find a way to articulate the essence of sponsorship, to offer coherent and robust theories to support the emotional connectivity it can create.

And stop talking about rights fees.

Sponsorship's Credibility Gap

Published in Sport Business International, Issue 143, March 2009
By Richard Gillis

As the global economic crisis continues to undermine the sports business, one of the world’s most influential advertising executives has launched a blistering attack on the sponsorship industry, accusing it of lacking professionalism, creativity and failing to offer sufficient value for money for its clients.

“Every sponsorship property you see is talking about the wrong stuff,” says Kevin Roberts, global chief executive of Saatchi and Saatchi, “and some of the stories they tell are ridiculous, they're so juvenile”.

Roberts thinks the approach taken by many sponsors and consultants is in need of a fundamental shake-up, airing his views when interviewed as part of a project called Defining Sponsorship, the results of which are to published in a new book commissioned by Redmandarin chief executive Shaun Whatling. The book consists of the views of more than forty prominent people from the spheres of sport, media and advertising in addition to contributors from the music and cultural fields.

“The ROI that sponsorship has to bother itself with has changed,” says Roberts, “Return on Involvement is where the game is going to be played and sponsorship will get obliterated if it measures itself as it does now on awareness and eyeballs, because those are the wrong, wrong measures in today's age”.

Attempting to play advertising at its own game is a game it can’t win he says, “Sponsorships are all about emotion, yet most of them are still sold rationally. If I was a sponsorship property now I’d be investing my money in new techniques that attempt to measure emotional connectivity and predict involvement”.

His comments come at a time when value from sponsorship is under greater scrutiny than before, with many high profile and big spending sponsors cutting their spend or exiting contracts early. Next month, a select group of sponsor members of the European Sponsorship Association (ESA) will meet in London to discuss the state of the industry. It is clear that the sponsorship bull market of the last decade is over and the challenge for those working in the sports business is to establish a way of working that fits the new economic climate.

Dutch bank and insurance company ING Groep NV announced it is pulling out of Formula One at the end of the 2009 season. ING is currently the title sponsor of the Renault team. The company has also been heavily involved in trackside advertising and is the official sponsor of this season’s opening Grand Prix in Australia as well as those in Belgium, Hungary and Turkey.

According to estimated figures published in a Formula Money report last year, ING is the second largest sponsor in the sport. The report estimated that ING were paying around $86 million annually into the sport, with around $65 million of that going to Renault.
The group announced last month that it would cut operating expenses by €1 billion in 2009 and put out a statement saying: “In light of the recently announced cost reduction programme, ING confirmed it was not to renew the three-year sponsorship (2007-2009) contract with Renault F1 and to end its presence in F1 beyond the 2009 season”.

Similarly, the troubled US insurer AIG said it would not be renewing its shirt sponsorship deal with Manchester United that expires in May 2010. AIG agreed to pay £14 million-a-year for four years for the shirt sponsorship and also has a longer £5 million-a-year deal to run MU Finance. It is currently restructuring itself, having received a $150 billion bailout from the US government. And research by Sweeney Sports shows that it is the same picture in Australia, with figures showing that one in four companies have axed sponsorships while nearly half have shelved plans for new ones. “Some 27 per cent of corporate sponsors have quit existing sponsorships as a result of the crisis,” said general manager of Sweeney Sports Todd Deacon.

“48 per cent have put on hold signing new sponsorships at the moment and I think it will get worse, with another 15 per cent of companies saying they will put sponsorship on hold for the next 12 months.”
Running in parallel to the economic downturn is a growing and potentially very damaging perception that presents sponsorship as an indulgence, an image that if allowed to run unchecked undermines its position as a strategic marketing tool.

The old whipping boy of the sponsor sector, the chairman’s whim, is as relevant now as it always has been, says Roberts: “The whole ego driven, CEO pet project thing is down the toilet”. Much of the coverage of RBS linked the bank’s catastrophic financial results with its free-spending sponsorship programme. The bank announced a £28 billion loss for the last financial year and is now part-owned by the British government.

