ESPN announced a line-up of 15 brand sponsors for the first-ever college football playoff series. Official sponsors range from food and beverage brands such as Reese’s, Gatorade and Dr. Pepper to financial services firms such as Allstate and Northwestern Mutual to major automotive brands like Ford and General Motors. The six game play-off series offers sponsors the opportunity to develop advertising and promotional programs that will hopefully score big.
According to AdAge, many of the official sponsors are planning large-scale, promotional efforts. Allstate is coordinating a sweepstakes, Dr. Pepper is partnering with Wal-mart for a campaign that will include advertising and in-store promotions, and Taco Bell is planning a ‘Live Mas’ student section at several of the games.
There are several keys to success when brands enter a sponsorship arrangement and plan integrated marketing communications and promotions around the event. The most successful efforts tend to:
- Create a custom campaign to leverage the sponsorship. Brands miss a significant opportunity to fully leverage sponsorships if they simply tell consumers that they are the ‘Official Sponsor of…” The most successful brands create custom programs and creative to ensure they maximize the full benefit of the sponsorship.
- Reinforce the brands’ unique selling proposition. The most successful sponsors leverage the event and related communications to tell consumers something meaningful about the brand and to reinforce their unique selling proposition. Simply being associated with an event your target audience associates with will not drive the ROI most brands hope to achieve.
- Align with base brand messages in market to help drive synergies. While sponsorship driven advertising and promotions are often different from the base campaign brands have in market, it is important to have clear linkages between the two campaigns. When both have creative synergies, they can work together to maximize campaign impact. When each campaign is forced to work in isolation, the results are often not as strong – a significant missed opportunity given the amount of money spent on high visibility sponsorships.
- Don’t get lost within the sponsorship or among other promotional partners. Brands risk getting ‘lost’ among all of the other messages around the event. Ensure that all communications are strongly branded – placing strong focus on the brand and working to stand out versus other sponsors and event messaging.
While the true value of the college football playoff series has yet to be seen, it is poised to be as big of an opportunity for brands as for the teams in the game. Which brands do you think will truly score a playoff touchdown?
