In the first part of this two-part article, I made a case for sponsorship as a potent and effective marketing tool. Today, I continue with a focus on sports sponsorship and its marketing mileage.
Sports sponsorship wields transformative power that can drive exponential growth in brand awareness and affinity. However, driving awareness and affinity are not objectives in themselves; they must be part of a deliberate and well-thought-out strategy in pursuit of business drivers. The brand owner must therefore have clear-cut objectives for his sponsorship of a sport asset and he must set aside the leveraging investment that enables the brand to maximize the benefits from the sponsorship. The brand owner is therefore in the sponsorship for the long haul seeking a partnership with the sport that enables fans accept the brand as theirs because the brand is identified with their passion point.
When sports fans become your customers, your brand rises to a level of patronage and loyalty that “customers” are not known for. Marketing Directors change jobs switching allegiance and consumption as their jobs change but with every job change, they bring with them their allegiance and loyalty to a team/athlete and wear this badge proudly, in their hearts and minds.
Sponsorship offers the possibility of achieving several goals at once and I will briefly discuss some that I find most appropriate: Enhancing Image and Shaping Consumer Attitudes. Companies are often looking for ways to improve how they’re perceived by their target audience. Sponsoring sports events that appeal to their market are likely to shape buying attitudes and help generate a positive reaction.
Building Brand Awareness: You can spend a lot of naira on print advertising or on radio and television commercials, but you’ll spend a lot less and perhaps achieve a better result if you can simply put your brand in the hands of potential consumers.
Driving Sales: Driving sales goes together with brand awareness. Sponsorship that’s geared toward driving sales can be an extremely potent promotional tool.
Increasing Reach: A good sponsorship not only allows you to contact potential buyers and customers, but it can also promote that priceless marketing tool—word of mouth. Ideally, people who attend an event will continue to talk about your service or product, particularly if they had a good experience at the time.
Creating Positive Publicity, Heightening Visibility and Engagement: Every sponsor seeks wide exposure in both electronic and print media, and positive publicity helps create heightened visibility of products and services. These days, leveraging digital media enables your brand to engage millions of prospects.
Differentiating from Competitors: The mere act of sponsoring an event, especially an exclusive sponsorship, is a significant way to create competitor differentiation. Your company name can stand out head and shoulders above the rest. This tactic is particularly helpful if your company wants to combat a competitor that has a larger ad budget. Sponsorship allows smaller companies to compete with industry giants.
In these climes, I am aware that the presentation of these time-tested goals may not be enough to persuade brand owners of the viability of sports sponsorship due to the corporate governance issues that they face with some (certainly not all) of our federations. But times are changing very fast and federations are now seeking working relationships with Sports Marketing consultants in order to “shore up their game”, so to speak. Brand owners should toe the same line in order to extract the highest possible ROIs and ROOs.
I meet an increasing number of marketing directors who identify with the potential of a sports loving country like ours but are frustrated by the fact that there are barriers to entry into the local sports scene and so prefer to leverage on Nigerians’ penchant for offshore sports, athletes and teams. And they commit a huge amount of naira that should have been deployed locally that would really help in developing local sports. Despite this, I still see the greatest opportunity for brands in the local sports industry.
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The greatest opportunities can be found in that category of sports referred to in Nigeria as “Other Sports”. Ironically, this is where Nigeria records a sustained trend in international participation and recognition from the efforts of individual and team sports like Boxing, Table Tennis, Cricket, Taekwondo, Athletics, Basketball, Volleyball, Golf, Squash and Wrestling. I can also confirm that these “other sports” have the best organised youth development programs especially at the grassroots which is why they haven’t died due to underfunding and a lack of sustained development initiatives by those saddled with the responsibility. And they have a large following of spectators and fans who are passionate about these sports.
GoTV Boxing Night, for example, steadily records spectator counts of 6,000 screaming fans and TV viewership of 5 million persons in Nigeria alone and another 10 million in West, Central, East and Southern Africa. These are audiences just waiting to be mined. And what a future Nigeria has in boxing due to the successes of AJ (Anthony Oluwafemi Olaseni Joshua) who is already an Ambassador of Nigeria’s leading brand supporter of sports.
With these sports, brand owners will find that these federations are welcoming and willing to collaborate. Most of the boards comprise men and women of proven integrity in the corporate world who are driven by a passion to contribute to the development of the sport.
What level of accountability and corporate governance do you imagine you will encounter when discussing your sponsorship plans with the Country CEO of one of the world’s largest financial consulting firms who happens to be Vice-President of a federation? Or an Engineer of repute and Olympian who is the Technical Director of a federation?
It’s the dawn of a new era and I can safely invite brand owners to hook up now. The investment required is low, but the benefits are huge. And there is now a high sensitivity to those issues that are paramount in the minds of brand managers – M&E! ROI! ROO! Accountability! Sustainability! Marketing Opportunities!
There are several federations, athletes and teams in Nigeria worth investing in. By themselves they are performing well, and they have a large enough following of fans who demonstrate the kind of passion brands can explore for mutual benefits. They can only do better with partnerships with brands who are ready to unleash the confirmed passion for sports for accelerated business growth.
(Olusola J. Lawson, CEO UB40 Sports Marketing; solalaws@gmail.com)