It is also one of sports biggest global sponsors, with a portfolio including golf (British and US Open), Six Nations rugby, cricket (the Nat-West series) and Formula One (the BMWWilliams F1 race team). The bank’s former chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin was closely linked to the sponsorships, particularly the choice of ambassadors including Sir Jackie Stewart and Jack Nicklaus, who according to The Sunday Times, were “boyhood heroes of Goodwin”.
For Saatchi’s Roberts, such examples offer ample ammunition with which to attack what he sees as a lack of professionalism in the ‘sales driven’ sponsor sector.

“Don’t ask me what AIG were doing on the Manchester United shirt, I’ve just no idea,” he says. “What does women's tennis bring to Sony Ericsson in terms of involvement and enrichment or happiness or purpose to the base proposition? That is the question that women’s tennis has to answer”.

Music and sport are short cuts to people's hearts, and offer an added dimension to the base line, or ‘rational stuff’ of product performance and quality. But, says Roberts, over the next few years these attributes will not be enough.

“How do we go beyond that? Consumers will get supremely tired, very quickly about anything that is not authentic and deeply rooted in the brand” he says, quoting advertising legend David Ogilvy, “He said it very smartly 25 years ago - the consumer is not a moron, she's your wife. Sports fans are not morons but sometimes they get treated like it. Most of the great sponsorships are grounded in the fans. Much of what Coca-Cola does in sport is really admirable because they do it from the fans point of view. Toyota is another company that really gets sport sponsorship if you see what they do with Munster rugby and the Heineken Cup. Some of the other stuff just tries hard but there is no link and the fans and the consumers just look at it and say there's something wrong about that; it is not authentic or credible”.

“Nothing in marketing that we did over the last three years is going to necessarily sustain over the next three years. We are entering an era where consumers have all the power, you can't hide anything from them because they have masses of information.

“The rules of marketing are about to come under enormous scrutiny, we are changing from demand and control to being about connectivity and collaborations. The best brands will look to collaborate with like-minded partners, who get that they are one of the triumvirate, between property, brand and the consumer, all as equal partners. Most sponsors and event companies come at this from the wrong end of the spectrum, focused on brand equity or financial return, and the consumer is treated like something at the end of the line. That won’t cut it anymore.”

Meanwhile many sports federations for whom the money from sponsorship is a lifeline, face an uncertain future.

I'm big and powerful part 2

In part 1 I talked about sponsorship's six levels of I'm big and powerful. Which sounds like an internal IMG training mantra - but isn't.

Inspired by that, I wanted to take a look at: the Three winning ways to relate to your sponsorship.

The first, 'proud sponsor', is a humble inoffensive role. 'We're sensitive to the fact that we're a mere sponsor, and potentially an uninvited guest for the average fan.'

And a cop-out, albeit a humble, inoffensive cop-out. We believe in our sponsorship but don't feel it appropriate to step into the limelight. We clearly aren't that interesting, don't really have anything to say and lack the confidence to expose ourselves any more. We're too nervous to express publicly how we relate as a business to something from outside of our comfort zone, so we won't. From a corp comms POV, it's strictly bunker mentality: head down and wait for the dust to settle.

This position can of course be nuanced with humour. Carlsberg are proud sponsors, but probably the best proud sponsors in the world. Humour of course isn't without risk, as anyone remembering Budweiser's 2006 World Cup campaign will agree. You bring the football and we'll bring an attempt at self-parody that failed to convince that it was.

Understatement can of course be turned around to genuine modesty by brands which are clearly indispensable to event functioning - such as Avaya or IBM. But only in the case of those brands who understand that product and service integration into the property is a good starting point.
The Big Simple Business Metaphor is another popular route, number two.

We're fleet of foot, agile, responsive and a great team player - in the case of football sponsor. Oh, and F1, rugby, tennis, athletics, basketball, pretty much everything but chess, to be honest.
Again, business analogy comes in different sizes.

ING was doing a good job of its sponsorship of F1 simply by demonstrating such palpable enthusiasm. Who wouldn't want to do business with a company that is prepared to be enthusiastic? What other banks show enthusiasm, for god's sake?

