Promo - January 2008 - (Page 37)

Book Excerpt AMBUSH MARKETING Pros and cons of not being an official event sponsor By Kim Skildum-Reid The following was excerpted with permission from The Ambush Marketing Toolkit (McGraw-Hill Book Co., Australia, 2007). Sponsorship has grown up. It’s multi-faceted. It’s quantifiable. And it’s widely acknowledged to be at the forefront of modern marketing. It is not just mature, it is wise. In the past, sponsors have concentrated on creating bonds with events, rather than with their target markets. An example would be a brewery that decides that it is in their best interests to be aligned with football. They spend a lot of time, effort, and money creating an indelible link between their brand and football—they put logos all over each other, the players drink the beer, they run ads, and thank each other at end-of-year dinners—with the assumption that after all of this overt linking, Joe Beerdrinker is just going to “get it,” whatever that “it” may be. Unfortunately for all involved, it’s just not happening. People aren’t noticing signage anymore and we don’t bother with the convoluted mental gymnastics required to transfer attributes from an event to a brand (e.g., “if Beer X is associated with football, and football is manly, then Beer X must be manly”). We have all become very good at editing the few marketing messages that matter to us from the hundreds that merely clutter our universe. Many would say that leverage is the key to maximizing sponsorship returns, and it does help, but even if a sponsorship is very thoroughly leveraged using the old model, the focus of that leverage is football, not Joe Beerdrinker. It may catch Joe’s attention, but it is unlikely to really matter to him. And to be an active part of the sponsorship, such as participating in promotions, Joe Beerdrinker is required to make the lion’s share of the effort. It is hard work wasted, which brings us to the new model of sponsorship, The Conduit. First, we have to ask ourselves, is it really a brewer’s job to “align with” football? Is it in the company mission statement to be “synonymous with” football? No. A brewer’s job is to sell Continued on page 38 Promo / WWW.PROMOMAGAZINE.COM / January 2008 37 http://www.promomagazine.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Promo - January 2008

Promo - January 2008 Contents Editor's Note Viral But Virtuous Slap Shot Power Chords Tuning In Auto Play Trekkies Unite Commentary Retail Report: Get In Here! Generating Store Traffic Yankee Candle Shopper Marketing What Seniors Want Cyber Stumping Party Hearty Q & A: Paper Trail Ambush Marketing The Agency Center Resource Center Back-End Foundation Index of Advertisers

Promo - January 2008

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