Evaluating Social Marketing Elements in Sponsorship

Abstract

Organizations of all types increasingly recognize the importance of sponsorship as a source of revenue and as a means to achieve their objectives. This trend is driving the broader adoption of sponsorship, which has resulted in its use to pursue objectives other than those related to promotion, including those related to behavior change and, thus, social marketing. Concurrently, sponsors and sponsees are demanding the development of legitimate, reliable, and meaningful methods for the evaluation of sponsorship as investment in the area increases. For organizations whose objectives include behavior change and, thus seek to market behaviors (i.e., social marketers) this results in a need to be able to evaluate the social marketing elements of their sponsorships, distinct from other objectives that may be sought. The current research conceptualizes social marketing in sponsorship and then develops hypothetical examples for each resulting scenario to demonstrate how social marketing elements in sponsorship should be evaluated. APPLICATIONS 2

Understanding the decision‐making processes for arts sponsorship

“…Corporate giving is suggested to serve these dual commercial and societal purposes, with related decisions a result of a combination of both ‘economic and moral reasons’ (Valor, , p. 25); motivations may be related to strategic, altruistic, political and personal goals (Campbell et al ., ). This resonates with findings in the social marketing sponsorship area, where sponsoring companies are found to often share in the objectives of the sponsored company (O'Reilly and Madill, ; Madill and O'Reilly, ). This again supports more of a blurred line between sponsorship and corporate philanthropy.…”

Investigating social marketing sponsorships: Terminology, stakeholders, and objectives

“…While, very little research either defines or describes social marketing sponsorships, a number of papers focus on evaluating social marketing sponsorships and in so doing briefly discuss what is meant by social marketing sponsorships (Giles -Corti et al, 2001;Holman et al, 1996;Jalleh et al, 2002;O'Reilly and Madill, 2007). Holman et al (1996) introduce health promotion projects funded by Healthaway -the Western Australian Health Promotion Foundation, set up to "promote health messages via the sponsorship of sport, arts and racing events ('sponsorship projects')."…”

“…With the exception of several papers reporting on the evaluation of social marketing sponsorships (e.g. Giles -Corti et al, 2001;Holman et al, 1996;Jalleh et al, 2002;O'Reilly and Madill, 2007), the authors could find little existing empirical research aimed at understanding social marketing sponsorships -they remain significantly under researched (Lefebvre, 2006). Sponsorship theory is in early stages of development, but provides a basic foundation for understanding social marketing sponsorships.…”

Measuring Sponsorship Performance: Challenge and Direction

“…Recent forecasts suggest a modest recovery in global sponsorship expenditure. However, as sponsorship rights holders increasingly “sweat their assets” in pursuit of greater revenue flows, greater numbers of sponsors are being drawn into the sponsorship arena which in turn leads to greater proliferation in the sector (Dundas, ; O'Reilly & Madill, ).…”