TV sponsorship has evolved considerably over the last ten years or so, and is now recognised as a powerful option for marketers.

It is a highly effective method for clients to communicate their message by association and alliance to a specific programme or collection of programmes. Brands benefit from the perceived values that the programme delivers and can inherit these through a successful partnership.

More than anything though, good sponsorship can provide effective cut-through and targeted communication to specific viewing audiences.

Here are some questions you may wish to ask yourself if you are considering this way of using TV, in the form a guide.

Overview
Many TV programmes are themselves powerful brands. Their prestige and popularity can impact on those brands associated with them. With the sponsor’s credits running directly ahead of the programme, optimal viewer attention is guaranteed.

If the creative idea for the credits is engaging and relevant to them, viewers of all ages welcome sponsors as supporters of their favourite TV programmes. Many have said that if a programme is sponsored, it must be good!

Sponsorship can deliver a consistency of audience, time of day and environment that is expensive to replicate through the traditional media buy.

What do you want to achieve and what to sponsor?
What you choose to sponsor depends on your priorities, target audience, and of course your budget.

Your objectives dictate the programming to choose and how to best leverage the association. These are the crucial questions to ask yourself:

• Do you want to make a new product famous fast? 
• Do you want to reposition or de-seasonalise your product?
• Do you want to take the high ground in a competitive market?
• Do you have a variety of products or variants to display over time that do not have a TV advertising budget?
• Or do you want to change perceptions of your brand?

Stella’s sponsorship of Films on Four enabled them to attain standout and cut-through in a highly cluttered and competitive bottled beer market. They owned the film genre and occupied the territory visited by their target audience: a great brand-building sponsorship.
Aside from your marketing aims, also consider timing and risk. TV programmes have a lifecycle. Some burn brightly for short periods of time, others display a more classic curve of growth, maturity and decline over a longer period (like many American comedy series). And some, of course, simply run and run.

The trade-off is between being new and exciting vs established with a more guaranteed return. It is true that fortune can favour the brave, as the first sponsors of Big Brother and Popstars discovered, but some options will be more of a known quantity than others.
All of these factors, together with the expertise to be found at your Agencies and Media Owners, will determine the best option for you. 

The Question of Fit
Some sponsors are looking to stand out quickly, and deliver a boost to their advertising during a key sales period. Some need to launch a product and arrive on the market with a bang. Either way, sponsorship can mean a reappraisal of the brand. The most important thing in the brief is to decide where your brand is now and where you want to take it.

For example: Bailey’s used their sponsorship of Sex and the City to totally reposition their brand and move it from a seasonal drink to one throughout the year. It’s a classic sponsorship triangle – with the pull of the programme moving the perceptions of the brand, and doing so very successfully both in terms of reappraisal and sales.

Many of the most successful sponsorships have started off feeling a little uncomfortable, but ended with the audience perceiving a perfect fit as the “pull” of the programme moves people’s views of the brand to precisely where you want it to be.

Creative Work On Screen
The most crucial area to get right is on-screen credits. These are how the audience will judge the brand. They should engage the audience while bringing out a common value between product and programme, which gains credibility in the territory you want to occupy. It’s vital to make sure that the on screen work has enough time and investment to produce something you can be proud of. It should never be left until the last minute or unplanned within the budget.

Off screen
There are many off-screen rights options available for promoting your product to different sections of the audience. No two sponsorship plans are the same in design, even when a programme has been sponsored previously. It all depends on who you need to talk to and your market territory.

A product in the FMCG market may use licensed promotions at the point of sale. One in the Computer Games market may favour a mobile telephone solution; in the Travel sector an online solution, in the Music industry a live event - and some may require a mix.

Measurement
Research Specialists and Media Owners provide bespoke solutions to each client. Many also have longer term tracking studies available. The basic challenge for any sponsorship is to isolate the sponsorship effect as far as possible from other activity that may be running in parallel. So we often test differences in attitude, awareness and likelihood to purchase among those who have seen the sponsorship (i.e viewers to the programming) vs those who haven’t. This requires pre and post research and a mixture of qualitative and quantative testing. Because you need to prove your money has been well spent, research planning can’t be an afterthought. Your objectives need to be clear and realistic from the outset.