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…..
Evaluating Sponsorship
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.
The Rapid Shift in Consumer Sentiment
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.
Talent Endorsements Re-Imagined
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.
Lumency’s Six Key Asset Production Considerations
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.
What Sports’ Broadcast Shift Means For Sponsors
The restart of play across major league sports will bring with it many new opportunities, leading to changes in the way consumers watch games and marketers build activation plans with not just the NHL, but major pro leagues across North America.
Don’t Waste A Crisis
If you are a brand side marketer or marketing procurement professional, maybe your organization’s management of its sponsorship investments hasn’t pressure-tested very well during the coronavirus pandemic…
Where Is The Turning Point For Sponsors?
The COVID-19 pandemic has turned sponsorship upside down and it may be a very long time before it looks anything like it used to, if ever. With so much uncertainty around the mid to long term impact of the pandemic, sponsors and rightsholders are having to revise their plans almost on a weekly basis…
Optimizing a Long-Standing Sports Sponsorship at Renewal
CASE STUDY: Castrol | Sponsorship Renewal | MLSE | Canada Assignment Advise Castrol on the renewal of a long-standing sponsorship with the potential for expansion of the package from a single team, single venue deal to a multi-team and multi-venue
Don’t Forget Your People
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.
ACTIVATION SCORECARD
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.
The Power of the Athlete Voice
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.
FIELD FORCE STAFFING SOLUTION
Having the right people on board to represent your brand is key, whether it’s at an activation, in a retail environment, or another brand experience touchpoint.