Are brands maximising sports marketing potential in Asia?

Along-standing marketing staple in the US and Europe, sports sponsorship is increasingly gaining traction across Asia. Regional investment in sponsorship has seen double digit growth year-on-year over the past six years, making Asia the world's fastest growing market.

According to research by Ogilvy, since the Beijing Olympics, 87 per cent of the Chinese population is more motivated to participate in sport. With sport a key passion point for so many, it is generally assumed that consumers respond more positively to sponsorship than blatant advertising. But as the Olympics showed, achieving and measuring return on investment among a raft of official partners, not to mention brands looking to leverage an event in an unofficial capacity, is not easy.

While Asian brands such as Samsung, Hyundai, Kia and Emirates have bolstered their global status through involvement with major sporting events over the past decade, sponsorship is still not something to be taken lightly, according to Qiang Wei, director of sports marketing at Ogilvy PR Beijing.

"A brand should be well prepared to prevent and control various risks and it must fully understand the subject of its sponsorship," says Wei. "It needs to identify the most important rights and maximize those benefits. Brands must balance sponsorship rights and marketing needs to achieve results."

Clear identification of key performance indicators (KPI) prior to commitment might seem essential, but Wei says brands often dive in with sponsorships for the purpose of "one-upmanship" and, in terms of activation, fail to exploit the available sponsorship rights, doing little more than ‘badging' the events.

" We want to see our brand and the values we promote come alive," says Brian Fisher, regional brand manager for Caltex, which sponsors the V8 Car Championships in New Zealand and the Masters Golf Tournament in Singapore, among other initiatives.

"The KPIs that can be built into these types of programmes are only limited by imagination. In this respect sponsorship can be much more flexible than traditional media buys."

Once a deal has been inked, establishing decisive internal and external mechanisms to maximise and measure the benefits is another critical area brands must address. Internally, brands can integrate a deal across the entire company, with individual departments assessing the ways they can use it - from sales teams entertaining clients through to HR departments exploring ways to motivate and reward staff. Externally, elements of sponsorship can be evaluated by specialist research agencies like Repucom and Sport&Markt, which employ tools to measure the media branding value of stadium signage, as well as research into the demographics of sports fans and their habits.

Tools that measure sponsorship impressions through TV, print and online media can, according to Craig Mapleston, managing director of iris Singapore "make PR and sponsorship agencies very excited, as they can create an equivalent advertising value out of the amount of visibility of their sponsorship".

Yet while Mapleston advocates a comparison of cost with media return to an extent, he believes that finding a sponsorship campaign's true value is a much deeper process. "A sponsorship should not simply be an awareness tool measured through media exposure," he states. "It is a great opportunity to create a deeper connection with consumers that simply seeing a logo on a screen will never deliver. The marketing industry needs to fundamentally move its approach to sponsorship. Sponsorship properties need to be viewed as cultural assets."

One way that sponsorships can be evaluated on a more meaningful and emotional level is through advancements in digital technology. Many of the most effective sponsorship campaigns today include strong social media elements, driving consumers to branded microsites, social networking portals and mobile applications, and encouraging them to download content such as podcasts or branded screen savers.

This was an approach undertaken by Hyundai during the World Cup. The brand leveraged its status as the tournament's official automobile partner on a number of levels and across a variety of platforms. Away from the traditional above-the-line advertising activity, it engaged consumers across Asia through social media, hosting competitions online and encouraging consumer interaction via social networking sites, as well as developing an iPhone application for fans of the South Korea team.

By activating sponsorships on digital platforms, brands can appraise elements of campaigns instantly, with real time updates showing download figures, web traffic, or member levels of a social networking group. Wei believes that ‘new' media and technology have made evaluation easier.

"Online and mobile platforms have become the main channels of sports communications, attracting more and more young people and fans. Views of online sports videos, BBS threads, participation in online sports communities, as well as traffic to sports websites and celebrity blogs, are all used as evaluation criteria. Digital media offers a more diversified approach to assessing the effectiveness of sponsorship."

