Over the past few years I have watched with interest how sponsorship has changed and effectively grown up in recent times to become a genuine part of the marketing mix. Gone are the days of traditional sponsorship where you put your logo on the shirt and that is as far as it ends. Being in the curious position of being a Marketing Director of a brand and Chairman of a rugby club has really opened my eyes to the level sponsorship has now developed to.
Over the years these agreements grew to include what are now described as assets, and this can be anything from appearance at the sponsors events, certain rights to use the club’s brand image in marketing campaigns – originally print now tv and digital, along with other hospitality assets. But times are changing. Recently the power and weight of the club used to be defined by what media coverage the used to attract as part of their association with their respective league/ sport / international reach.
Whilst for the most part sponsors are looking at how they use those assets and reconfiguring them into a more powerful tool. What has emerged is that the sponsors have started to develop their own sporting properties which they own completely and then then support this with their assets from their agreements. This has enabled them to create a money can’t buy experience for their staff and/ or customers that has enabled them to build a phrase called brand equity with those people.
In applying this to rugby the most telling proof of this change has been the creation of the mini series called O2 inside line which gives supporters a short snippet of behind the scenes access to the England teams activities. The series has had it’s ups and downs and particularly during the World Cup the video content that was produced effectively gave the wrong insight into the behaviours of certain players during that tournament, which gave fire to the critics of the then regime in charge. What is interesting is how much the quality of that content has changed since then, but without the inside knowledge it would be difficult to ascertain whether O2 made the decision to police the content better or whether the new regime, who certainly aired their disdain for certain behaviours when they came in, have called for the series to paint the players in a lot better light and as such have restricted the access to certain areas. Certainly the new platform has more shape and structure that prevents some of the scenes previously published, and as such the quality has improved and the access to more contentious material for the press has been reduced.
What is interesting is this only makes up one part of the deal with the RFU and O2 also have other assets that allow them to really reach out to their customers during the internationals with a supporters hub onsite at every game as well as a host of other activations around the match.
Now in a position where I receive these proposals from clubs I have to raise concerns at how poor some of these proposals are and how little there is within them that actually makes the propositions interesting. In today’s economy there has to be some value in it for the sponsor, having my company name on a hoarding or shirt does not actually provide me with anything more than a little bit of good will. Does it help my business sell more of our services, no. I am more interested in what we are going to get as useable marketing material from the partnership, how can I use this to actually achieve the business goals that I have to hit. I have limited budget with which to grow and develop the brand and the business.
Of 3 quarters of the proposals I have received do not even begin to address starting a conversation with me about my needs from the partnership, the largest £50,000 request didn’t even get close to what I would want from the deal and I know I am not in the big leagues but that is still a lot of money to be asking for.
Clubs need to be wiser about how they are approaching sponsors even at the lower levels to try and ensure that they are really offering the sponsors something that gives them real tangible marketing results for their money. It might sound silly but my 15s club recently agreed a sponsorship package with a restaurant which, as our part of the agreement, we agreed to hold a number of events at the venue. Commercially they gained from this because the profits they have generated as a result of this agreement has led them to renew the agreement which is now in it’s second year because the deal added value for them financially.
If clubs really want to build real long term relationships they have to work with their sponsors to ensure that they are getting tangible benefits from the partnerships.
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Main Photo Credit: Eric Gjerde via Flickr
