Advantages of TV Sponsorship over TV Commercials

In 2008 UK television sponsorship was worth £190 million and shows no signs of slowing down. This is a quick post on the advantages of television sponsorship, using television spot commercials as a comparison when appropriate.                                                                          
Television sponsorship works by sponsoring a programme, channel or even a tv genre. For example;
Programme: TalkTalk sponsor X Facor
Channel: Blackberry sponsor Sky Atlantic
Strands of programming: Fosters sponsor original comedy on Channel 4 

Lets dive straight in.The first advantage of sponsorship, and arguably the key difference to tv spot advertising is that it offers brand association.

Brand Association

A brand is the identity of a specific product or service. TV programmes are themselves- brands. Viewers can describe a show how a consumer would describe a product. For example one could describe the show FRIENDS as “lighthearted”, “consistent” and “youthful”.  It is also possible we could use the same words to describe Mars Planets- the shows sponsors on E4.
This example demonstrates that a “shows prestige and popularity can impact on those brands associated with them" (Thinkbox). Ofcourse the association works best when the creative (the sponsorship ad) attempts to align itself with the shows values.

Emotion

So television sponsorship is a great tool to try and associate a brand with the values of a particular tv show/channel etc.  The reason for this is because sponsorship can be used as a tool to tap in to the emotions of your audience. Thinkbox research shows that fans of a show are more likely to have a deeper emotional relationship with a sponsoring brand than less dedicated viewers. According to the study, sponsorship has a greater impact on the emotional/implicit part of the mind than the rational/conscious mind. This then makes sponsorship more memorable and brands more famous. More importantly, studies shows sponsoring a fans favorite show  increases purchase intent.  According to Thinkbox research, intent to purchase can be up to 9% higher for ‘fans’ of a programme than for the normal viewer (the average increase across the sample was 4%).

Isolation

One possible problem for tv advertising is that most tv commercials are 30 seconds and are clustered with other advertisements. This means that marketers have a short amount of time to tell their story and make their brands stand out among the other commercials. If you have a limited budget and can only buy a couple of spots, there is a good chance that the message will get swallowed up by other advertisers or forgotten by the audience.  However this is less of a problem for tv sponsorship, because the sponsorship commercials or “bumpers” work by advertising before the show, in the centre break out of show, centre break in to show, and the end break. Research shows that these bumpers allow sponsorship messages to be received as an isolated message to a more receptive audience and are seen in a more positive light when compared to tv spots. This leads on to my next point, viewer opinion.

Viewer opinion

Viewer opinions and reactions fluctuate towards tv commercials.  For example I imagine the majority of audiences have very contrasting opinions to the story-telling  John lewis adverts, when compared to gocompare.com and that bloody jingle and fake moustache wearing idiot.

Anyway, research shows that sponsorship is very much an accepted part of the television landscape.  Overall, viewers appreciate sponsorship’s role as ‘break punctuation’ and have a more positive view of sponsorship than of spot advertising.  Spot commercials are viewed as a ‘harder sell’ whereas in many cases, sponsorship is seen as separated from the ad break. Research shows many viewers fail to distinguish it from the programme and felt it acted as a marker and set the tone for the coming programme.

Value for money

In addition to all this, Sponsorship can still be a relatively cheap way to start advertising on television or to boost and leverage TV presence. For example, to sponsor an entire series on satellite tv can cost as little as £5,000, this budget would severely restrain a tv spot campaign on satellite TV and in most cases it would not be enough to buy a single  30 second spot on ITV.

On a much Larger scale we can see that even a £20million sponsorship can be good value for money. TalkTalk sponsor X Factor, over 3 years for an estimated £20m (approximately £6.6million a year). This is a huge amount of money, however when comparing it to tv spot advertising it is still demonstrates good value. X Factor runs for approximately 16 weeks, with the live shows being aired on a Saturday and Sunday.  By my calculations, this gives TalkTalk an absolute minimum of 156 sponsorship bumpers. However Just one 30 second commercial in last years final would cost up to £250,000.The deal also includes sponsorship of the tour and rights to exclusive online clips (which gets a global audience and millions of hits on YouTube).  £6million……BARGAIN!

There are other uses of sponsorship such as using it to drive response, and launching a new product, etc- for more on that find another blog. The main advantage and difference to tv spot advertising  is the association, the emotional insight, value for money, and the recall.

Lets finish with a “recall” quiz,

Who sponsors…..

1) Britains got talent

2)The Simpsons (on Sky1)

3) Coronation Street

4) Take Me Out

5) Top Gear (on Dave)