Invisible Brand

‘Alternative’ areas of corporate sponsorship can present interesting and affordable branding opportunities for professional and business services firms – but there are pitfalls as well as rewards.

CORPORATE SPONSORSHIP is now firmly established as one of the major options open to the Marketing Director for building corporate image and awareness. Indeed, for many large consumer brands, sponsorship has become as least as important as consumer advertising, with a budget to match. For professional services firms there is no imperative to reach millions in the mass market and nor are the objectives necessarily confined to awareness. A key brand attribute of any business in this sector has to be its intellectual capital, its cultural edge. So even if major sporting events such as football are financially beyond reach, this is little real loss since they are unlikely to resonate with the brand in the desired manner.

The less obvious alternatives are more interesting not only because they represent better value, but because they are capable of striking a much more powerful chord with the target audience.Areas of sponsorship might include the arts, social causes such as the NSPCC or Childline or, at the far end of the spectrum, semi-political causes such as Amnesty or Greenpeace. The potential power of the latter examples becomes realisable not simply through financial support but through open ‘alignment’ – here is a cause that reflects the cultural sensibilities and attitudes of your organisation. This kind of sponsorship says much more than who you are; it says what you are and what you stand for.

Such initiatives are also powerful agents for internal cohesion and branding; people like the idea that their employers have a social conscience and will stand behind their beliefs.

Sponsorship alignments with an edge don’t have to go to the ‘political’ end of the spectrum to be effective. In the arts, the sponsorship of radical, politicised contemporary art clearly signifies far more attitude than a cocktail evening at the RA Summer Exhibition and, as a result, is likely to have a much greater impact on your awareness and how you are perceived.

But it is at this point that a double-edged sword must be acknowledged. High awareness doesn’t always equate to positive perception and, if you raise your corporate head above the parapet of anodyne, broad church activities to espouse more radical causes, you must expect at least some people to take pot shots. Not all of your clients or prospects may be in sympathy with the cause you align yourself with. Some could be totally anti. World events, or public opinion, might move against a position that had once looked attractive, leaving you uncomfortably stranded. As with much in life, there is a clearly defined spectrum of risk and reward in taking decisions on alternative forms of sponsorship.We all know that the greatest prizes go to the brave, but we also know the brave have a tendency to come unstuck slightly more often than the rest of us.

In the interests of balance, let us conclude by returning to the central theme. There is a strong argument to make that alternative forms of sponsorship, reflecting real attitude, can more powerfully evoke the values of an intellectually-based service business than more conventional routes. If one of these values is ‘the conviction to put forward what we believe to be right’ then this might be exactly the right territory for a truly progressive service brand to explore.

It all depends on what you stand for.