Monday 26 November 2012

The Sponsorship Holy Trinity

It seems to be all the rage in sponsorship circles at the moment to talk about 'modern approaches' and '21st Century sponsorship' - for me it's quite simple. We've all suddenly woken up to the fact that there are three important groups in a successful sponsorship, and if you don't consider all three, and address the needs of all three, then the chances are you're wasting your money.

1 - The brand - clearly, as a sponsorship consultant, my focus begins on the brand. and the business and marketing objectives that have been set. Any recommendation that I make has to be rooted in fulfilling the objectives that have been set.

2 - The property - this could be an event, a person, a club - basically it's the property we're looking to sponsor. Whatever kind of deal and activation programme that we come up with has to work for the property. For example, in my view, Audi were a great partner for Manchester United. Chevrolet - hmm, I'm not so sure.

3 - The most important party in this equation - the fans. For any sponsorship to work, then the fans have to win - and to win, their experience of the property has to be improved.

I like to view this as the holy trinity - brand, property and fans. Others refer to it as win, win, win.

Whatever you want to call it, ignore it at your peril.

Thursday 15 November 2012

Is a sponsorship good value?

I had a conversation with someone this week. This person is a senior decision maker for a business who make products that cyclists want and need, and has been involved in the sport of cycling for around a decade. We were discussing the opportunities available to brands within the sport in the UK, and debating the relative merits of some events over others. We got onto the subject of one major event, and the amount of money that the rightsholder is looking to get from principal sponsorship. This guy felt it was extortionate, and couldn't figure out why it was so expensive and still available when, according to him, cycling is in such rude health and surely brands are lining up to associate themselves with the sport.

I guess this raises two questions - firstly how do you value a sponsorship opportunity, and secondly are brands lining up to get involved in cycling?

This blog is going to tackle the first question - the second one I'll try to cover at another time.

So - how much is a sponsorship worth? How can it be valued?

I find there are three ways to look at this - and probably the right answer lies somewhere in the middle. When I get a proposal land on my desk, and it is a proposal that actually has some interest to me and the brands I work for (that's around 5% maximum of all proposals I receive) then I consider three things:

1 - How much can we afford to pay for this?
2 - Is it comparable with any other similar opportunities - and if so, how much were they valued at?
3 - If this were a straight media buy, how much would it cost?

Points 1 and 2 are clearly individual to different brands, and to different sports/events, but actually should form the clearest guide as to what the right value is. Point 3 is only there to satisfy the bean counters who are still under the misguided illusion that a sponsorship is only about logo exposure and media value (but bean counters rule the world and we have to tick that box).

So for me, a sponsorship is only good value if it is both affordable and realistic in terms of the market. Obviously if we're talking about a sponsorship renewal, then hopefully we'd have an idea of the value to the business the sponsorship is giving, but when it's a new proposal, then it pays to do some research and find out what other similar properties are worth. If that means looking at properties in other countries, then do it, because someone is going to ask you, at some point, how it compares to other sponsorships - so it's worth doing your homework.

I think the guy I was talking to was only considering point 1 - i.e. it was out of his (budget)league, because I happen to know that the figure being quoted was actually very comparable to other similar properties both in the UK and in other countries.

Oh, and it doesn't stack up too badly on media value either!!

Tuesday 30 October 2012

Is cycling the new fishing?

Along with a few other sports like tennis, fishing and running in particular, cycling has a peculiar position of being a far bigger recreation than it is a sport.

What I mean by that is that the number of people who are out on their bikes is far, far greater than the number of people who follow the sport of cycling. Sure the Tour de France might generate a couple of million viewers for the final stage when it's live on ITV, but according to some research I've seen there are something like 7.5 Million regular cyclists in the UK. And it's this 7.5 Million cyclists that brands want to talk to, especially as cycling becomes the new golf, these are people with disposable income who are very attractive to brands from all sorts of different sectors.

So here's the dilemna - it's hard for brands to connect with the recreational cyclist as the vehicles don't really exist. Sure, RideLondon will be a great start as there will be something like 100,000 amateur cyclists taking part over the weekend, but how many cyclists are there out there on a Sunday morning who might only enter one or two sportives a year, and really aren't that interested in races like Milan - San Remo or Paris Roubaix. And you can bet your last dollar they'll never have heard of the Lincoln GP or Melton CiCLE Classic.

I ride with a guy most weekends - he's in his late 40's, has been riding for a couple of years and is totally hooked. We've done a few sportives together, and we're undertaking a long 4 day ride together next year. He loves his bike, and loves to ride, but has only ever watched the Tour de France, and certainly wouldn't know any of our top UK pros other than Wiggo, Cav and Froome.