'Precision, sensitivity, control and responsiveness… all skills required to compete and succeed at the top of women’s tennis and women's real life.' Unmistakably Whirlpool. Think about it long enough and the machines themselves start to flit across the court to the delight of the crowd.

It can all go awry when the BSBM is word-smiff'd. Did RBS Make it happen with Williams? What did its B2B guests really think faced with that unlikely pairing of post Nike positivism and long odds. We bet hopefully on outsiders? (In retrospect, pure prescience, of course - or an insight into corporate unconsciousness, a Freudian revelation of the RBS shadow.)

Thanks heavens then for Accenture - or Mark Ritson's thesis would be harder to rebut. A company that can legitimately argue that its brand essence, or at least a prime purchase driver, is embodied in Tiger Woods' perennial high performance, a true marriage of brand and property proposition. I wonder what they'll do next.

Is a perfect marriage so hard to find? It depends on your ambition, I suppose. Ultimate high performance metaphors ARE hard to find. But if we take Martin Sorrell's point about brands needing to own single big ideas, there's plenty of scope. Marmite would naturally have sponsored Mourinho. Okay, impractical, but the League Managers Association might not be.

The point is about self-definition and the eternal tension for brands represented by Marmite. Am I prepared to stand for something in consumers' minds, knowing that not everyone will like me?

I'm big and powerful

Earlydoors thinking about how sponsorship affected consumer brand perception was based on the clunky term 'brand value transfer'. The assumption was the values of the sponsorship property would rub off on the brand, a little like someone else's dandruff on the tube, I guess.

It's obvious from practise in the field that our understanding, with lego-like subtlety, has evolved - even if it's rarely articulated. But it's still painfully the case that many big brand sponsors really only succeed in communicating one brand take-out with their sponsorship: I'm big and powerful.

I'm fine with that in the case of Vodafone, who proactively change their sponsorships to reflect their desire to be number one in red. This is conscious, self-aware and thought-through - and every category needs a leader. And for some industries, there are still arguable benefits in being seen as the biggest and most powerful. Even if that list is shrinking.

But other brands seem to act from a place of brand myopia - a 1970's mindset that if I don't act like a brand, people won't notice. To Mark Ritson's point about the dumbness of big brand sponsorship of big ticket properties, there are several possible consumer take-outs.

Firstly, no matter how cleverly you might argue the B2B relevance of your sponsorship, consumers - actual people - will still draw their own conclusions - with varying levels of sophistication.

1: obviously, this is a big and powerful brand.
2: this brand is very profitable.
3: this brand is profligate and associates itself with large properties without any obvious need to explain why.
4: this brand doesn't actually have a lot to say about itself.
5: the brand doesn't really understand consumers.
6: the governance of this business is poor.

If you sponsor a big property and don't sizeably or noticeably do something with it, you are, by default, communicating one of the above - not necessarily the first.

In praise of scientific method

"The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate."

- Francis Bacon, 'Novum Organum', 1620

Francis Bacon published 'Novum Organum' in 1620, it took 150 years for the Western scientific community to appreciate and implement its key lesson, the relative roles of inductive and deductive processes; it is taking the marketing and sponsorship industries longer still.

Without digressing too far into the abstract, and with apologies to any learned scientific historians; the scientific method proposed in Novum Organum is a challenge to the Aristotelian method of deductive reasoning, building logical arguments based on base assumptions; and a manifesto for a new method based on observation and inductive reasoning, using acquired evidence to test a proposed hypothesis.

To extend the reference to sponsorship;

The belief that media exposure, opportunities to see, or awareness of a particular campaign delivers value to a sponsoring party is based on deductive reasoning.
We assume that the creation of an association delivers a value to a sponsoring brand.
We assume that exposure to a message translates into acceptance.
This is not the time to challenge those assumptions, though they're certainly worth returning to in a later article, but to demonstrate the reliance of such methodologies on arbitrary assumptions.

