Sponsorship Activation Explained
The key to a successful sponsorship activation is delivering something that your audience will be interested in. This involves a deep understanding of what the attendees of the sponsored event find appealing about the occasion. Sponsorship is no longer as simple as slapping your brand’s logo on promotional material for an event. The best sponsorships add value to the experience and demonstrate the distinctive qualities of all parties involved. Sponsorship activation is a way of ‘switching on’ your sponsorship through marketing activities. It is best to plan out how a sponsorship is going to be activated at the beginning of a partnership and not just as an afterthought.
How to activate a sponsorship
There are almost endless possibilities to explore when it comes to sponsorship activation. The most well known and simplest methods of sponsorship activations involve going the extra mile to improve the experience of attendees. Free Wifi and phone charging stations at festivals and concerts are an easy means of offering up something that guests will appreciate. Special lounge areas and free samples fall under the same category of activations that are relatively easy to execute, yet have proven to be very effective in satisfying audiences.
One such brand well known for this style of sponsorship activation in Ireland is Bulmers Irish Cider. In recent years, Bulmers has stepped up its sponsorship of music and sporting events; like their very own Bulmers Forbidden Fruit festival. This is an annual music festival hosted by Bulmers since 2011 that has proven a massive success for the brand.
“The beauty of events like Forbidden Fruit from a marketing perspective is that they create a year’s worth of social media fodder and other such ‘content’, said Belinda Kelly, Marketing Director for Bulmers in a recent interview with the Journal.
Leveraging technology to enhance sponsorships
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram should all be harnessed as part of any sponsorship activation strategy to amplify a brand’s message.
More creative and innovative activities for sponsorship activation are becoming increasingly popular. This is because people are becoming used to the more traditional methods of activation. Immersive and experiential technology such as augmented, mixed and virtual reality can be used to great effect to capture the attention of your audience and create a unique and lasting memory that will stay with them long after the event.
What makes for a successful sponsorship activation?
Activation is where audience goals and sponsor goals come together in a way that achieves the outcomes of both parties. Sponsoring an event or organisation is only the first step. Sponsorship activation is what will get people interacting with and talking about your brand before, during and after the event. The idea for a sponsorship activation should come from an understanding of what the sponsors and the audience are hoping to get from the event.
SAP were looking for a way to activate their sponsorship of Super Bowl 50. Avid sports fans are typically interested in team statistics and performance analysis. These passionate supporters spend a lot of their free time consuming extra content for their favourite sports such as video highlights and news updates. SAP wanted to demonstrate the capabilities of their technology in a way that NFL fans would relate to. Using SAP HANA software, vStream created a number of interactive attractions where attendees could access content that appeals to them in a way that showcased what SAP solutions can do. This sponsorship activation serves of an example where all parties received added value from the sponsorship. SAP got thousands of tech-savvy consumers to interact with their software, the NFL increased their promotional content reach for the event and the attendees got to interact with the content that they enjoy in a way they haven’t experienced before. A triple touchdown.