The case for Motorsport Sponsorship

Why sponsor a racecar?

Following a successful career in the electronics industry during which I had the opportunity to be involved extensively in sales, marketing and general management, I decided to explore, and then to develop my lifelong interest in motorsport into a business.

As a consequence of my decision, five years ago I started to work raising sponsorship for a talented young race driver, and I quickly learnt that I needed to offer something very different if I was to be successful.

I realised from an early stage that the days of the sponsor paying money just to see their company logos appearing at race events were numbered; and this is even more the case today, attendance at a motor race will demonstrate to you that there are many hundreds of logos on cars, trackside banners and team clothing all trying to get your customers attention, and few of the spectators could name more than four of these sponsors.

The consequence of this is that a sponsor who relies solely on the logos on the car and at the trackside will realise little benefit in terms of sales or brand awareness, and certainly won’t achieve any real business results from their expenditure, just good corporation tax write downs.

Brand exposure has regularly been cited as the reason for sponsorship, how often in presentations to potential sponsors is the focus on ‘spectator numbers, demographics and TV coverage, or the idea of putting your brand in front of larger audiences’ used to promote sponsorship as a way to generate sales? Rest assured logos alone do not produce brand awareness or tangible results.

Is your logo special? Would it stand out more than the many others on display, would your logo be more memorable? Would a spectator or TV viewer be influenced to buy your product just from seeing your logo on a racecar? Sadly no matter how good your logo might be the answers to all of these points is a resounding no, it would not!

The conclusion to this thinking is that in the current business climate the ‘logos on the car style of sponsorship’ will not change or influence the buying decisions of the customer, less still attract potential new customers and opportunities to the company.

However I understood very clearly from the beginning that sponsorship as part of a well thought out marketing promotion does reach out to the customer and will result in tangible and measureable benefits to the sponsors company!

I believe that the best way to explain how sponsorship led marketing works is to use the three questions below to guide the thought process and to prove the justification that sponsorship works as part of a marketing promotion.

So here are the questions:

1. What is required to make a well thought out marketing promotion?

2. What are the activation strategies that make sponsorship of motorsport the highly successful promotional form of marketing that it can be?

3. What are the key points to consider in building a successful marketing promotion?

Taking each of these questions in order;

A well thought out marketing promotion is quite simple; it empathises with your target customers, it aims to match with their lifestyles, their wants, needs and desires. Once these are clearly understood the direction of the marketing plan becomes clear, quite simply understanding your target customer and market enables you to decide what types of racing, off track promotions and advertising will work for them, this work will also enable a clear definition of what your brand means to your customers, a subject we will deal with later.

The best phrase to describe this research is by using the phrase ‘touching the customer or the prospective customer’, getting inside their mindset and understanding their motivations. How is this achieved, by using a well constructed and conducted market research programme, followed by application of the knowledge gained, added to by continual refining as more information becomes available. This is the foundation of a successful sponsorship led marketing promotion, by applying these simple processes the whole plan is really very easy to create and will be clear and targeted.

As mentioned this part of the process collects a great deal of information, particularly about your customers’ attitude to your brand and that of your competitors, and this provides invaluable information for the promotion plan. However the plan acts only as a starting point, the future learning and data collection offers fluidity of activation and the opportunity to enhance results.

The second question focuses on the activation strategies that will be required to make your sponsorship led promotion successful, and it is in this area that I have learnt to focus significant efforts.

Inevitably the structure of the activation activities will vary depending on the results of the market research; however it is likely that a subset of the items shown in the list on the following page will be included in your plan, and will be linked across the media disciplines to ensure a cohesive message is received by your target audience.

The list contains a number of the more common sponsorship led marketing promotion activation key activities.

a. Logos on the racecar, team trucks and team wear.

b. Corporate hospitality.

c. Driver interaction with customers.

d. Days out with the team.

e. PR Campaign, press, radio and TV.

f. Web linking.

g. E-mail campaigns.

h. Advertising campaign, printed media and internet.

i. Passenger rides in the racecar.

j. Driving days.

k. Display cars.

l. Promotional presents.

m. Promotional competitions.

n. ‘In house’ promotional campaigns.

o. ‘In House’ competitions.

This list is by no means exhaustive, each promotion requires detailed thinking and imaginative solutions, these are the province of your selected sponsorship agency, however any or all of these points can be built into your plan, naturally with greater emphasis being placed on the elements that match with your target customers mindset, to ensure success for your promotion.

The activation strategy is the heart of your promotion and it must be measureable; ranging from ensuring milestones are met for media exposure of articles printed or TV and radio exposure, through increase in sales/customer contacts received by your company, to carrying out research of the guests that attend the events.

By testing each activity and event you will learn what works and more importantly what does not work for your customers, after all why spend money on areas of the promotion that do not work. The measurement phase has high importance for sponsorship led marketing promotion; working with an agency that can achieve this with proven results is critical.

I believe that there are 5 key points to ensure a successful promotion and these are really quite simple, but they are vital if the project is to succeed, and provide the required results.