This approach leads inevitably to the mundane ('please tell me how appropriate this sponsorship is'), the fantastic ('a UK media reach of 1 billion people'), and the outright leading ('do you believe sponsors would benefit from linking their advertising and promotions with Olympic ideals').

An inductive approach seeks to test the hypothesis that sponsorship has impacted on business return, not simply to prove it.
i.e. by identifying the measures that would be impacted if the hypothesis were true:

• higher levels of consideration amongst those exposed to a particular activation, when correlating factors have been accounted for
• changes in key brand metrics that mirror activation activity
• cut-through of specific sponsorship messages, and so on

Identifying these measures in advance and setting specific success criteria allows us to have confidence in both the efficacy of the methodology and the accuracy of the results.

In essence it is a new mentality. The confidence to treat evaluation not as a tool to justify investment but rather one to prove our worth.

"A word on our sponsors"

Comment from Shaun Whatling on Mark Ritson's piece last week "A word on our sponsors":

Mark Ritson's got a point of course. I just wish he could have aimed it better.

He's right to call out the many big ticket sponsorships which totally fail to deliver against ROI (without the convenient myth of AEV, that is).

And he's right, yes, big companies which don't sweat the details will find the rhetoric of the sponsorship sales boys reassuringly compelling: sign on the dotted for global brand awareness and a worldwide audience of fanatically appreciative fans (all responding positively to the question: are you pleased brand X is spending its marketing budget sponsoring this event?).

We welcome Mark's scepticism. As a business, Redmandarin has saved clients literally tens of millons of pounds - behind the scenes - advising them how to discern measurable business value amidst the spurious claims of glossy sales decks offering, often, big, dumb sponsorship.

But he's woefully off piste to denigrate sponsorship per se. His simplistic characterisation of sponsorship as an 'i-pay-you-a-hefty-wedge-and-get-to-stick-my-logo-on-your-shirt' is anachronistic and he should really do a bit more prepping before his next class.

No matter how cleverly our associate professor of marketing has 'run the numbers', I'm pretty sure he won't have done it better than Coke or McDonalds. Or Samsung. Or us.

And instead of looking at the list of 2012 sponsors, as Mark suggests, take a look at Interbrand's top consumer-facing brands - and consider the role of sponsorship in shaping brand perception and supporting business growth.

The point is not about a simple correlation between bad business and sponsorship: the point is that far too many businesses fail to approach sponsorship intelligently.

Brands Go Banana's For Obama

It may well be Obama’s big day next week, and even though he’s not gone cap-in-hand to brands to fund the occasion, that’s not to say that certain household favourites won’t be pulling out the stops to associate themselves with it… In fact there’s something for everyone if you look hard enough:

Thirsty? How about Pepsi “hope” or change” badges? Rumours are the big blue will be handing them out on the streets next week.

Hungry? How about the “stars and stripes” Dunkin’ Donut all of next week?

Hungry tech-head? Quaker Oats is supplying oatmeal to 11 bloggers' parties to promote a campaign to feed 1m low income families…

Design-hungry? Or the Ikea Oval Office? Pop down to Washington’s Grand Union station and see for yourself…

Couch-potato? QVC will be selling Obama memorabilia including coins (20 bucks!) and the “Presidential” pocket watch (90 bucks) – Elizabeth Duke eat your heart out.

Associative marketing should make sense. Without needing any explanation or creative copywriting, as a consumer, you should just get it.

I’m all for piggy-backing major calendar events to create some noise, but the above examples seem, to be honest, weak.

So here’s a list of 5 Obama / brand campaigns I’d loved to have seen on the streets next week …

1. Bob the Builder / Playmobil White House set scale model: “Kenya build it – yes we can”!
   
   
2. Silent Night bed / mattress installation on the street: “Dreams can come true”
   
   
3. Roc-A-Fella records free download single: “Obamarappin’ / American Dream”
   
   
4. The Facebook Obama-app: “…makes the world more open and connected”
   
   
5. Oxfam / Obama pin badges: “Be humankind”

Post your best (and worst) here…

Til next time!

Ben

Howdy

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