Event Sponsorship

• Event sponsorship is when I company will financially support an event with their product in hope to get future customers.

Advantages

• The audience tends to be very interactive and engaged with the event, which is intern creating interest for the product.
• The audience is already put in a segment since events are usually specialized for a specific interest. For example, if St. Croix Rod and Reels were to sponsor a bass fishing tournament they would not have to do much research on the audience because they are there for fishing and it would not be hard to sell top of the line fishing poles to people at a bass tournament.
• Data can be used from interaction between the audience and the product, event sponsorships can almost be used like survey groups.
• Not all event sponsorships have to be face to face, hybrid events are becoming more and more relevant. A hybrid event is still an event were people interact face to face but the company sponsoring it usually has some messages for the audience through a webcast, this tends to be a cheaper route.
• Many corporate conferences will provide an attendee list, where you will be able to contact everyone at the conference at a later date for either feedback or just for sending promotions and other deals.

Disadvantages

• Lack of control is a big issue for events, weather, media coverage, and attendance is completely out of the sponsors control.
• Negative image association can hurt a brand. For example, if you were sponsoring a actor and he recently got arrested for a DUI it would shed negative light upon the brand and company.
• High profile events tend to be sponsored by a lot of different companies, at these it is very hard for your brand to stick out compared to all the others.

AIDA Model – Event sponsorship is very good at drawing attention to the brand and since it is an event it holds their interest in the brand. Since it draws attention and interest, the desire for the product is high and if the desire is high it usually means people will purchase the product

Event sponsorship is more or less meant for a niche audience, and the main goal of sponsoring an event is to inform the audience about the product usually because they didn’t know it existed. It can also be used as a power move by some of the bigger businesses who can sponsor a whole event and give their product away as gifts in some cases, but if this done your company looks very powerful and makes it look good.

Event Sponsorship for Western Tech Marketing Program

This would be most effective for high school students. If the Marketing Program were to sponsor an event at a high school they would already have a whole building filled with kids interested in college and have a message about how beneficial college is to getting a good job, but also explain how Western TC works and how it is a more cost effective option.

What I Learned and Misconceptions

I was unaware that almost every professional sports game is basically event sponsorship because the stadium, teams, and even the jerseys are sponsored, not to mention the thousands of billboards plastered throughout the stadiums.A big misconception of event sponsorship is that people think it is too expensive to be financially effective, but in retrospect they tend to be cheap and if done right can cause huge booms in sales.

Sources

Why Event Sponsorship Is An Untapped Marketing Channel.” Sponsor My Event Blog. N.p., 13 Apr. 2016. Web. 18 Feb. 2017.

“Sponsorship – Marketing Agency Exeter, Devon.” Marketing Agency in Exeter, Devon. N.p., 26 July 2016. Web. 18 Feb. 2017.