In the world of sports, sponsorship is big business, and openly so, but arts and culture are different. Sponsor companies are reluctant to tout their support as anything but a very expensive good deed. That approach offers little in the way of marketing mileage, but companies are finding new ways to satisfy art lovers as well as the bottom line by making sure their sponsorship is enriching events, rather than distracting from them.
The question is, how can sponsors capitalize on their sponsorship relationships without wearing out the public welcome? One way is to not just push your brand at the event, but to actually add value to the experience.
Bell Canada tried this approach at this year’s Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ont. Bell has long been a partner of the festival. This year, it wanted a way to enhance its presence at the event while also enhancing the meaning of that presence for attendees.
The answer lay in unique signage for the lobbies of the two theatre venues. Panasonic donated two giant plasma screens which play looped information about the festival, as well as sponsorship recognition.
For Bell, the screens are ‘an opportunity to showcase their technology.’ The company created a series of interviews with actors called ‘Festival Highlights.’ Also playing were scenes from plays.
Rachel Hilton, marketing and corporate sponsorship director for the festival, implemented two major programs this year. She says ‘closer ties and more meaningful relationships’ with sponsors are becoming the trend.
‘This is,’ she says, ‘not an opportunity sponsors usually get unless they’re at a sports site. We were really hoping to be able to offer something that was going to resonate a little more with our audience than just a sign on the way to the stage.’
This summer L’Oréal’s Garnier Fructis brand sponsored Cirque du Soleil’s tour of Canada as the troupe visited Vancouver, Montreal and Calgary. The Montreal-based hair styling line’s on-site activation included live models mingling with show-goers before and after the event. But these models were offering something more than just free samples: their Garnier-inspired hairstyles generated some real buzz, as did their costumes, which were made entirely of Garnier sample packets.
‘Costume design is one of the key visual components of Cirque du Soleil’s success,’ says marketing director Scott Moon, who worked with the Cirque du Soleil’s costume manufacturers to product dresses and vests. ‘This is an extra experience à la Garnier.’
The costumed models distributed over 200,000 product samples during the tour. They also made a point of snapping souvenir photos of about 3,000 families with the models, which were later emailed to them in a special Garnier digital frame. Families who receive their photos after September 20th will receive an offer to participate in an online contest which will send one lucky winner to a Cirque du Soleil show anywhere in the world for five consecutive years.
‘We’re offering people the chance at running around the world with Cirque du Soleil,’ Moon says.
Another interesting twist occurred at the Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival this summer. At one of the performances, fans noticed a big green chair sitting on the stage before the band showed up to a concert at the Carlu in Toronto. The emcee introduced the green chair as the proud sponsor, TD Canada Trust, before the show began. Exit interviews found that the stunt was subtle, but effective.
Programs like this suggest some real innovation is afoot, but these kind of sponsors are rare, says Jana Turner of Toronto’s Mirvish Productions. In fact, her company continues to field requests from companies who want to hog the stage. They get the hook.
‘We’ve received a lot of interest from high-end, luxury cars and they all want to do the same thing which is to display their car at the theatre, and we just don’t have the public space to be able to do that.’
Other companies want to use the theatre to entertain business partners. ‘We get pretty outlandish requests from people who buy seats for a show. They want to do an announcement from the stage. We just don’t offer that. That’s not an option.’
The reason, she says, is that, ‘When you enter the theatre there’s a certain environment that you’re releasing yourself to. You’re not there to become banged over the head with some corporate message. The theatre is an art form. To sully it with a corporate message at the top of the show, from an artistic point of view…I just can’t imagine the creative team would ever go for that.’
Mark Sabourin, editor of The Sponsorship Report, predicts those kind of fears will be overcome in time. ‘Look at sport – they confronted the same thing in the early days of corporate involvement. People were afraid that it would somehow interfere with the experience. Now people understand that without the corporate presence, the event wouldn’t exist. You will never find a race car fan saying that Molson is over the top in its presence at the Molson Indy. You won’t.’
Sabourin notes there are many more opportunities for innovation that don’t have to alter the script, so to speak.
‘Purolator has a program with the CFL. They will deliver the game ball at the beginning of a football game. At some point, and at some point soon, at the Downtown Jazz Festival the band is gonna set up and a sax player is gonna look around stupidly until a van drives up with the sax and has the musician sign for it. And I don’t think the marketplace will resist. It may create a nice light moment.’
Dave Bogart, account director for Vancouver-based Myron Balagno & Associates (MBA), hopes to continue the evolution of sponsorship value. MBA recently signed a deal with BMW Western Canada on behalf of The Centre in Vancouver for the Performing Arts. BMW plans to host VIPs, dealers and product launches at the venue, and maybe something more.
‘We try to build as much leverage or activation with the sponsor directly and say that with the rights to the facility, you could build in additional marketing programs,’ says Bogart. ‘Our whole philosophy is we’ll produce anything you can think of. If we can’t produce something creative and imaginative, who can?’
Theatah-going women a match for Olay
This year Procter & Gamble tied its Olay brand name into Stratford’s Gigi, becoming the first packaged goods company to sponsor a play at the event.
The company was undergoing something of a re-brand, which included dropping the old ‘Oil of…’ from its brand name. It wanted to reach for something more contemporary, ‘less for the old guard,’ says Rachel Hilton, marketing and corporate sponsorship director for the festival.
Stratford offered the ideal demographic: women 35+ who are professionals, highly educated, and have a household income of at least $75,000.
During the six months of the play’s performance, Olay conducted on-site sampling of its new Regenerist skin-care products targeted at women 35+, the exact demographic that Stratford was also reaching. Olay also had leverage rights outside of the event and into the town of Stratford as well as in local hotels. The star of the show, Jennifer Gould, agreed to serve as a spokesperson for Olay – a relationship Olay chose not to activate.
‘The products they’re choosing to promote in association is in keeping,’ says Hilton. ‘It’s very fitting with the experience. And a bit more meaningful than handing out samples at Shoppers Drug Mart. These are women who care about theatre and recognize the support.’
