QViews

Two ways sponsorships engage an audience

As I observe the evolution of marketing and advertising, I am convinced that 'sponsorships' will become one of the most important ways for companies to gain and keep awareness among a target audience. Sponsorships take the pressue off a company to talk too much about itself (or theirselves, I guess). Your audience is interested in what you can do for them, but not in much else going on in the company. Unless your have employees who are particularly entertaining...if not, you can hire some entertainment by sponsoring a professional entertainer.

For instance, Hewlett-Packard is sponsoring the online airing of The Beautiful Life, a cancelled TV series produced by Ashton Kutcher. The really entertaining part is that HP is not promoting computers but a charity drive, and now the show's stars have to participate. Looks to me like a clever variety of product placement.

Hewlett-Packard is presuming that Kutcher and his supermodel stars will attract traffice, but Toyota's Scion brand is taking a different tact. They are helping their audience discover emerging artists in music and the visual arts, in keeping with their brand promise to help people express themselves. After sponsoring hundreds of performances and exhibitions, they have launched www.ScionAV.com to make sure their audience realizes they support many artists across many genres.

So Hewlett-Packard is 'borrowing fame' and Scion has its 'heart on its sleeve'--two ways you can use sponsorships to keep your market engaged.

Hanging out with the cool crowd

To improve the quantity and quality of people in their online community, The Patrón Spirits Company is building a two-way cross promotional system with more popular sites.

Mediapost Marketing Daily: Patrón Club Leveraging Content Partnerships, 2009-Jul-24, by Karlene Lukovitz

In essence, the brand is taking online media buys to a different level by aggregating and integrating the exclusive content and event opportunities. Eleven site partners are currently providing exclusive content, refreshed monthly, for an area within the club site dubbed "The Agenda." [Hip content sites include Going.com, Urban Daddy, Thrillist, Pandora, etc.] Partners are responsible for generating articles relevant to the Patrón brand's core target audience and driving new, qualified members to the club site via whatever brand-appropriate tactics they believe will be effective.

How to Host a Good Party

Corporate art patronage doesn't usually lead to great art, but it does lead to great parties, and it's a good fit for alcoholic beverage Campari. Art patronage can be leveraged in so many different directions. You can send out press releases, send out invitations, get the artist to help with images for the advertising, if they are so inclined. Anheuser-Busch has been doing some great digital artist sponsorship for Flavorpill.

Mediapost Marketing Daily: Campari Unveils Commissions Initiative, Targeting Artists. 2007-Aug-28, by Nina M. Lentini (free registration required): As it continues to target a key demographic for the brand, Campari has expanded its House of Campari contemporary art program--now in its third season--to include a newly announced 2007 Campari Commissions Initiative. The goals of the Campari Commissions are to provide financial support for artists to create significant new works of art and exhibition opportunities for showing the work, and then to donate the artworks to appropriate museum collections.

Experimenting with Milk for Free

We're anxiously awaiting word from the artist currently known as Prince as to his reasoning behind distributing his new album, Planet Earth, for free in the UK. First he decided to give it away with tickets to his London concerts, then it was distributed free in The Sunday Mail, as well. The Sunday Mail publisher is crowing about their position as a leading-edge promoter of fine music, but I think Prince is trying to redesign the connection with his public once again, and Sunday Mail got to hitch on for the ride. So what's he going to do for fans in the rest of the world?? I don't understand what's going on well enough to judge this as a marketing tactic. Maybe it's just an experiment? Billboard.com: U.K. Storm Brewing Over New Prince Album. 2007-Jun-29, by Lars Brandle

Premium Shareware

You have many different ways to support creative talent. Your company could become a distributor of a small but significant piece of software art. Consider it the digital equivalent of mailing a calendar to regular customers.

ClickZ: Shareware Synergies. 2007-May-22, by Chad Stoller

There's a large number of shareware developers, and their exposure opportunities are limited and short in time. They don't buy ads in consumer magazines or have a regional sales force that calls on Fortune 500 customers. Generally, their editorial coverage is limited to a top-tools list or a daily entry on an enthusiast's site. From there, they rely heavily on search, word of mouth, and community participation. They covet the opportunity to expand their marketplace. This is where you come in. Here are some quick tips on how you can partner with a developer: Find an innovative solution. You know your customers. Check out the thousands of consumer programs available for free on the Web, and find something that will appeal to your audience.

Lexus as Art

To attract the right audience for the new Lexus LS, they have developed a touring art gallery of contemporary art, so advanced that it attracts a select targeted audience, only 4,500 in Los Angeles. They invite a few co-sponsors to help with expenses and round out the experiences, but overall the feeling conveyed is "Lexus is art." This strategy will play well with influencers even if they aren't actual Lexus customers.

Mediapost: Lexus Marries Art With Design At City Events, 2006-Nov-3, by Karl Greenberg

A new Web site at www.460degrees.com serves as an online kiosk to the shows. The galleries are being curated by New York-based Sebastien Agneessens, whose agency Formavision has also created such events as the Starbucks Salon and Diesel Denim gallery.