Using digital media as part of sponsorship activation is already commonplace in Western markets, which lead the way when it comes to integrated initiatives with activation that goes way beyond stadium signage and logos emblazoned on kits. However, as MEC Access managing director Mike Jackson points out, sponsorship is still a comparatively new tool for many marketers in Asia, and most are not yet as comfortable using it as a communications vehicle over traditional advertising.

"This is still a relatively young and inexperienced industry, and key principles need to be addressed around a number of topics: acquiring the correct rights, clearly defining the role of sponsorship along with smart business and marketing objectives, the appropriate investment into consumer insights and evaluation techniques and the development of a strong, compelling connection that engages fans."

Brands that have developed successful sponsorship strategies look for ways to interweave their rights across the marketing mix, and do not treat it as standalone activity separate from other commercial areas. Coca-Cola's strategy around the World Cup saw it integrate its sponsorship across above-the-line activity through to packaging. While it may be easier for brands of that scale to implement such strategies, they should still be viewed as benchmarks for brands of all sizes with sponsorship properties to activate around.

Brands that activate comprehensively not only achieve high consumer awareness, but also become synonymous with the sponsorship property, such as Carlsberg with its long association with football and Sahara Group with Indian cricket.

Carlsberg has successfully extended its partnership with the English Football Association (FA) and Liverpool FC across Asia, helping the brand stand out in the beer market and appeal to the legion of soccer- mad consumers across the continent.

During the World Cup it promoted its association with England in countries that were not competing, such as China and Singapore, through above-the-line activity. In May, in a bid to increase brand awareness in China, Carlsberg employed a novel one-off marketing ploy that saw its logo on Liverpool's football strip written in Chinese. The specially designed kit appeared in the game against Chelsea, which attracted over 750 million viewers around the world, with further messages for the Chinese audience via displays during the match on the LED perimeter advertising hoardings around the pitch.

Meanwhile in India, Sahara's long standing association Indian cricket will continue until at least 2013 after it recently agreed a deal worth between US$100 million and $120 million (dependent on matches played) with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). The move comes after a four-year sponsorship worth $80 million and is indicative of confidence in increased brand awareness and sales through the association.

While sponsorship evaluation remains a challenge for brands, so too does cutting through the clutter, particularly with more and more companies looking to association with sport as a way to engage consumers on a more emotional level than with standard advertising.

This has been the case within the Indian Premier League (IPL), which has attracted huge interest beyond India. Unsurprisingly, a slew of sponsors have associated themselves with the event, but recent studies from MEC show that the top two brands in terms of recall against investment were Kingfisher and Nokia. Neither were leading TV advertisers around the coverage, but both benefited from a balance of team association and activation to complement their above-the-line activity.

Although consumers generally respond positively to sponsorship, the sponsor must display commitment. Jackson notes that a long-term mindset is critical. "Often sponsorships require organisations to adapt and change to a new way of working, and the first year may not always be as successful as planned. It is important to evaluate, build on the achievements and course correct from less successful activities."

Jackson offers advice to brands considering using sponsorship in their marketing strategy. "Firstly, be very clear of the role of sponsorship within the communications mix, and define the marketing objectives and communication tasks that the sponsorship must overcome. Secondly, understand the audience; base sponsorship strategy on clear consumer insights and be sure to differentiate from other brands operating in a similar space. Thirdly, budget for exploitation. All too often, companies believe core media rights available through the property will suffice. Brands need to exploit the property, bring communications to life above and below-the-line and have a dialogue with consumers as to why they are involved."

With consumer empowerment, media fragmentation and advertising avoidance technology on the rise, sponsorship would appear more relevant than ever. "Sponsorship has a bright future ahead if the core principles are applied," Jackson says.

This article was originally published in the 15 July 2010 issue of Media.