Event partnerships; an emerging pillar to your marketing strategy

How your brand can benefit from a strategic partnership with an established activity, event or program.

Setting the Scene

Many of you who work in commercial marketing know that September and October are set aside to evaluate and analyse the current year’s marketing outputs, the core challenges and most importantly, to agree the plan (and budget) for 2019.

The role of marketing is evolving rapidly, content has to convey purpose and the available channels are moving faster than Usain Bolt on a Sunday morning walk with varying degrees of meaningful measurability. So, to cut through the noise, live experience offers a more immersive, less overt and crucially brand-building opportunity many have left untapped.

The role of the event and how to maximise its ability to reach audiences in unique ways

Using events to drive commercial acquisition is nothing new. From the traditional sponsorship opportunities to pop ups, shopping mall activation's, branded experience (Secret Cinema, Tough Mudder, The Colour Run). It seems like lots of choice.

The benefits

Brand experience and physical interactions persuade your hard to reach audiences to become engaged with your brand by capturing the prospect. The behavioural science behind these associations takes some perfecting but done right. The rewards and brand recall (in an age of short-term metrics) can’t be ignored.

The role that partnerships play in the event marketing.

You know your customer and their needs, you still need an understanding of which mass participation event would fit your brand and the products/services you offer. There of course is no point partnering with an event that doesn’t fit the audience(s).

A good partnership agency understands the whole marketplace, sports (or e-sports) sponsorship vs a more tactical activation. All-out logo everywhere or a quiet whispered word. And, most importantly how to tessellate this with budget, timing and value.

Here at Ingenuity we endeavour to find the little utilised and the under-valued, establish the platform and take it to an audience in a less one-size-fits-all way.

Once you have identified the right platform and have an agreement in place, the next stage is to create an effective campaign and create an exciting and intriguing physical experience that the consumer will recall. The campaign should develop a moment that entices the consumer to engage and share, allowing you to tempt the consumer to share with their own audiences.

Here’s our point of difference, at this stage we can assist by pointing you in the direction of the right creative house or activation agency, based on the nature of the campaign and our knowledge of the agency landscape. Or if you can only tie it up in house. We leave it over to you with as much of our consultancy as you may need.

 Who is doing this effectively?

Two brands that are seamlessly benefiting from such partnerships are BrewDog and Soap & Glory.

BrewDog’s partnering for sponsorship and benefits scheme of Tough Mudder, allows for the beer brands to engage and reward their customers for their efforts at the finish line, something I know they will love! I can image this is just what the doctor ordered after such an event!!

Soap & Glory Becomes Exclusive Beauty Sponsor for Tough Mudder 2018 – Again a deal which starts next month across Northern America, allows the cosmetic brand unique access to audiences that sit outside of their current market, and allows alternative platform to target and engage female audiences post the completion of the event. Something different to the normal shopping centre experiential marketing historically in the marketing calendar….

As for next year, 2019 is expected to be a marquee year for our clients Thorpe Park, with the attraction business soon to be offering a unique platform to brands to create on-park experiences to the typical millennial audience that attend every year. If you’d like to hear more, please drop me a DM on this and I can share more…

Finding the right partner; Partnerships are the key: Ingenuity London

Having extensive experience in helping a number of brands to develop an effective partnership offering to market, there may be some interesting people we could introduce you to. (To see more, please checkout our new website here).

Please drop me a line at Chris.Wilson@ingenuitylondon to discuss!