Are sponsorships on the Path to Purchase?

Australia will always be regarded as a sporting nation, with both individual and team sports strongly embedded into our culture. Whether you watch your favourite team play each week, or just tune in for the main events, the world of sports touches most Australians in some way or another.

As marketers, we are all comfortable with the idea of using sports sponsorship as a way to communicate with engaged fans, however many brands are not fully leveraging their sponsorship rights to form stronger or more meaningful partnerships with both the sport and third parties, to specifically drive a retail performance uplift.

With US$62.8 billion spent globally on sports sponsorship in 2017 (Smart Company, Jan 2018) and this figure steadily increasing year on year, sponsorship is big business. Brands see it as an opportunity to increase their awareness and to build a strong identity, in the hope this will contribute to sustained, long-term sales growth.

To achieve these results, more and more brands are realising they need to do more than just rely on logo exposure on a uniform or before a sporting title. If brands choose to spend a significant amount of their marketing budget on a sponsorship deal, then they want to be forming a partnership strategy to really leverage it to its full potential, or risk leading to underutilised assets and undesirable results.

So how should brands make the most of their sponsorship rights? Cameron McGeachie, Head of MKTG Live and Retail Sydney, believes it’s not enough for a brand to only buy the naming rights in relation to a sport, an individual or a team.

"Alongside the sponsorship package, they should also be investing 1:1/1:2 additional budget for leveraging the sponsorships effectively in additional marketing initiatives throughout their business," says Mr McGeachie. These could range from an integrated media campaign, content, experiential events (in-stadium or live-sites), sampling at game, on-pack branding, retail trade programs and consumer promotions to name a few."