Second Chance Sponsorships provide big return

It seems like a lot of the sponsorships of conferences or events or athletes don't provide a tonne of value to a company. That being said these sponsorships are important to the party that is being sponsored otherwise they would not be able to do what they do. But is it really a good use of your company's valuable marketing dollars, especially in these penny-pinching times?

Here are a couple of sponsorships that i've seen recently that were clearly a well thought out, strategic use of their money to create goodwill among their customers.

The Keg Restaurant - Celebration of Light

Each year, Vancouver has a fireworks competition that brings teams from around the world to the city to compete and provides 4 nights of free entertainment for locals while at the same time keeping restaurants, bars, and shops in the downtown area packed with people. Over the years the event has had trouble finding sponsors and entering this year they were a sponsor short of being able to put the show on. It was announced as being cancelled. Well within a short period of time of this announcement The Keg Restaurant (a canadian steakhouse chain) stepped up to the plate and contributed what i'm sure is not a huge chunk of their advertising dollars. The event was back on, all because of the Keg. So what happens? They get countless value out of the blogs/media coverage of their sponsorship that easily makes the amount of their sponsorship seem minimal.

Here's one such blog that published the event http://vancitybuzz.blogspot.com/2009/03/2009-celebration-of-light-vancouver.html


Vancouver Canucks playoff games in HD - Save-on-Foods

Being a Canadian city, Vancouver has some of the most passionate hockey fans in the world (if not the most passionate ie. i'm one of said fans). This year they are in the playoffs after missing last year and the city is buzzing with excitement. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is a public television network that has first rights to air canadian teams playoff games. They aired the first game from Vancouver in High Definition and it was found out after that games 3 and 4 to be played in St. Louis would not be televised in HD due to the extra cost associated with it $100,000. They had just gone through some rounds of layoffs and felt they could not justify the cost (weak excuse). Cue Save-on-Foods, a lower mainland based supermarket chain, who jumped in and basically said "$100,000??? That's it. We'll pay for you to have HD for our consumers." Boom! Now not everyone in the province has HD but even those without are going to be happy with Save-On for stepping up to the plate. This was a great sponsorship move and got buzz all over the radios and television stations throughout the province.

So maybe a sponsorship investment isn't the worst thing in the world for your company. Especially if it is for something that has a passionate following. Your generosity will fuel a lot of goodwill with those followers and they are quite likely to be pleased enough to spread the word to their network......especially if that something was on the verge of going kaput.