Sponsor in Good Company

Sponsorship marketing is usually associated with a business helping out a charity or nonprofit. It can also take other forms. Your store might financially support a business seminar for retailers in your community, staff the press room at a week-long local trade show using a few of your paid employees, or provide supplies from your store stock for a children’s soccer team over an entire season.
     A chief objective of sponsorship marketing is to build goodwill toward your business from prospective customers and from community decision makers. Knowing all this, researchers at Leibniz Universität Hannover urge you to inquire about and then seriously consider the reputations of any cosponsors. Using sophisticated statistical analyses, the researchers verified that if a sponsor is viewed unfavorably by participants in the activity or event, those negative impressions will bleed over toward perceptions of the other sponsors. This situation could occur, for example, when your cosponsor has signed on to a marketing initiative mostly because they want to calm a recent controversy about them.
     The bleed-over to your reputation is more likely when:

• The cosponsor is in the same type of business as you 
• The cosponsor is well-known 
• The cosponsor’s name is featured in the same posters, agendas, and speakers’ expressions of gratitude as is your business name 

     Other research indicates that although there will also be a bleed-over when the reputation of a sponsor is highly positive, the influence on audiences is not as significant as with a negative bleed-over.
     It’s probably pretty much out of the question to ask event planners to withhold the identity of a cosponsor you’re concerned about. Yet there is a circumstance where you could make a case to the cosponsor to stifle the notice:
     Invite one of your suppliers to be your cosponsor, but to not announce themselves as a cosponsor. Your argument could start with recognizing that building sales is in the interest of both the supplier and you. Go on to point out that if the target is a charity, you’ll get better results in convincing others to join you in donating if you publicize the sponsor as being your store, not the supplier. Research at Michigan State University, Illinois Wesleyan University, and University of Texas-Austin suggests that when a store instead of a brand is publicized as the sponsor, consumers are more likely to see the sponsorship as a charitable act rather than only a selling technique.

For your profitability: Sell Well: What Really Moves Your Shoppers

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Activate Sponsorship Marketing
Donate In Ways that Encourage Others to Donate