"Hmm, my ears are burning. Wonder if it's the missus or the Samsung marketing team?"

Once upon a time sponsorship was all about big consumer and financial brands.  Insurers were nowhere to be seen. But today the global economic downturn has led to a huge shift in the brands we associate with sponsorship.  Perhaps the most well known example is RBS in the UK, which cut almost all of a huge sponsorship programme in the face of massive public criticism.

What has been the net effect of this withdrawal?  The answer is twofold.  First, sponsorship has become significantly cheaper, as the big sports and entertainment clubs and venues face up to huge holes in their budgets. Second, sponsorship salespeople have had to cast their nets wider to find potential sponsors for their ‘properties’.  This has ultimately brought them knocking at the insurance world’s door.

Last year, many senior marketers and CEOs in the insurance industry have woken up to find themselves offered – and suddenly able to afford – a brand, spanking new marketing tool:  sponsorship, bringing with it multiple mouthwatering benefits such as free tickets, access to sporting stars, television advertising exposure, and even global reach.

Not that insurance is a complete stranger to sponsorship:  there were already a couple of obvious examples out there, such as Norwich Union/Aviva’s long-term support for British Athletics and Brit’s association with cricket. However, broadly speaking, at about the time that Aon announced it was replacing AIG on the Manchester United shirts, the floodgates began to open for the smaller players in this industry.

And that means that a lot of people without experience of getting value from sponsorships finding themselves in the firing line.  And if any form of marketing activity relies heavily on previous experience to succeed, it’s this one. Why?  Because sponsorship success is all about a number of intangibles which are hard to appreciate unless you’ve been there.

It begins with negotiation.  The rights holder (say FIFA or the RFU) will offer any likely sponsor a pre-set menu of benefits.  Deconstructing this, removing the benefits which you don’t want and ensuring that you get full usage of everything you do need is the first step to making your sponsorship a success.

A classic example is free tickets.  Almost every rights holder will throw in large numbers of match tickets as part of the package.  This is great, but you need to be aware of the true cost of these.  For a start you will pay around 40% tax on the face value of any  tickets that go to staff – making those free tickets less free than you thought.  And watch out to see if the tickets also include any hospitality.  After all, if you’re going to use them for clients, you want to be able to provide a truly memorable experience, not just two tickets in the stands and a Ginsters pasty for lunch.  It’s often better to take fewer tickets and look to receive a better hospitality package  – or more tickets for key games in the season.  This won’t be an easy negotiation but it is most certainly worth doing.

Another example is access  to players.  The rules around this are extremely complex and ‘access to players’ can mean many things – often  adding up to only to a few personal appearances, and excluding any rights to use pictures of the players.  In this case you need to know exactly what you want , which means that if you are going to use the sponsorship  for a huge ad campaign, plan for it up front and include it in your negotiation, or be prepared to pay extra for advertising rights.

So, if you are the leader (or the head of marketing) who’s offered a tempting sponsorship, think long and hard about the implications of saying yes.  Follow the pointers above and add one more, which is ‘if you haven’t done it before, get some expert advice’.  There are plenty of sponsorship agencies who will offer to negotiate and activate a sponsorship on your behalf.  If you do use one of these, the best advice is to hire an agency that has experience in this industry, and also in the sport that you have chosen.

Sponsorship can provide real value but only providing if you customise the offer. If you get it right, sponsorship is an exciting and very rewarding marketing tool.  It can bring glamour, life and value to your brand, and the kind of magic that no amount of adverting in Post Magazine will buy.  How to get it right?  Well, in one sentence, get some advice, know what you want, and be realistic!

Written by Victoria Sisson