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AdMedia,  Jun 1, 2007  by Murray Campbell

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As some sort of interim reconciliation appears to be reached between the billboard industry and Auckland City Council, it is worth reflecting on the importance of airports as a platform for billboard advertising. Travellers to and from airports in Sydney, Kuala Lumpur, Hanoi or Bangkok are left in no doubt who to talk with, fly with or drive with.

Auckland International Airport is not much different in that regard, but with one remarkable exception. As you drive out of the airport and come to the first major intersection, you will see a large billboard from Kristin School featuring half a dozen images of some very positive, energised looking students - the message of this billboard is that you will probably never meet these people, but Cambridge, Oxford and Harvard will.

While we don't need any more more reasons to accelerate the brain drain, that particular billboard is remarkable, both for the power of its message, and its media placement - more than 80km away from the target school, but obviously very much connecting with the target market.

In its simplest form, sponsorship occupies similar territory to billboards along the continuum of advertising. But instead of brand logos being fixed in one point, typically they are fastened to someone or something popular, loud and fast.

And while advertising in general is a mixture of dark art and inexact science, the rationale for many sponsorship programmes makes one extremely interesting cocktail of art and science. The effectiveness of sponsorship programmes will come under increased scrutiny over the next three to four months as the Challengers Cup then slips into the America's Cup proper and of course, as the Rugby World Cup starts and climaxes in France later this year.

Independent analysis of the internal investment of sponsorship programmes undertaken by institutes such as the Chicago School of Business or advertising agencies themselves such as DDB in Chicago, often report very low levels of connection between an event and a sponsor, particularly in very crowded multi-facet events such as the Olympics or a World Cup.

But to be fair, a lot of sponsorship programmes are not explicitly designed to create brand awareness. On many occasions, the core purposes of the sponsorship programme are the opportunities of corporate hospitality and key account business development. So much of the final impact of a sponsorship programme cannot be directly assessed through consumer-based market research.

And while we can all point to some very odd combinations between brand and sponsorship (my favourite is Sleepyhead's sponsorship of an offshore power-boat team), there are equally some very powerful and enduring sponsorship combinations.

Vodafone's long term sponsorship of Ferrari and Michael Schumacher was the perfect vehicle to create brand awareness and passion in their growth markets of Germany and Italy in the early 2000s. Locally, McDonald's long-term commitment to children's sports and child road safety throughout NZ schools earned it a level of goodwill and brand commitment that was very enduring.

Sometimes the most powerful sponsorship programmes are those which juxtapose the brand with an event or a cause that at first glance seems disparate from the established values and behaviours of the company.

But, because of this unexpected partnership some sponsorship programmes can draw the attention and develop positive preferences, not only among the current customer base, but of a wider audience who have been attracted by this new innovative sponsorship arrangement.

Perhaps the most enduring example of that was Mobil Oil's sponsorship of Masterpiece Theatre in the US. Locally the partnership between Bayleys Realty Group, and a training programme for 100 Seeing Eye dogs for the blind is an example of opposites combining very attractively.

Murray Campbell (balmain@xtra.co.nz) is a TNS Global regional director for Asia-Pacific & Latin America.

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