I always find it interesting to attend conferences focused on specific marketing disciplines, and Future Sponsorship 08, held last week in Brussels, was no exception. In addition to giving me some new insights into sponsorship, the presentations I attended caused me to reflect on the way three different groups look at sponsorship. While the rights owners and the sponsorship agencies seem to think primarily in terms of their own industries, the sponsors, who actually foot the bill, need to consider sponsorship in a larger marketing context. If they are to maximize effectiveness of their sponsorhips, the sponsors needs to convince the other two groups to think more broadly as well.

Lesa Ukman, Chairman of sponsorship company IEG, gave a very interesting opening presentation outlining the history and current status of the sponsorship industry. She divided the history up into five different phases:

Pre-1980
Before 1980, sponsorship was primarily used by brands that could not gain broadcast access through advertising. For example, in the face of legal constraints on cigarette advertising, Virginia Slims used its sponsorship of women’s tennis to gain presence for the brand.

1981-1991
Modern sponsorship came of age as brands extended their involvement to music tours, arts, and sports such as soccer and Formula One racing.

1992-2001
The dot-com bubble fueled a frenzy of activity. Agencies created special entertainment groups happy to help clients spend their money.

2002-2008
The bubble burst and after the shock dissipated, new technologies became the agent of change. While I disagree with Lesa that the 30-second spot is dead, I believe she was right in suggesting that media agencies used TiVo as a scare tactic to persuade many marketers that the world had changed forever. And I also agree with Lesa that social media has been a boon for sponsorship. For every person that actually attends an event, there are probably ten more who hear about it through their social networks.

Through all of this change, the sponsorship industry has grown steadily. But the discussion made it clear that many in the room felt that sponsorship was still a marketing underdog, not acknowledged as a legitimate medium or given its fair share of budget. Some even seemed to take perverse delight in the idea that sponsorship might grow at the expense of advertising. However, to me, this seems like a very channel-centric view-one that is not likely to resonate with prospective clients in this age of 360-communications planning.

The problem faced by sponsorship is that the footprint of an individual event is often quite small. A few blockbuster opportunities such as the World Cup or the Olympics can have a measurable effect on a brand’s image and sales, but most sponsorship opportunities do not. Therefore most sponsorships must be integrated into an overall communication program if they are to have any real effect.

One of the panelists at the conference noted that sponsorship is more about retention than acquisition. If you do not coordinate your efforts or use other media to make the event famous, that will be true. But when managed well as part of a broad marketing program, the reach of sponsorship can be extended beyond the passionate few who are inclined to actively engage with a brand to the vast mass of buyers who are willing to spend money on it.

To my mind, an example cited by Lesa offers an apt analogy for the situation facing sponsorship today. Top management at Coca-Cola felt that Coke’s significant sponsorship efforts, which included contributions to thousand of non-profits in multiple communities, were too fragmented to yield the optimum benefit from the social capital they created. As a result, in 2008 these initiatives were united under the Live Positively umbrella.

In the United States, the Live Positively campaign is used to promote community-focused activities including the Coca-Cola Scholars and the Global Water Challenge, which helps to provide safe water in poor countries. The strapline used is “Just by drinking Coke, you’re giving your community a helping hand.”

It seems to me that many brand’s sponsorship events are just like Coca-Cola’s individual corporate and social responsibility initiatives. Unless they are integrated into a wider marketing plan, their impact may be limited. The future for sponsorship is not in stealing dollars from other touch points in the marketing mix but rather in collaborating with other partners to ensure the total marketing program is successful.

So what do you think? Is sponsorship siloed? Does it pay its way on its own or does it need to be integrated into a wider communications program? Please let me know your thoughts, and, as always, even if you do not want to comment, please rate this post.

(P.S. Click here to see an interesting sidebar commentary on the “Live Positively: phrase from Shannon Clark at Slow Brand.)

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