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Branding

A corporate event or conference is a wonderful opportunity to promote your brand and brand identity. Many corporate events are, indeed, brand promotion events and many are very successful in their efforts to promote the brand’s identity, increase market share or raise awareness of the products associated with the brand. However, before engaging in the branding of any event it is necessary to ask how this activity will add value to the brand. Recall alone does not often justify the costs associated with branding an event.

Your Brand

Many companies use hoardings and logo placement on materials such as folders and paper notes to announce their association with an event. It is certainly important to ensure that the event is clearly marked and labelled as belonging to the company hosting the event and their sponsors. However, one of the questions that must be asked is whether such signage and logo placement is an effective and cost efficient method of promoting the brand. It is interesting to look at the corporate branding undertaken by some of the leading brands in the world when considering the effectiveness of signage sponsorship. In the United States corporate sponsorship of stadiums is quite common. Sponsors pay from $5 million to $10 million a year to rename sports arenas in their own brand name. It seems like a great idea in that every time a game played in their chosen stadium is discussed their name is mentioned and they ensure that their name and logo are plastered everywhere inside the venue. Thus, in the US, football fans in Boston watch the Patriots play in Gillette Stadium, and the Houston Astros play ball in Minute Maid Park, there is a McAfee Coliseum, a HP Pavilion and a Tropicana Field. The trend is also evident in the UK;

Walker’s Crisps sponsor Leicester City FC stadium and the newly branded Emirates Stadium opened its doors to fans of home team Arsenal in July 2006. Studies in the United States show that an overwhelming percentage of sampled individuals could name a branded stadium, however there does not appear to be a direct correlation between brand name usage, brand recognition, and increased sales of the associated products. Where such deals were effective they were undertaken as part of the whole brand communication process. The goal of venue or event sponsorship is to link the brand message with the event or venue to the degree that the two become inextricably linked and always associated with one another. For this to be useful the sponsoring brand and the event or venue must compliment one another. Essentially, your brands must flatter each other such that you are happy to have the names linked, possibly for a lot longer than the period of your sponsorship. Such deals are grand examples of sponsorship and of how non-traditional marketing can be applied, however anyone looking to brand or sponsor an event could learn a lot from noting that active sponsorship often works better than passive promotion, such as logo placements or indeed, entire venue sponsorship. What’s in a name? Not much, if it is not actively connected with the attributes of the product that it represents. Thus, while you might place your company logo in prominent positions around an event, getting attendees to engage with your product and to think about the unique selling points that distinguish it from others is far more effective. Don’t just promote the name; tell guests something about your brand by the way that you promote it. Better still, get them to use your products, show them what you do, interest and excite them and make sure that they enjoy themselves while doing it.

And Theirs...

2006 marked the 250th anniversary of the birth of Mozart and corporations lined up to sponsor events, some of which had small but exclusive audiences in attendance. The worth of the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart brand is estimated to be in the region of €5.04 million. Credit Suisse sponsored the Salzburg Festival, which during this anniversary year celebrated Mozart and his work. Credit Suisse often sponsors artistic and cultural events; one presumes in the hope that such sponsorship communicates that it is an innovative organisation, yet one that has a rich heritage and an appreciation for culture. Accenture will communicate a similar message with its sponsorship of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, as Ulster Bank will when it supports the visit by London Philharmonic Orchestra to the same venue in April. When attempting to attract sponsors to your event it is important to offer to marketers a distinct advantage over competitors. Events associated with Mozart did just this by offering sponsors the opportunity to be associated with an already established, high-end brand. Events that involve a large number of guests or delegates may be of interest to companies that are keen to increase awareness of their brand, however in many cases, smaller, exclusive events are extremely interesting to established brands, who are keen to communicate with a particular socio-economic group or cultural tribe. Conferences offer sponsors a great opportunity to target a particular audience. The great advantage to the sponsor of becoming involved with a conference or event is that you, the organiser can offer them substantial and useful information about the group that they will have the opportunity to target. Annual events are a marketers dream, as post event analysis from previous years will inform any marketing campaign that will be undertaken. Thus, marketers can target the campaign to the particular group and communicate with them in an appropriate manner. Ensure however, that the sponsor’s brand does not become more prominent than your own and that the two brands compliment each other in a manner that is beneficial to your own image. Branding is, in essence, part of the emotional dialogue that goes on between companies, their staff and their customers. While logic informs some purchasing decisions, the belief that a brand stands for something in particular or can convey upon the consumer some form of status or membership of a group is a very powerful selling point. A conference can be used to promote your name but it is far more worthwhile to use such events to convey the essence of your brand, the lifestyle that it represents or the peace of mind that it might offer.