In a big brand, especially a global one, sponsorships often take on a life of their own.
If decision-making is devolved to individual markets or regions, people will make their own decisions on what to sponsor and how to bring that to life, based on the specific needs and nuances of their market.
Nothing wrong with that. Think global, act local, right?
The problem is when the thinking global bit hasn’t been done. Or if it has, it’s become outdated or just gets ignored by local teams.
The result can be a patchwork of sponsorships dotted around the world. They might all make perfect sense at a local level, but there’s no coherent strategy behind them. And in a very connected world, that can be a real problem.
A few years ago a global fashion brand came to me with this issue.
They were sponsoring a football team in one market, a cycling team in another, skateboarding, stadium naming rights, athlete partnerships, Esports….you name it.
You could see the rationale for each one, but nobody could have told you what the overall purpose or strategy was. And the impact on their brand amongst the target audience would have been confusion, at best.
In this situation you’re probably not going to just rip up those existing deals and start again, but you can develop a future-facing strategy for how you want sponsorship to work at a global level. I helped this particular brand to do this – a chunky project looking at business and brand objectives, the sports landscape and trends, audience insight (global and local) and the role sponsorship could play in all of that.
Through this, we developed an overarching global vision for the role sport would play in the business and a framework for how that could come to life. This was backed up by a detailed playbook for local markets, enabling them to make their own sponsorship decisions within the global strategy.
So if you find yourself in this position, you’re definitely not alone. But you can do something about it.
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