A VERSATILE MARKETING PLATFORM

In 2008, £10.5 million was spent in sponsorship of races, teams and events during the Jumping calendar. The total, less than 1% beneath the previous year’s figure, endorses the industry view that sponsorship remains a growing marketing communications tool against other media purchase, and excellent value for money.

Add to that a figure of the order of £3 million in ancillary spend on rights fees, ranging from perimeter boards to print and online spend, and you have ample illustration of the commercial flow of revenue entering the sport.

It’s a truism of sponsorship that purchase of the rights covers only half the total expenditure to make the very best of the property. Whether this feeds directly to the racecourse or to other rights holders in the racing family depends on the sponsorship property. For example, a growing trend in recent years has been team sponsorship, aligning a brand or company behind some of the most proficient winning machines in the sport.

Schroders is now the power behind Alan King Racing, with over 150 horses running for the yard. Jewson is now in its third year of backing Jonjo O’Neill’s powerful Cotswold yard, and, hospitality provider Chris Coley Racing backs Nigel Twiston-Davies team at Naunton in Gloucestershire. Up and down the country, a wide range of companies, large and small, add their name to the runners from individual yards or owners as part of a cost-effective brand awareness and experiential marketing campaign. Imagine the excitement of escorting a key customer to a race meeting to join your team in the paddock before and after the race, and you can appreciate the “money can’t buy” flavour that sponsorship can offer.

Part of racing’s attraction as a sponsorship offering is its immense versatility. There’s no obligation to pitch in and sponsor the Grand National for starters. At each of the 42 Jumps courses around the UK, individual races may be purchased for sensible sums of money to provide a focus for the day’s hospitality, or to make a point to a local audience. Horses for courses, one might say.

Equally, there are plenty of premium events where lending your name to an event will reap real dividends in media value accrued from broadcasters, newspapers and from event spectators.

And there’s no reason sponsorship needs to be confined to consumer goods. Some of racing’s most enduring sponsorships are solely b2b promotions, like Smurfit Kappa’s association with the Champion Hurdle, Pertemps and its successful Hurdle Series, Byrne Group and the Cleeve Hurdle.

Racing at large offers access to a huge volume of the population at home and on the course. Its sponsorship offerings provide access to viable data capture exercises through newspaper partnerships, print and online solutions, perimeter signage, experiential sampling and marketing techniques, and simple brand awareness through TV, radio and online portals. Often, sponsorship can simply improve Search engine optimization, getting your brand at the head of Google rankings, and importantly, ahead of the opposition. And of course, its premium hospitality is a clear winner.

How to measure your sponsorship investment
Too many organizations still approach sponsorship in a fearful manner, afraid that it might be seen as anything other than an orthodox marketing communications strategy. The reality is that Jump racing, like any other marketing application needs to illustrate value and measurability.

In order to achieve success, some simple tips are helpful:

Clarify your key objectives
Be sure before you begin that you know what you hope to achieve, and communicate this to the rights holder and all those involved in the delivery of the activity.

What marketing applications are you using to deliver the objectives?
Racing offers a very broad range of marketing applications. In that respect, it’s a mature sports marketing offering. Perimeter boards and signage deliver brand impact to spectator and TV viewer; name mentions add presence where verbal mentions count double points for impact; print solutions offer measurable returns on product specific offers; and data capture can help acquire critical customer information.

Ask whether your sponsorship offers online communication channels.
Are there newspaper partnerships to help you? Can you work with other sponsors to broaden the reach of your proposition?

Are these provided within the sponsorship?
A general rule of thumb is that leveraging your sponsorship will double the cost of the rights fee. Logistics support is costly, particularly initially in production. However, look at multi-channel approaches. Can the same investment achieve more through data capture, media competitions and so on?

Don’t see this as a short-term solution
Sponsorship is largely about brand building, and with that, an affinity with your chosen market. To that end, it’s not generally a short-term solution, although there are always tactical reasons to embark upon this path. It takes time to change consumer opinion of your brand so consider the term you’re embarking upon, and extend it.

Communicate
Don’t forget to communicate the sponsorship internally as well as externally. Create a virtue of the activity by adding a page on your company web site, adding in benefits for your staff as well as customers. And communicate the success or failure of individual elements of the activity to the rights holder and to those helping you deliver it. Without their support, your activity is unlikely to fly however much you invest in it.

How are you measuring success?
Score your sponsorship by the different elements you have purchased. Naming rights to an event are important, but not if you’ve nothing left to exercise that ownership. How much business did you defend or bring in from the premium hospitality? How many data records did you achieve and how does their quality compare against other communication channels? Could you help drive footfall to the event and thereby increase brand impact? And can you evaluate the media value associated with owning an event?

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