You may be thinking, sponsorship isn’t really that big of a weapon. Yeah, tell that to Subway who for years has been beating us over the head with the story of Jared. Jared is a guy that reportedly lost a ton of weight by walking to a local subway and eating one of their sandwiches every day. Now he’s basically the face of Subway. Sponsorship can help you communicate to your intended audience in ways that other marketing tools can’t. It’s a great way to clearly tell everyone what your brand stands for.

My dad, who is a 3 year prostate cancer survivor, decided to stay in shape so that he could limit his chances of a recurrence, and began running in 5K races. Every race, he wears a sign on his shirt that displays the logos of all the businesses and non-profits that have helped him in his fight against cancer. One of those businesses, USMD Prostate Cancer Center, thought that it was such a good idea that they started sponsoring his runs. By sponsoring my dad, he is able to run in more races, and thus promote these organizations more effectively. He’s become a vocal spokesperson for USMD’s services (which did indeed save his life), and gets the message out in a very low cost way. By the way, you can check out my dad’s latest racing exploits on his blog here.

You don’t necessarily have to sponsor a person to get your point across. Sponsoring an event, or a cause of some kind also has the same effect. It gets your brand name out to people that are interested in what you do, and goes a long way in describing the intangibles of your company. What do you stand for (besides making money), and why should your target audience care? Speaking of targets, like all good and effective marketing, sponsorships should be targeted. You want to make sure that whoever, or whatever you are sponsoring has some interest to your target audience. Otherwise, what’s the point.

Anyone else have anything to add?

Anyone that knows my dad knows that he’s a huge sports fan. He has season tickets to the Texas Rangers baseball games as well as the Dallas Mavericks basketball games, and never misses a game. He usually comes back from the game with some interesting stories, and I remember a few weeks ago he told me something that got my wheels turning. Let me tell you about it…

So he was at the Dallas Mavericks basketball game where someone had won a new car. This wasn’t just any old vehicle though. It was specifically designed to promote the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. Check out this picture to see what I mean…



Pretty cool huh? That’s my dad in the pic by the way, a 2+ year cancer survivor (shameless plug alert)  wearing a t-shirt promoting Dadfest, a 5k race event that benefits prostate cancer awareness and sets up free screenings.  Anyways, to win the contest, the winner had to be the one to guess the correct number of golf balls (of course they were branded with the team logo on one side and the sponsor, Dr. Pepper, on the other) that fit into the vehicles trunk.

I think the Dallas Mavericks are really on to something here. They are taking advantage of what I like to call compound marketing. You know, kind of like compound interest (interest on top of interest), except with marketing. First they promote the contest to win the car, which generates excitement among the fans. To sign up for the contest, they have to fill out a form which helps collect marketing research and demographic information. Of course, the form also helps build the team’s e-mail list. The vehicle itself promotes the team while the proud owner drives it all around Dallas (even in the off season). Oh and after the contest, they handed out those branded golf balls to the participants.

This… dare I say it… orgy of marketing strategy can be used to promote any brand you can think of. Why not promote yours?

I once read somewhere (probably some old marketing textbook) that it takes about 9 or 10 impressions before someone decides to buy from you. In addition, most people discard 4 out of 5 marketing messages (this data could be obsolete, but I’m going to go ahead and run with it… sue me). This means that you may need to reach a person 45 to 50 times with your marketing message to get a sale. Why not take advantage of some compound marketing opportunities so that you can deliver multiple messages at one time?

Think about ways that you can use this to benefit your business. If you come up with something brilliant be sure to let me know so I can steal it… er um share it.