Don't mention the sponsor
28/04/2010 3:04:00 p.m.
I AM currently grappling with the small matter of a provincial sports teams’ $450,000 budget being put at risk through a silly policy, which directly affects my principles.
My dear wife, bless her, put up with my last matter of principle (walking away from a well-paid gig) while she was heavily pregnant with the Human Wrecking Ball. So when I mention principle now, she rolls herself into a ball and rocks backwards and forwards underneath the duvet.
I’m stuck with a problem that faces a lot of sports team that don’t have enormous marketing teams (the team in question has 1.5 staffers).
Of the $450,000 budget, a certain amount comes from a naming rights sponsor. Having been a newspaper hack in the past (albeit with a lot more sex appeal to my ageing – very ageing female sub-editors), I was always able to sneak a sponsor’s name in at least once in a story with a lift of the eyebrows or a quick “My, that new foundation makes you look not a day over 40”.
Now, it appears, a certain major newspaper conglomerate (their name starts with F) has an editorial policy of not naming sponsors – even going to the point of cutting sponsor’s names out of carefully crafted logos.
As a sports marketing chap, I have many McGyver-like tools in my capacious toolkit to fix this. But here’s where the principle comes in.
This sport will do a search and discover that most netball teams in the Great Duty Free Trans Tasman competition have their sponsor mentioned often by the conglomerate beginning with F’s publications.
Is it equal opportunity in action? Or is it a fear from the conglomerate that a mobile phone company or hotel chain might pull their advertising?
While this is going on, the other sport’s naming rights sponsor is making rumbling sounds – not in the direction of the media, but towards the one and a half roosters running a successful show on the smell of an oily rag.
It seems to be an odd policy for a business based around advertising revenue. Surely keeping the advertisers/sponsors sweet would lead them to be more inclined to running more lucrative advertising.
Instead, the approach taken is that “who else are they going to advertise with?” which illustrates perfectly the reason why the mass media struggles with the new media age.
There are so many marketing channels now – from direct to consumer, to social media and everything else – that mass media don’t ‘get’ the implications and the opportunities they are missing out on.
It’s not even as if mentioning sports teams sponsors creates an uncomfortable commercial issue for them. Trying to fathom how one mention of the “BNZ Super 14” would bring the media world crashing down is difficult. They could even link the mention to the BNZ website and charge BNZ for the privilege.
Yet the smaller sporting organizations, who rely on the goodwill of sponsors, are being put in a bind. The sponsor wants its name mentioned in the newspaper articles, but the newspaper refuses to do it.
One could argue the sponsors are being unreasonable when there is this odd editorial policy. But they see the inconsistency when “Vodafone Warriors” are mentioned more than several times, but they can’t get one mention.
Would it hurt that much? After all, they don’t seem to mind running the “Kelt Capital Stakes” or the “Stella Artois Auckland Cup” in the racing pages.
The inconsistency can be fixed easily to make everyone happy. After all, it’s easier to bend a policy than make it a matter of principle.
My dear wife, bless her, put up with my last matter of principle (walking away from a well-paid gig) while she was heavily pregnant with the Human Wrecking Ball. So when I mention principle now, she rolls herself into a ball and rocks backwards and forwards underneath the duvet.
I’m stuck with a problem that faces a lot of sports team that don’t have enormous marketing teams (the team in question has 1.5 staffers).
Of the $450,000 budget, a certain amount comes from a naming rights sponsor. Having been a newspaper hack in the past (albeit with a lot more sex appeal to my ageing – very ageing female sub-editors), I was always able to sneak a sponsor’s name in at least once in a story with a lift of the eyebrows or a quick “My, that new foundation makes you look not a day over 40”.
Now, it appears, a certain major newspaper conglomerate (their name starts with F) has an editorial policy of not naming sponsors – even going to the point of cutting sponsor’s names out of carefully crafted logos.
As a sports marketing chap, I have many McGyver-like tools in my capacious toolkit to fix this. But here’s where the principle comes in.
This sport will do a search and discover that most netball teams in the Great Duty Free Trans Tasman competition have their sponsor mentioned often by the conglomerate beginning with F’s publications.
Is it equal opportunity in action? Or is it a fear from the conglomerate that a mobile phone company or hotel chain might pull their advertising?
While this is going on, the other sport’s naming rights sponsor is making rumbling sounds – not in the direction of the media, but towards the one and a half roosters running a successful show on the smell of an oily rag.
It seems to be an odd policy for a business based around advertising revenue. Surely keeping the advertisers/sponsors sweet would lead them to be more inclined to running more lucrative advertising.
Instead, the approach taken is that “who else are they going to advertise with?” which illustrates perfectly the reason why the mass media struggles with the new media age.
There are so many marketing channels now – from direct to consumer, to social media and everything else – that mass media don’t ‘get’ the implications and the opportunities they are missing out on.
It’s not even as if mentioning sports teams sponsors creates an uncomfortable commercial issue for them. Trying to fathom how one mention of the “BNZ Super 14” would bring the media world crashing down is difficult. They could even link the mention to the BNZ website and charge BNZ for the privilege.
Yet the smaller sporting organizations, who rely on the goodwill of sponsors, are being put in a bind. The sponsor wants its name mentioned in the newspaper articles, but the newspaper refuses to do it.
One could argue the sponsors are being unreasonable when there is this odd editorial policy. But they see the inconsistency when “Vodafone Warriors” are mentioned more than several times, but they can’t get one mention.
Would it hurt that much? After all, they don’t seem to mind running the “Kelt Capital Stakes” or the “Stella Artois Auckland Cup” in the racing pages.
The inconsistency can be fixed easily to make everyone happy. After all, it’s easier to bend a policy than make it a matter of principle.
