Driving Differentiation through Sponsorship

Here’s one… Over the months of Thursday Thoughts I’ve written to date, I’ve raised concepts around the merits of sponsorship, the value, the measurement and the overall potential it’s capable of as a business strategy (Read: it’s more than a marketing play…). Today’s thought draws our attention towards its ability to provide differentiation that’s hard(er) to copy. 

Let’s start by thinking about brand and business USPs. 20 or 30 years ago, it was far easier to build a moat around your business; either through NPD or a brand positioning that was difficult to replicate. Today, the pace of life and ability to pivot and change means that the opportunity to mimic what is working for other businesses or categories is far easier to integrate into your approach.  

As more entrants come into play, at a more rapid rate of knots, the need to constantly evolve is paramount. Take ‘Food Delivery’ as a category. In the early phase we had one main player in Uber Eats who were quickly joined by the likes of Deliveroo, Menulog, Foodora, DoorDash, Milk Run et al… What all of these businesses were able to do, is observe. They could watch from afar and plan an entry strategy to create as big a splash as possible until the next entrant came in. 

What I find interesting about these newer business categories is how quickly they all turned to sponsorship as a way to differentiate. I was across the Deliveroo x St Kilda deal, I enjoyed the Door Dash approach with the State of Origin, we all loved the Uber Eats activity with Channel 9 around the Australian Open… Same thing for FinTech. The volume of deals being done locally and globally from these relative ‘start-ups’ is immense. 

What they have all correctly recognised, is that audience passions are the most persuasive way to connect and land a message. We are hardwired to seek out our passions. We think about them more often, have deep emotional connections and an availability bias that is almost impossible to replicate through ‘spots and dots’. 

It doesn’t stop with newer product categories. Some of the world's biggest consumer brands have recently turned to sponsorship in their plight to stay relevant. Google’s recent deal with McLaren F1 Team or Spotify’s deal with Barcelona spring to mind - examples you’d never expect to see under the view of ‘why would they need sponsorship…’’.

So here’s the thought. If you’re facing a competitive threat, have a think about how you can use your sponsorship/s to say something unique about your business that is hard to replicate. Be original, get creative and open the doors for sponsorship to be more than a logo somewhere, to an integrated part of your overall go-to-market approach. Here’s some thoughts to spur you along…

1. Sponsorship, by its very nature, provides category exclusivity. While your competitors can buy advertising around yours, they can’t buy the same sponsorship. 

2. Unlock what makes the audience tick about the sponsorship. Consider this, and how - as a business - you could play a genuine role in amplifying it. (Hint. People care more about their passions than they ever will about your brand). 

3. Think about how the assets you’ve secured can work across the broader business than just marketing. For example, how could they be used to strengthen the supply chain, improve front-line staff performance, enhance thinking around NPD etc.

4. Ask the right questions. Why have we got sponsorship? What is it for? How are we using and measuring it? Get under the hood and develop a crystal clear understanding in order to be able to defend its use when the pressure increases and the urge to ‘buy more display’ creeps in...

In the fast-paced, ever-changing world we operate in, it’s likely your access to people's passions through sponsorship that can provide the strongest, clearest point of difference for your brand or business… 

3 Points of Contact

Here’s one… have you ever wondered what happens if you go rock climbing and take both hands off the wall at the same time (or both feet for that matter)? I’ll save you the hassle; you’re highly likely to fall off. 

The ‘3 Points of Contact’ rule is one of the oldest and most important rules to understand in order to stay safe and enjoy climbing. It means that at all times, you have both hands and a foot, or both feet and a hand in contact with the surface. Obvs, but what does this have to do with partnership marketing? Good question. I've recently been working on a portfolio review for a client and the thought occurred to me that the more points of contact we form between a brand and the rights holder, the less chance the sponsorships have of ‘falling’ (or failing). 

Think about IP utilisation or assets like MCBE’s and tickets. The more deeply these are used within the brand organisation, the stronger the performance of the sponsorship. How many times have you heard that a sponsorship was pulled because it wasn’t performing rather than it having ran its course? Lots I’d imagine. I’d also imagine in a large number of these cases that the assets weren’t really being used which is why it was pulled as opposed to being used but not performing… 

So what might ‘Three Points of Contact’ look like? Well:

1. IP - There are very few brands in the world who are more meaningful, desirable and immediately identifiable to your audience as the brands of their passions. Contact number one should be taking your rights holders brand through every relevant touch point in your brand architecture. Websites, end-frames, holding messages on call centres, artwork etc. If you’re not using their brand as far and wide as relevant, you’re leaving huge sums of value on the table. 

2. Integration - How many departments within your business know about your sponsorships? Do they know what the portfolio strategy is, how they are being used or measured? Empowering the broader business on what sponsorships your brand has and how they can play a role in their day-to-day is contact number two. 

3. Experience design - Most contracts will have some form of money can’t buy experience (MCBE), player appearance or similar. Quite often there’s little logic on why these assets are in the contract in the first place, but they can provide valuable return nonetheless. Sitting down to plan out how you can use these assets takes less than a day and can be a quick win on getting your sponsorships to work harder for you. That’s contact number three.

So there you have it. There are many other ways to draw contact points between your organisation and the partner, and we don’t need to be confined by the conventional reality of two hands and two feet. My point though is this; don’t hang from the wall by one hand and complain when you fall off and land in a puddle. 

If sponsorship isn’t performing, I’d bet it’s likely due to its lack of integration...