Coors Light Taps Winter Sports Theme

Winter sports like skiing and snowboarding should get a predictable boost this year from the Vancouver games. With amateur enthusiasts taking to the slopes, are their ways to tap into the sporting spirit without writing a big sponsorship check? One time honored marketing tradition is to take out the official marks and simply tie into the official lingo as in this example highlighted by B...

Sponsorship And The Economy

I want to take a few minutes to address one of the questions that seems to keep coming up, since it is obviously on a lot of our minds. Sponsorship and the economy…how the poor economy has impacted sponsorship? The answer is some "good news ---- some less-than-great-news" insofar as the economy is concerned. The good news is that while the economists are pointing out that for the first ti...

Is Bigger Always Better in Sponsorship Sales?

Stacy Mitchell penned a great piece the other day entitled How the World's Biggest Corporations, From Starbucks to Wal-Mart to Barnes & Noble, Claim to Be 'Local.' Here's a short excerpt: 'HSBC, one of the biggest banks on the planet, has taken to calling itself "the world's local bank." Starbucks is un-branding at least three of its Seattle outlets, the first of which just reopened as "15...

M-B Lines Up London Fashion Week, Too

In keeping with Mercedes-Benz sponsorship of exclusive fashion experiences throughout the world, the automaker will be the official car of this year's London Fashion Week. As the official car of London Fashion Week, Mercedes-Benz will provide a fleet of low CO2 emission, BlueEFFICIENCY cars to provide transport for accredited journalists VIPs, designers and celebrities between the catwalk s...

Deal Flow 9-11-2009

Mercedes-Benz has agreed to be the official car of this year's London Fashion Week. The automaker is already a leading sponsor of many other fashion weeks throughout the world, including New York Fashion Week. Herbalife Ltd., a global nutrition and direct-selling company, today announced that it has completed an agreement with one of Spain`s leading La Liga football teams, Valencia CF, to ...

Sponsownership, the Virgin Way

True to the Richard Branson way, Virgin is one of a number of companies pioneering the idea of "sponsownership." In response to our previous post about the idea of "sponsownership," Stephen Rogan at Virgin Media UK offered up an interesting perspective on the Virgin Way: "I think this is an interesting topic. I know for a brand like Virgin it is very important that we are seen to have so...

Natural Evolution of Advertising Hits Golf

Editor's note: In last week's BrandCast, Doug Pirnie mentioned ProBagAds as one example of how sports marketing continues to find ways to evolve. Here's Michael's take on the new product. ProBagAds might be changing how player sponsorship and advertising for golfers work. SBJ reports the company has released a golf bag with a built-in H-D, weatherproof digital display that can show adverti...

2 Brand Icons, 1 Vinyl Banner, Lotsa Bad Press

Partnering with a global icon, ~$10M. 1 vinyl banner, $50. Bad press, priceless. I'll admit it, we were pretty excited to see what Blackberry and U2 would cook up when the two brands announced their partnership last April. At the time, we said the partnership was "clearly not about awareness - both the brand and the band already have leading global mindshare." Judging by some recent report...

Comeback Categories?

Not to be a debbie downer, but it's going to be a long time before we see the spending levels we once saw from categories like auto, finance, and airlines. Nevertheless, the August TURNKEY Sports Poll, which surveys senior-level sports executives, asked the question on everyone's mind: "Which of the following categories will bounce back, in terms of sponsorship spending, the fastest?" A...

PS Takes on the Measurement Agencies, Rd. 1

Ding ding ding... In a scathing post of measurement agencies entitled sponsorship measurement agencies fading into irrelevance, Power Sponsorship's Kim Skildum-Reid poses the question whether measurement agencies have lost their relevance in today's environment. Here's the crux of the argument she makes: Sponsors need to know what results they get. Exposure is a low-value mechanism that ...