Sponsorship as a force for good

At The Sponsor, we regularly interview marketing leaders of financial services brands. When we ask what their company values are, the first three are nearly always the same: trust, integrity, and some form of putting the client first.

A close fourth would be a mention of diversity and inclusion.

Brands that merely pay lip service to these important value drivers of demand stand to lose out to those who are willing to put their money where their mouth is.

The easy approach to rectifying a perceived shortcoming in one of these key values is sponsorship. However, tread with caution.

Brands that merely use sponsorship to paper over the cracks in their offering will quickly find their message does not resonate authentically with key audiences.

Customers and clients are savvier than ever before, and nowhere is this truer than in financial services.

Sponsorship success comes from a real, long-term, and unwavering commitment to genuine values that align with your target audience.

Successful sponsorship of this nature begins with deep-rooted, values-based alignment between two parties. Such an alignment can often be hard to find, which is why the foundations of every successful partnership are rooted in comprehensive research and evaluation of all available opportunities to find the partners that truly represent a company’s values and target market.

It has now become crucial for brands to also consider the risks of sponsorships. This is especially true in financial services, where only a tenuous link to oil and gas can find you in the crosshairs of environmental campaign groups.

Once your values are set and you have identified a sponsor that can help communicate or demonstrate these values, the next step is to engage the event audience around those values.

Many brands make the mistake of thinking the more a logo is flashed up on a screen or around the side of a pitch, the more engaged fans are. Annoyed and distracted perhaps, yes, but engaged? Not necessarily.

This is especially true of wealthy audiences and high-net-worth individuals for whom sponsorship requires a more delicate and nuanced approach.

All this logo-based sponsorship achieves is brand awareness, and if brand awareness is all you seek, then it would usually be cheaper to simply advertise.

The true power of sponsorship comes not only from raising awareness but from shaping how audiences think and feel about the brand.

Brands should consider how they are perceived today versus how they want to be perceived in the future. This desired perception can shift stakeholder perception across the key values that drive demand in financial services – trust, integrity, client focus, and increasingly being a good corporate citizen.

Customers and clients today are deeply knowledgeable and interested in the behaviour of the brands they interact with and purchase from.

It stands to reason that the most engaging sponsorships connect with audiences not by the things they simply like but by the things they genuinely care about and have a passion for.

This could be a passion for their team, but it is often much deeper than that, touching on support for youth development, gender equality, health and wellness, and the environment.

The very best sponsorships not only provide a return for the team or event and a financial return for the sponsoring brand, but also make a positive contribution to the fans and the wider community.

Sponsorship is the most powerful tool in a marketer’s arsenal because when implemented correctly it goes beyond brand awareness and instead shifts audience perception and, subsequently, buying behaviour.

For this shift to happen, brands need to use their partnerships to demonstrate an authentic belief in the values that matter most to their customers and audiences.

Audiences are most receptive to this when they see you putting those values into action by sponsoring the cause that matter most to you and them. Sponsorship is not an opportunity to get your logo out there but rather an opportunity to demonstrate who you really are.

Sean Connell is editor at The Sponsor.