Sports sponsorship is perceived as important in developing relationships with key clients. However, few companies set relationship marketing objectives when sponsoring sports. This paper aims to examine whether sports sponsors are pursuing the right objectives. It concludes that a deeper understanding of the sponsor's relationship marketing objectives could heighten the sponsor's success, thereby reinforcing and sustaining their own relationship with the sponsoring organisation.

This paper examines industry responses in Australasia and Europe to the growing practice of ambush marketing, to establish whether the measures that have been put in place to deter the practice have indeed prevented the 'ambush' effect, whereby audiences associate non-sponsoring organisations with particular sporting events. Although some of these measures may be more effective than others in blocking ambush attempts, they also come with potentially negative consequences for event sponsors.

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PurposeThis paper aims to gain an understanding of the nature and extent of the practice of “public relations” in history.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses an analysis of popular narratives (in particular rumour, legend and myth) to inform a detailed case study of Glastonbury abbey in the medieval period.FindingsGlastonbury Abbey worked in partnership with the Crown to develop a detailed promotional campaign based on powerful narratives. As a consequence it was able to grow to become one of the wealthiest communities in the country. The Crown, meanwhile, consolidated its position by being able to engender a whole national “brand” around the mythical corpus.Research limitations/implicationsMethodologically, using folklore and other popular narrative material is useful as to an extent it is outside official control, but also provides information about the story tellers and the audiences.Originality/valueThe research builds on Watson's recent work on St Swithun and Winchester, taking the ideas forward several hundred years (and finding many of the same patterns). It finds new developments in terms of co‐branding and brand revivals.

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