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.