Why define sponsorship?
When we tell people Redmandarin is publishing a book called 'Defining Sponsorship', we get one of two responses: great! or: why bother? Sometimes, it seems an academic exercise, even to me.
But it’s far from academic. Definitions are the start point for everything. A car’s a car – unless you can avoid road tax. People give their lives for their own definition of freedom, and often to oppose others'. HSBC’s long-running campaign is based on the chasms separating the disparate meanings given to very common words. Most of us rely on definitions to support our sense of identity, our ethical judgements, our place in the world.
Shapelessness has its advantages. Lack of definition has enabled sponsorship to spread itself thinly across the marketing universe. And, regardless of definition, sponsorship - as a shorthand for ambient media buying in particular – is unstoppable.
Definition, on the other hand, can be limiting - but as anyone starting a business, writing an article, planning a campaign knows, self-definition can’t be escaped: it’s one of the first challenges of maturity.
Everybody at Redmandarin shares the belief that sponsorship, well done, can be the most magical and powerful of models for marketing. Surely such a sponsorship is worth defining. We also believe that a lot of what goes by the name of sponsorship is rubbish.
There are very good arguments why tactical sponsorship has a role to play. Unfortunately, unless we’re prepared to discriminate between tactical and strategic, or between good and bad, more clearly; unless we’re prepared be self-critical, to own up to the bad ones, the duds, the errors of judgement, the wastage and the idiocy; unless we define what we as an industry represents the best, the optimum model, the reason to believe which is uniquely ours, we’re powerless to defend ourselves and weaponless to advance the very real cause of sponsorship as a serious, credible and increasingly appropriate response to brands’ need to build deeper relationships with consumers.
Redmandarin has always stood for a more progressive, smarter approach to sponsorship. We ask questions. We probe. We challenge. Self-aware brands with a culture which supports self-improvement and fresh thinking tend to like us. Brands which prefer business as usual ... tend not to.
‘Defining Sponsorship’, ultimately, is our credo. It’s our vision of sponsorship. In many respects, it’s our conceptual framework. This is what sponsorship represents for us at its absolute best - what we strive for in our client work.
