About time to give to sponsorships their rightful place and space
Product fit, fit perceptions, brand awareness, loyalty, attitude of the crowd and a hundred other buzz phrases strive to create opportunities along with confusion when it comes to promoting and communicating a brand.
There is a wide range of ways in which a brand can be established or promoted but most of conflicts are raised around two concepts that -at the very end- serve different purposes.
Undoubtedly, both advertising and sponsorships have immense power when used wisely and depending on the situation, equivalent results and impacts can be accomplished. There is no objective reason why a company should prefer the one rather than the other; however it is necessary to choose the appropriate means so as to serve its strategy in the best way possible. Different reasons can justify the use of each medium.
Advertising essentially has the mission to establish a brand and raise awareness around it. It is also a useful means for retention, as it can remind current and potential users of a brand’s presence. A company can achieve awareness for a product or a service through an advertising campaign that sets to promote the brand through the available mediums. Typically, the advertising campaign has specific duration and can achieve particular results by saying the story of a product.
However, its duration is usually not as long as the commitment between a company and an event. Sponsorship on the other hand, is a means widely accepted as an evolving agreement that creates sophisticated relationships between the brand and the audience. An applicable and tailor-made sponsorship proposal can lead to a deeper and stronger relationship with the brand’saudience.
Research shows that sponsorships can lead to higher levels of awareness and recognition especially when proper association links are created. More specifically, it has been shown that the more congruent the information given to the audience is, the more it is remembered. This means that if a company caters for creating unambiguous communication objectives that focus on detecting the events that fit best to their image and their target audience, this sharply raises the chances of achieving these objectives.
Additionally, research shows that fit perceptions — the fit between what the event and what the company represents- can actually be governed and handled towards the positive dimension when relevance, similarity and duration are taken into proper consideration. This means that a brand, which appears in an event that appeals to an audience that has similar attitudes and belongs to a similar or the same geographical region and is relevant to the concept of the event too, has very increased chances of affecting the perceptions of the audience. Moreover, the longer the sponsorship duration is the better the results.
Therefore, right after setting the strategic communication objectives straight and clear, a company can make the informed choice between advertising and sponsorship. In the case of sponsorships, in order to understand and see the actual impact on the brand, a means to measure and depict the results has to be used. Assistance to detecting the relevant event is essential for a company too.
The disambiguation of such means of communicating the essence of a brand can prove to be vital for its survival in a marketplace where every brand aims to create a unique identity. Using the proper vehicles to achieve this is equally important.
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