Corporate Sponsorships and the New Consumer

A recent webcast titled “How Sponsorships Add True Purpose to Marketing Efforts” delved into the future of Cause/Non-Profit Marketing and its implications for traditional business models. The webcast, hosted by Dan Kowitz of IEG Sponsorship Consulting provided an interesting look at developing consumer trends and opinions.

For instance, 90% of Americans surveyed want companies to increase sponsorship for cause-sensitive campaigns or organizations. Furthermore, more than two-thirds of those surveyed globally said they would switch brands if the makers of a similar product supported social causes or nonprofit organizations.

What does this mean for businesses?

• Consumers are becoming more market-savvy and, consequently, independent. We now have an abundance of resources at our fingertips – message boards, blogs and watchdog sites, to name a few – and consumers use these to learn about the companies, share opinions and develop their brand recognition independent of traditional advertising.

• Consumers are socially aware. They support – and applaud – corporations who take an active interest in social change and cause-related marketing. Conversely, the new consumer can sniff out insincere marketing tactics or less than authentic concern from corporate social marketing efforts

Businesses that are authentic in their corporate sponsorship of and participation in cause marketing campaigns receive a generous bump in brand recognition and sales. As an example, in the five years since YoPlait began its ‘Save Lids to Save Lives' partnership with Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the company’s sales have steadily increased and even developed previously nonexistent seasonal sales spikes. Yoplait embraced the cause and, in turn, consumers embraced Yoplait.

Pepsi is hitting the ground running with this new aspect of the marketing mix. By declining to participate in the annual Super Bowl ad wars, and instead instituting its 'Pepsi Refresh Project' to fund cause-related, community-building campaigns and organizations, Pepsi has recognized that it may have more to gain in today’s consumer-savvy, cause-aware world by building a socially responsible brand.

Contributed by Kevin Barbeau

What Did We Learn in 2009?

It’s really important to take our learns from a really challenging year and go forward wiser into the New Year – 2010. Here are some of our lessons:


We are All in this Together
Is there anyone or any organization that was not affected by the economic challenges that started in 2008 and created tougher times in 2009? With a little inspiration from Ben Lee’s High School Musical song "We're All In This Together" it’s really important to share our situations and get support for working through them. It’s also important to take solace in knowing, while we each have our lessons to learn and changes to make, we were all affected one way or another.


Flat is the New Up
It’s a popular catch phrase and enough of us experienced it to have some truth. Still we must be careful to not use the phrase again in 2010 to explain, rationalize or justify negative trends in key performance metrics.


Run Harder to Stay in Place
There is no question that most of us are having to do more to sustain our base income: such as working more than one job or juggling more responsibilities with the same resources. In our sales coaching and, even in our own firm, we’ve encouraged people to increase weekly business development activity. I increased my own touch points with prospects from 50 to 75 per week in the back half of last year and it made a big difference. So I upped my outbound dials and e-mails for 2010 to 100 each week.


Social Media Networking is for Everyone
2009 was definitely the year I started taking Facebook and LinkedIn more seriously. It’s helped our firm get to hard-to-reach people for both our client projects and ourselves. We have been getting coached by social media network guru Dean DeLisle this past year as part of the curriculum offered by the Wright Business Institute. Now, in addition to my daily exercising and meditation discipline, I do my 20 minutes of networking online. Let’s connect at on my Facebook page or on my LinkedIn page.


Cause Marketing and Corporate Social Responsibility
are On the Rise
Close to home for our firm’s interest in Mission-Driven Marketing (TM), we are encouraged to see more companies and social causes turning to corporate/not-for-profit partnerships to collaborate on ways to create a better world. We appreciated Mike Swenson's Advertising Age column this past week which speaks to this.


Fly Southwest
We are “nuts” about Southwest. We’ve been able to build our business because of Southwest’s Chicago hub at Midway airport, its low airfares and its continually expanding the list of cities it flies to. (They added Boston, Minneapolis and LaGuardia this year!) While even this stellar brand took it on the chin financially in 2009, our money is still on Southwest.


Here’s to learning more lessons in 2010.


--John Davidoff, Founder and Managing Director