September Sponsorship Brands Community Zoom Call Summary

With the current climate impacting the way brands utilise sponsorship, participants discuss ways they have adapted to make the most of their partnership and what brands need to take into consideration. 

Sponsorship and Partnerships can still be effective

• Go into those relationships based on how you can leverage the partnership across your customer journey.
• Drives top-of-mind awareness and consideration of your product/offering.
• Sport products and apparel has seen an increase in sales – opportunities to work with Kit Suppliers.
• Don’t be hesistant to do something different.

Connecting B2B and B2C through Sponsorship

• With the potential of only a small number of people at events, chance to deliver a more personal setting for potential clients when hosting – instead of the mass reward approach.
• With lack of live games, look at other ways to support your partners to create additional value to the fans, such as esports, social media content, competitions with signed merchandise.
• Look to push the assets you can use alongside a digital content plan to build reach and engagement.

Remember both your brand and partner’s objectives

• Don’t go ahead with an activation if it doesn’t attract the right audience or fan engagement, it might not be welcomed or wanted.
• Consider both parties’ objectives when looking for new ways to leverage assets.
• Find the story you want to tell and build your objectives around this.
• Stick to the basic principles on what is right for your brand and target consumers.

New ways of activation

• Digital is becoming the default, but works effectively using creativity and storytelling.
• Look to connect with other brands partnering with your rights holders to build collaborations.
• Athletes are becoming strong brands themselves to influence fans through home videos and using brand’s products in everyday situations – creating organic and relatable content.

How to plan in this climate

• If you are looking for new partnerships, enter into them based on the business climate at the time.
• Be adaptable and flexible to the way you function to fit the shift to the current climate.
• Health and safety with due diligence needs to be the most important factor when planning an event or activation.
• Bear in mind the government’s latest restrictions and barriers.
• If the landscape changes, make sure your event is safe for customers.
• Don’t stop planning, prepare what you can and be ready to be flexible to the change in climate.

Measurement of assets and activation should be the same

• Even though planning is affected, how you measure your assets and partnership should remain the same.
• Use your data to look at fan engagement and interactions.
• Look at the customer journey for your brand’s objectives.