Sponsorship activation is basically a marketing terminology which is used to indicate a corporate sponsor’s intention to independently advertise and promote its sponsorship regarding the marketing opportunities. All costs and expenses that are associated with this promotion are absorbed by the business and are above and beyond the amount of funds allocated to the sponsorship itself. The business takes on fully responsibility of creating awareness about the brand, its activation, in the public eye.
Businesses pursue sponsorship opportunities to allow their corporate name, services and products to reap the benefits that are affiliated with a popular event, individual, cause or product. The theory is that public’s goodwill and their desire to emulate the habits of famous celebrities will lead to increased sales. Even though the perception is usually that the business wants to offer its support, in reality the expectation is that the sponsorship investment will certainly generate tangible advantages that can be easily measured.
The only way sponsorship activation could benefit a business’s bottom line is if people are aware of it. Public awareness is vital in this regard, but is generally handled by the organizers of the sponsored prospect. Most of the sponsorship contracts will comprise of a clause that particularly requires the organizers of the sponsorship prospect to use every means at their disposal to fully the business’s involvement. Lack of inappropriate promotion can be grounds for the business to pull all its support and will obviously affect renewal if the prospect reoccurs on an annual basis.
Some of the sponsorship prospects have special value to the business objectives and goals. The company might need to shore up its goodwill in a certain community or simply combat negative publicity in regards to its products or services. In such scenarios, the company might take charge of the sponsorship activation and use other additional resources to ensure that the affiliation gets the widest possible exposure. The ROI is proactively managed on both sides of the relationship, relieving some of the burden from the organizers of the sponsorship prospect.
Sponsorships basically are negotiated contracts regarding an exchange of value. Sponsorship activation can be a part of this negotiation if the negotiator is savvy regarding their inner workings of a corporate budget. For large corporations, the funds used for sponsorship activations usually come out from the advertising budget, which is a different budget category than sponsorship.