When we talk about acquiring sponsorships and forming partnerships, we must realize the trends in the industry that could have a major impact on our dealings. Being in Sport Marketing, our jobs are marketers can be unique; it may require us to be creative, innovative, and strategic with our sponsorships and the way we form our partnerships with different brands. In this post, we will talk about four major trends—according to Senior Vice-President of IEG Jim Andrews—that will have major impact on our sponsorships. These trends seem simple, but once we dive deeper into their meanings, we will discover just how clever and effective these trends are becoming.
The first trend is about Story-telling. Before, telling a simple story through brand recognition was enough for consumers to become interested in the product (whether that be an event, an actual product, or an experience). Now, we have to do more with our sponsorships than just telling a story. It’s important to have a story about a brand, to get the consumer interested in the product or event you’re trying to market, but it’s even more important to nurture stories told by others. Our consumers are networked—this means they are already in-tuned with what’s going on and with the stories we’ve already been telling. The days of having a 1-on-1 conversation with consumers are gone. Thanks to social media and the digital age, consumers have become story-tellers/collaborators—they share all the things they find interesting, relevant, or noteworthy on their own social networking pages.
Therefore, it is our job to create stories that consumers would want to share AND enable their stories—stories we don’t own but stories that they’ve co-create with us. By doing this, our consumers become brand-ambassadors; they represent, advertise, and market our product for us! An awesome example of a company who uses this type of story-telling would be Coca Cola; their “liquid and linked” strategy entails multiple stories that 
encourage sharing and support its “Open Happiness” campaign. In Jim Andrews’ presentation, the VP shows a Coca Cola ad about soccer celebrations—the ad plays different soccer players’ goal celebrations, giving off a happy, exciting vibe—and end the ad with someone drinking a coke with the tag line” show us your own celebration. Overall, this ad tells a create story that is shareable and exciting to watch, but the best part of the commercial was Coke asking consumers to upload their viewers’ celebrations. The ad with the fans’ celebrations was shared MORE than the original ad!
The second trend mentioned had to do with Exploitation—changing the conversation around exploiting/leveraging for your own needs by using your assets to serve others. In this trends, it’s important to examine the value of sponsorships. It’s no longer about creating value for the company, but about how we create value for the consumer. A good example of this would be purpose-based brands or purpose based partnerships, like Proctor % Gamble Company. Going back to the London Olympics in 2012, P&G gave back
90% of their Olympic tickets to the consumers and/or public. Coca Cola is a great company that uses their assets to serve their consumers. In a Coca Cola Portugal ad, Coke announced that they would close their own corporate box and created a “dorm” where fans could come and spend the night—24hrs—at the arena! The most important thing to remember about this trend, that both P&G and Coca Cola have shown us, is that it’s not about pushing our products on consumers, but serving them in ways that makes their lives easier (or at least, entertaining).
The third trend is Engage—no longer is it enough to engage with consumers, but we need to create a sense of belonging. Brands need to become part of the community and help consumers to belong! Take a look at your partnerships and ask “what are we doing to help our consumers belong?” A good example of a company that actively engages with their consumers is Heineken. The beer company did some research on their consumers to see how they find a sense of belonging when it came to sporting events. They found out that many of their consumers were watching games (soccer) by themselves and wanted a way to connect with others who enjoyed the same game they did. This led them to creating a social gaming app that lets soccer fans interact and compete with each 
other while watching televised matches (how cool!!). They’ve also done this with music—at a Poland music festival, Heineken discovered that people go to music festivals to 1) enjoy music, but 2) to meet new people. Knowing this, Heineken set up a tent that helped festival attendees create stick-able QR codes that told fun, personal messages about the individual, encouraging people to scan each other and get to know one another. The idea was a hit!
The fourth trend is what Jim Andrews called Activate—this means to go beyond activating a partnership; think about HOW do we create these partnership. Get innovative! Andrews notes that Activate impacts all the other trends. Basically, don’t do the “same things” or the things you’re used to/expected to do—it doesn’t help anyone, especially you! An example of this would be the Swiss watch company Hublot.
This company stepped out of the luxury brand sponsorships (tennis and sailing) and got involved with sports that catered more to the masses ( so like soccer and football); they wanted to reach younger people and expand their brand. It was the first luxury brand to sponsor soccer, but most importantly, it used the megaphone of sports to promote a cause instead of its own brand. Hublot gave a nonprofit “say no to racism” their sign boards to promote their cause during a game instead of advertising watches.
Overall, the most important thing to remember about sponsorships and our trends is to be unique and be different. Think about how to be unique in what you sponsor, with consumer insights, and in the way you activate your partnerships!
The Brand of Allison 