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.