There’s an industry mantra dating back to the 80s, that sponsorship is a commercial means to a commercial end.

In the 80s, of course, it was a useful line to avoid approaches being routed to ‘community giving’; nowadays, it’s the logical defence against accusations of profligacy. But like any mantra, it both empowers and limits.

I was struck by this recently; a client, looking for words to explain the rationale behind a significant spend, chose to do so on the sole grounds of commercial benefit. Now, for tens of thousands of employees, this explanation risks being every bit as alienating as it’s now politically correct for the industry.
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This article is an exploration of a planning tool that Redmandarin uses to provide a bridge between the long-term sponsorship objectives typically leading the strategy, and the desire for freedom in developing creative solutions.

It’s in many ways the traditional hand-over point within a standard advertising model between the planner and the creative, the moment where all of the insights that have been accumulated through the process are converted into an idealised model of what the perfect campaign would include. By working to achieve the idealised model we can ensure that any creative solution retains a strong link to the drivers of business value that have been identified in the strategic assessment.
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