Illogical sponsorships can accelerate brand loyalty

The age-old advertising adage: “I know I’m wasting half of my marketing budget, I just don’t know which half”, is about to be stress tested. The current economic environment has clients, agencies, media and sponsorship venues edgy and anxious. The sound they all await: the other shoe to drop.

Company marketing departments are being culled. The pink slip destroyer may be lurking in every email inbox or Outlook meeting notice. The lines are noticeably shorter at the company cafeteria; the menus less robust. Finding a parking space is a little too easy. Getting things done is much, much harder. Escalating risk, waning reward.

Meanwhile on the agency side, each time the phone rings the frisson that hits the nervous system is equal parts apprehension and despondency. Another client has been let go, or needs to cut their marketing budget, or has an emergency presentation due and needs help they cannot pay for.

Indeed, marketers right this minute are in a situation hauntingly described by Mathew Arnold in Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse: “Wandering between two worlds, one dead/the other powerless to be born.”

The temptation in such stillness is to retreat with cuts designed to meet ever declining budget parameters, while maintaining those portions of the plan that, well, don’t require a lot of people to execute – and won’t get anyone in trouble. So, national television advertising survives, while less traditional tactics that require consumer engagement become too expensive in human capital to maintain, or too fraught with public policy implications to risk. There is a freeze on head count: Let’s run the 30-second spot six more times. Citigroup is being tarred and feathered for Citi Field. Let’s withdraw from sponsorships; stick to the basics.

And yet, when I began researching the world of brand evangelism, I wanted to find out why some brands rise to a level of passionate engagement with the consumer; why they simply have no substitute? Indeed, there are brands that create such a passionate attachment that if I recommend it to you and you don’t like it the way I do, you’ve put a question mark over our friendship, not the brand.

I discovered many intriguing aspects to this distinctly consumer society phenomenon, but none as fascinating as the role messy, exacerbating humanity plays in building a brand’s mythos. We’re talking about sponsorships here. Brands which go out into the chaos of the real world and touch real people in their real lives, via their real passions.

Not all sponsorships are created equal, of course. Citi Field may well be one of those which will be quickly relegated to the dustbin of history’s failed big ideas, speeded there by executives’ tone-deaf, Sky box grandiosity. Did anyone really believe that some fan was ever going to say: “Gosh, CitiBank is sponsoring the Mets’ new Stadium, I think I’ll switch my checking account!”

But we found two kinds of sponsorships which really do out-perform nearly any other arrow in a brand’s dwindling quiver. First, the logical associations - as in Specialised Bicycle Components sponsoring a bike team or Movado making a long-term commitment to the New York City Ballet. These relationships make total sense, aren’t a stretch and seem to be a better use of funds than nearly anything else they could do. The proverbial “no-brainer.”

The essential guide post to making these work? Forging a commitment that is permanent, personal, pervasive – and persuasive. This creates a trusted bond between the brand and consumer, made tangible by shared passion. As one marketer told me: “We show up. That’s it. We show up where our consumers are because it’s where we are too. We don’t sponsor anything that’s out of line with our target and once some fledging musician starts to edge toward popularity, we withdraw because we want to be in the heat of the discovery cycle. That’s who we are and that’s who our consumers are.”

It was in the world of big (a.k.a expensive) sponsorships that we uncovered what, for me, was a genuine surprise: The power of illogical sponsorship. A NASCAR team sponsored by coffee firm Folgers, as but one example. As one respondent explained it to me: “I’m a big NASCAR guy; I love the Folgers Team. When my sister-in-law wouldn’t use Folgers, we stopped going to her house. We haven’t spoken in three years.”

This kind of brandism is rare, indeed. How else would families come to an impasse over a cuppa or a detergent (the Tide team has its enthusiasts, too). These illogical sponsorships have the power to accelerate brand loyalty (and price imperviousness) in otherwise tough categories. The fans seems more appreciative of the brand’s involvement, since it doesn’t make rational sense – the brand must be genuine.

My suspicion is that there’s something too in the impenetrability of the sport – it’s a team, but once the team members are suited up, helmeted and encased in the machine, it’s impossible to discern individuals. That makes what’s emblazoned on the car so important. Fans are literally rooting for Folgers or Tide to win. The brand triangulates the fan’s love of the sport visually and compellingly, and thereby brands that passion.

Full disclosure: I do not now nor have ever I worked on Folgers, Tide, NASCAR or anything remotely connected to it. I had always thought of these kinds of programmes as mainly about ways that sales guys can legitimately party with key retail partners and, like many of my peers, as logistical nightmares - hard to read through conventional return-on-investment scrutiny. So my amazement is genuine.

Despite my doubts and despite the economy, despite the rush to respond to perilous economic and public relations disasters by cancelling off-site meetings and private jet contracts, these dollars are from the half of the budget that’s working. Marketers: Don’t throw the passion out with the head-count.