Michelle Rodger: SFA on the ball when it comes to sponsorship

Published on Saturday 15 November 2008 13:24

NOT everyone is a fan of Gordon Smith but the Scottish Football Association's innovative plans for next year's Homecoming Scottish Cup are ambitious, entrepreneurial and right at the forefront of new thinking on sponsorship.

The football arena is renowned for basic shirt sponsorship and boring stadium advertising deals, but when money is tight and return on investment is high on the agenda in every boardroom the traditional approach to sponsorship – "let's take a box at the game and invite our best customers" – must turn on its head in order to add real value to the bottom line.

So when entrepreneur Willie Haughey put up 2m and donated the branding rights of the two-year – possibly longer – Homecoming Scottish Cup sponsorship package to the Scottish Government, it was a spectacularly unselfish and unique deal.

His name, and that of his business, won't appear on any shirts or any ad boards. Instead the focus will be on supporting a bigger marketing programme. The money will pay for the dissemination of important messages about football for all, citizenship through football, healthy living, participation and lifestyle choices and anti-sectarianism. Oh, and it will also fund the development of youth football across Scotland and support a wider global tourism initiative to the 40 nations where the games will be broadcast.

It's clearly not the way sponsorship is traditionally done. It's no longer enough to bang your logo on a football top or the jumpsuit/helmet of a Formula One driver and hope your customers buy your product or service as a result. The move demonstrates a paradigm shift towards a new focus on ensuring this activity adds value to the bottom line; sponsorship needs to drive sales, and the only way to do that is through engaging directly with the consumer.

Nationwide's initiative "Sponsored by you" is a great example of the new trend. The campaign gives unprecedented access to the Home Nations football teams, with bank customers able to tap into the type of benefit normally reserved exclusively for large corporates.

Nationwide believes it's about customer empowerment and direct interaction, using hooks such as giving access to tickets, being in TV adverts and seeing their names appear in match programmes.

Carling too has reaped the benefits of the clever, smarter approach to sponsorship. Five years ago, sales of the most popular lager in the UK were practically non-existent in Scotland. Since its sponsorship of the Old Firm, its market share has increased to 5%.

It's not enough to worry Tennent's, the market leader, but with wider sponsorship of the Carling Academy music venue in Glasgow and the Rock Ness music festival, Carling is clearly not sitting back and waiting for the youth market.

It may still be in its infancy, but the UK market for sponsorship is forecast to reach 1bn by 2009. The vast majority is sports sponsorship.

Broadcasting is leading the way with a cutting-edge approach to sponsorship. You only have to look at programme sponsorship to see how easy it is to activate the customer: press the red button to vote, enter a competition to win dinner with Simon Cowell. There's instant engagement with the consumer and a level of interaction not yet appreciated by the other sectors.

The global economic slowdown will have an impact but the industry isn't immediately worried. There are rare cases where large organisations go belly-up and sponsorship is withdrawn, such as XL Airways' contract with West Ham.

And then there is RBS, which historically splashed the biggest sponsorship budget in Scotland. What will happen in the longer term to its sponsorship deals? The current Formula One deal is just one of the multimillion-pound campaigns aimed at positioning RBS as a global player. Perhaps the upside is that the lack of cash available to RBS in the future will force focus on less expensive and more local promotions.

Those in the know say that, in reality, the sponsorship sector is more robust, sheltered to a certain extent from the downturn by the very nature of their typically longer-term three to five-year contracts. The fact is that brands will be looking at their marketing budgets carefully and will want to spend wisely; sponsorship that drives sales and brand loyalty could definitely benefit.

But it will certainly be more difficult for new sponsorship deals, already evidenced by next year's Scottish Masters tennis tournament, whose sponsor has pulled out, and the World Fly Fishing Championships, which has so far been unable to secure essential event funding.

Nevertheless there are still big opportunities ahead. According to sponsorship guru Paul Goodwin, major London-based sports agencies are eyeing up the opportunities that the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow will bring.

Sponsorship isn't just a marketing tool, he says, it's a call to action. There are global opportunities waiting on our doorstep, we just need to ensure we get a share.