How Sponsorship Topples Over Advertising.

There isn’t a great issue over which fairs better between sponsorship and advertising. Both are marketing tools that strategically apply to different situation. There are however usual times when a business is faced with choosing between both tools. These times usually are a point of exposure as to which tool can give more and help increase a brand’s visibility. This arena is where sponsorship takes over.

What sponsorship accomplishes better than advertising is in the establishment of qualitative attributes. These attributes include brand image towards consumers, generating awareness, and consumer’s choice of such brand. On these attributes, sponsorship has more lead on enhancing them, which advertising falls short of.

Sponsorship’s winning features

With sponsorship, as compared to advertising, the following feature it builds includes the following:

• credibility – refers to the integrity that sponsorship builds

• exclusivity – the form of differentiation that sets clients into high status

• image enhancement

• relevance to lifestyle

• prestige that it offers

There are other points that make sponsorship a winner; and these are also quantitative benefits that are not available through advertising. The first of which is having a live audience for product and brand circulation. Sponsorship provides opportunities for on-site sales and sampling, customer feedback, surveying, sales-force interaction and product testing – all of which involve the participation of an audience. Through live product presentations, the exposure is greater and the promotion of brand and product names is at a rapid pace.

When we compare sponsorship and advertising, one mode to look into is how interaction is done. With advertising, interaction is one-way and generally a monologue. On the other hand, sponsorship is more like a dialogue where the opportunity of a company to have live exchange with its target customers is highly practiced.

As with interaction, product sampling is another plus to sponsorship. Events that are sponsored allow people to have on site trials on products. This way, awareness of a certain brand name or service is heightened. Examples on-site trials include food sampling, test driving, official clothes worn in the event, etc.

With sponsorship, an organization’s name becomes associated into a sponsored event’s actions unlike that of advertising. This means that sponsorship is able to surpass the medium of media and place itself in the environment where everyone can see it, For example, when sponsorship is incorporated in movies; the audience has no escape in seeing the brand or logo being promoted because it is part of the film. They can’t just eliminate a scene like changing a channel on TV; they have to sit through the film and take in everything that comes with it.

Lastly, sponsorship provides entertainment to its client. How? This is done through the events that are sponsored. When the word ‘event’ comes to mind, it is always a happening that does not come everyday. It is a break from the everyday routine that clients have. With advertising, nothing is disrupted from normal life. Everyone is accustomed to see bill boards, ad placements and commercials.

With sponsored events, the setting is different and the aim is to provide an avenue for people to interact with the business through a social activity. Events also make great places to have informal sales and networking; and with the chosen venue, which is most often a hospitable one, the event becomes desirable and unique to lounge in.