If the sport of cycling wants to attract sponsors into the sport, then cycling needs to think about how they are going to get guys like my mate engaged with the sport, and not just riding his bike. Sponsors want to connect with the 7.5 Million regular cyclists, not just with the 250,000 of us who will set our Sky+ box for 3 am to record the Tour of Taiwan in February.

And that means that event organisers, broadcasters and governing bodies need to think long and hard about how they're promoting the sport so that events like the Tour Series and the Premier Calendar races attract large numbers of spectators, and start delivering big numbers on TV. Here's a few ideas I've had on what needs to be done:

 1 - Imagine that every viewer and spectator is watching the event for the first time - dumb it down and make sure people understand what's going on. Cycling can be a complicated, tactical sport - it needs to be explained.

2 - Appeal to kids and to families - most MaMils and new cyclists are dads, or even mums. Have activites for the kids so it becomes a family day out.

3 - Please, please, please can broadcasters explain how the race has developed rather than going straight to the action. Yes Eurosport I mean you. Give us some context to the race and to the event rather than diving straight into the action.

4 - Create more events like RideLondon where amateurs ride the course ahead of the professionals and then hang around to watch the end of the race. Surely that's just a win win for everyone as the organiser has an extra revenue stream from the sportive, and the professionals get to race in front of bigger crowds.

5 - Teams need to engage more with the fans - Team Sky do this well. Get a loyal fan base - with social media as it is, one loyal fan will attract 5 more and so on, and so on. Things like twitter q&a's and video diaries work really well.

That's just 5 ideas, but there's loads more.

Everyone connected with cycling, who earns a living out of cycling, needs to take some responsibility. The sport of cycling is fantastic - it's interesting, full of history, dynamic and most of all fun - and the more people that watch it live or on the TV the better it is for us, and the more secure our jobs are in the future.

Friday 26 October 2012

What does success look like?

Having been involved in media, sponsorship and marketing for nearly 20 years now, I've come across all sorts of different methodologies for proving return on investment and measuring success of different campaigns and sponsorship programmes. Some hit the nail on the head, but most are fairly wide of the mark.

The reason is normally that objectives haven't been clearly set at the outset (or set at all), and as a result the measurement is often of the wrong criteria as there are no KPI's.

Now I know there's a load of marketing jargon and claptrap here - the message though is simple - if you don't know what success looks like, how do you know if you've achieved it?

In cycling particularly, I do wonder how sponsors are defining success. I still find it unbelievable that HTC had to pull out of the sport because they couldn't make their sponsorship work. But then what were they hoping to achieve? They certainly got a lot of 'brand' and 'logo' exposure - but did cycling fans actually know what HTC was? This was probably a case of setting the wrong success measures - and as most of us know, sponsorship is no longer all to do with logo exposure. If you want to change consumer behaviour in the modern day, just showing someone a logo a hundred times isn't going to make any difference. 

So back to measurement - this would be my blueprint. Sponsorship objectives must be allied to the overall marketing objectives, so for example in this case success will take the form of shifting consumers perception of the brand, and their likelihood to purchase. Other parts of the marketing programme will ensure that we turn these shifts into sales. But for me, the crucial element is that through the research we undertake we will be able to compare attitude shifts between audiences - so for example between hardcore cycling fans, Mamils and the general population. That way we can see if our specific cycling activity is resonating, and with which audiences.

It certainly isn't rocket science - in fact, it's incredibly simple. Know what it is you want your sponsorship to achieve, ensure that it's going to make a difference to the bottom line and then make sure you're measuring it (so put some budget into research).

Monday 22 October 2012

Introduction

Here at Marla Media we spend most of our time working on sponsorships in the world of cycling. That is not everything that we do (we are a media and sponsorship consultancy), but we make no apologies now if most of what we blog about is connected to sponsorship and to cycling. Let's face it - it's a rich vein of debate at the moment, and our feeling is that the ripple effect of 'Lancegate' will linger for years to come.

This is our first effort at writing a blog, and hopefully over the coming months we'll get a bit better at it. We believe in honesty, integrity and fairness - those principles should come across in what we write - and if we upset people then we apologise now. But what we will say will be our opinion, and we are entitled to it. If you disagree, or have an alternative point of view, then let us know.

Our first blog of substance should be coming out this week, and we're going to look into the subject of sponsorship measurement in cycling. Hope you enjoy it.