Our President and CEO, Ian Malcolm recently published a guest blog post for the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) to discuss key trends in sponsorship that have become more prominent due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the blog post below (originally posted on the
Consumer and employee expectations for how brands behave, not just what brands say, continue to rise. People want to have relationships with brands and organizations that share their values. The killing of George Floyd in 2020 started a long overdue
As Olympic organizers, athletes, sponsors, and fans prepare for an unprecedented Games’ cycle, Lumency has taken a closer examination of the pandemic’s impact on each of these groups, and how COVID may affect both this and future Games…..
Sponsorship can be an important way for brands to create emotional connections with consumers and to demonstrate a brand’s values. Sound strategy lies at the heart of a brand’s ability to achieve this successfully. Implementing that strategy though effectively and efficiently requires the ability to measure and understand the value a particular sponsorship (assets, entitlements, associative benefits) can deliver to a sponsoring brand.
In North America, prior to the coronavirus pandemic, consumers were already beginning to show signs of change in how they engage with live events across sports, music, arts, culture and community. The pandemic, with cancelled events, shortened or reconstituted seasons has had a significant impact on the assets that a rights holder has been able to deliver to its sponsors.
Athlete endorsements have historically been leveraged by brands as a way to communicate directly with an endorsee’s engaged and loyal audience. The competitive pressures surrounding the more sought-after athletes has left brands with little negotiating power over fees and the entitlement packages that endorsees offer to their brand partners. With athlete endorsements traditionally delivering a portion of their entitlement commitments in association with live events, new deal structures and means of activating rights in 2021 and beyond should be expected.
Ensuring you have the right people to represent your brand is key, whether it’s at an activation, in a retail environment, or another brand experience touchpoint. It’s imperative for your in-field team to have the brand/product knowledge, people skills, and the know-how to maintain a strong presence in-store or at an event.
Assessing and validating activation of rights on a key property by key property basis is important for ensuring your brand is leveraging the full value from these sponsorships. This practice also enables your brand to better optimize and refine future activations, including the extrapolation of learnings across properties or property types.
Physical asset production is often a large percentage of experiential marketing budgets but the spend is not always optimized. The right asset can help to create a memorable consumer engagement and drive program success. However, when done wrong can lead to inefficient spend and hinder the ability to deliver on marketing and business objectives.
Aside from simply captivating audiences around the globe, The Last Dance, the docuseries co-produced by ESPN Films and Netflix focusing on Michael Jordan and his final season with the Chicago Bulls, put a spotlight on consumer’s appetite for athlete led content.
While this is certainly a unique example given that Michael Jordan reached a level of icon status that transcends the world of sports, we can still see examples of content being produced that places the athlete and their story in the forefront.