1. The first key to a successful sponsorship led marketing promotion is to select your goals for the sponsorship, make certain that you have a clear plan of what you want to achieve. The way to achieve this first part of the plan is through market research, this enables you to understand what makes your customers react positively to your company and brand and build these elements into the plan. Selection of a sponsorship agency that you can work with is critical, the chemistry of this relationship is essential; you must ensure that they match your style of doing business.

2. Once you have selected your Sponsorship agency, make certain that they fully understand your goals, budget and your customers. This way they can set out to deliver your against all three, they are certain to want to influence your thinking, listen to their comments, they are the professionals, and it is their team who will deliver your activation plan.

3. Working closely with your sponsorship agency, ensure that with their help and guidance you choose a race series, team and driver that can deliver your goals. This is not just ‘on track’ each has an important part to play in the delivery of the activation plan. Do not forget it is important that the image and style matches with your business image, style and marketing objectives. Also make sure that the team and driver combination are capable of providing their key deliverables, the car on track and capable of achieving good results.

4. It is essential that you obtain a comprehensive proposal from the sponsorship agency; this must include details of what the sponsorship plan will deliver and how this will be measured. Ensure that your agency develops the package to meet your goals; this is achieved by working with them checking at each step that a full understanding exists between the people involved. The agency will want to succeed, as they will want your business now and in the future, long-term relationships with your agency will provide the very best results on the basis that they understand your business, your goals and your marketing strategy.

5. Once the sponsorship plan is agreed, put in place a formal contract drawn up by a specialist lawyer. This Contract may include performance clauses and the key deliverables to ensure that all parties know what is expected of them. But remember the relationship with your agency is bidirectional; I cannot over emphasise that communication is an essential key to success of the project for all parties.

So far we have considered only the external plans for the promotion; yet equally important is the role of the internal team at the sponsoring company. This team must support the concept of the promotion; everyone within the company must champion it because it must succeed at all levels, the internal team must not see the promotion as the property of the Chief Executive or the Brand Manager or the Marketing Team. The promotion belongs to everybody in the company, as they will all benefit from the success through increased sales and profitability.

In common with all of business life we find that communication is king, the internal team must be involved with the plan and they can be part of the events that you will use as part of the off track activation. It cannot be over emphasised that the ‘buy in’ to the plan by the internal team is critical; they can make or break the whole promotion; part of the method of achieving this is by keeping the internal team fully aware of the progress of the plan, ‘in house’ PR is just as important as the external PR.

Integration of all the various departments within the plan will engender commitment from the internal team; a necessary element of success for the project, as previously mentioned, the integration model also extends across all of the media used in the promotion.

Furthermore involving the ‘in house’ team directly in the promotion, both by enabling them to attend events and also by using the events to incentivise the people also brings greater success to the project. Consider the many possibilities for encouraging ‘in house’ team members to go the extra mile in the performance of their duties when there is a reward driven promotion on offer.

Now we need to consider your brand, and how to convey the message to the target customer, the logos that appear on the car, on the team wear and around the circuits in the form of banners are just the start. They are likely to be lost in the general ‘noise level’ of other brand promotions, but they do play a very important part in the whole plan. They provide a focus for the activation events.

In reality the users perceive a brand in different ways, however within the many personal views there will be a common thread or brand image. The market research project discussed earlier will enable you to understand how your customers perceive your brand which will enhance your business at all levels, and will feed into your motorsports led marketing promotion, ensuring that your plan will meet your goals.

The whole concept of a sponsorship led promotion is to ensure that your brand message is seen by your customers and prospects, the brand message is reinforced through the activation program, a significant proportion of your target customers will be your corporate guests, it is these people who will respond to the brand images, because they will be involved in your brand, it is these people that will buy your product or service.

Quite simply by using the powerful and emotional tool of sponsorship to lead your planned promotion, and by using a fully integrated promotion across all of the marketing media you will achieve outstanding results.

One of the key features of a sponsorship led marketing promotion is that it has the single aim of persuading customers and prospective customer to recognise and use your products and services and not that of your competitors

Aristotle (384-322 BC) is attributed as describing persuasion as the art of getting people to do something they would not ordinarily do if you did not ask. A good sponsorship led marketing promotion will conform to the Aristotle view of what is required to persuade: character and reputation, emotional appeal and logic. These will be delivered by a well thought out promotion, which is why it will work.

Conclusion

The starting point of a successful marketing promotion that uses motorsport as its foundation is really a question, ‘does motorsport fit with my target audience?’ Most company marketing professionals will believe they know the answer to this question; however market research is the only real way to identify if this opinion is correct.

By carrying out the research the promotion can be targeted at the audience in such a way that success is guaranteed, because you are using techniques and ideas that your customers will have explained fits to their image of your brand.

Once this is understood the sponsorship and marketing plan become an incredibly strong and cost effective method of winning new customers and expanding business with existing customers.

Motorsport is not an expensive luxury promotional tool, when a promotion is developed fully from a good knowledge base then an outstanding measurable result will be achieved, increase sales, increased customer awareness of your business, increased enthusiasm of your internal team and improved customer loyalty.

Many companies have proven this conclusively in the UK alone, Halfords, the RAC, Holiday Inn, Seat and Vauxhall are just some of the companies that invest in motorsports led marketing promotions and all derive fantastic results, now is the time to join in?

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