How Sponsorships Become Great Marketing Investments

Unlock the secrets of getting engagement instead of just brand awareness from sponsorships with our guest Richard Levy - a CMO with 20 years of global experience. Imagine transforming a boring sponsorship into an unforgettable event experience.  This episode proves that the magic lies in going beyond mere brand visibility and engaging with people in meaningful ways.

Beyond community engagement, Richard shares his insights on speaking the language of financial metrics in the boardroom, an essential skill for marketers aiming to demonstrate real ROI. He stresses that using clear financial language rather than marketing jargon is key to gaining budget support from decision-makers. Richard's extensive experience provides a beacon for those looking to bridge the gap between marketing creativity and financial accountability. Don't miss this chance to learn from Richard's pioneering approach to sponsorship activation and his strategies for financial communication that can transform marketing efforts into measurable success.

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Transcript

Eric Eden 0:01

Today we have an awesome topic it's how marketers can make sponsorships work and we have the perfect guest to help us talk through that. Richard, welcome to the show.

Richard Levy 0:12

Thanks so much, Eric. What a pleasure to be here.

Eric Eden 0:16

So why don't we start off by you just sharing a minute or two a little bit about who you are and what you do? Sure.

Richard Levy 0:24

So I've been in marketing for over 20 years now, but I've worked for the biggest GE Capital probably is the most famous one in the US and I've worked for really small companies as well. So I've worked in the UK and Australia, in North America as well. So I've got some global experience. And then I decided at the beginning of this year to do a sort of fractional CMO role and see how that goes, and I've got four clients at the moment it's just me. So that's quite a lot for me, ranging from a variety of different industries actually, from real estate to payments, to employee benefits, to a real startup. And then I also teach once a month at Cambridge and I teach marketing. So marketing is really, eric. It's fair to say what I do.

Eric Eden 1:14

Awesome. Lots of people giving it a go these days with the fractional chief marketing officer route. Seems like a lot of companies are really embracing that model. It makes a lot of sense out. It seems like a lot of companies are really embracing that model. It makes a lot of sense.

Richard Levy 1:33

So why don't we start off by you sharing a story about some of the marketing that you've done recently with you and your clients that you're the most proud of, when I worked at a very famous money transfer company and we sponsored probably not that familiar for your listeners, but bear with me, we sponsored the international cricket council. So cricket is, I don't know, the european equivalent of baseball. Let me put it like that. It's the nearest comparison and the story you'll be pleased to know is not about cricket very much, but it's about that. We sponsored it. And when you get a sponsorship like that, you get the usual rights, like you get your name on the on a pitch, on the grass and you're also on these sort of electronic led billboards that go around. You get your name all over that and you know you're in the program and all this kind of stuff. And I was really thinking that it actually reminded I went to a cricket match with my wife I think she was my fiance at the time. But now my wife and I said to her look at these billboards. And she said you know, I could be here 10 years watching this and I would never have noticed one advertisement, one billboard. And it shows the life, eric, outside of being a marketeer, when you're looking at all this stuff all the time, is that normal people don't look at this stuff right, so it's it's a really interesting field. How can you make a sponsorship pay or how do we do it?

Richard Levy 2:51

And what we did is we set up an activation where we went to all the schools in the uk. There's thousands of schools in the uk and we said, if you tell us why, we'll get a famous ex-england cricketer to come and visit your school for an hour and you can do whatever you want with him, as in he could teach kids how to play cricket, or he could give a lecture at your assembly, or he could open a building for you, or he could do a Q&A. Whatever you want, he's yours for an hour. And you know sport here football or soccer, soccer, as you guys would call it, is the number one sport, cricket's number two, and the idea of of someone going into a school and spending an hour is an absolute dream for many of these cricket obsessed schools that we have. And the purpose behind this, eric, was that this isn't just sponsoring and putting your name on a billboard, but this is actually going into communities and saying this is what we're doing and this is the chance for your, for your kids, to win, and that then creates a very positive association between the company us and the asset which is the cricket, and that, for me, is far, far, far more impactful than actually just putting your name on a billboard and thinking, well, if I put a name up there, people will come because this is doing things in the community that people benefit from. So we got thousands of schools applying and that already is getting your name out there in a very positive, associated way, and I'll move on at the end of why that's important.

Richard Levy 4:23

And then we sort of chose four schools, schools, one, and we literally spent a day driving from one school to another school and you know, each school, let's say, has 800 kids in it, but times that by four is 3200. And all these kids are going to go home to their parents and say guess who I saw today? Guess who I spoke to today? Guess who taught me cricket? Guess who did a q, a? Guess who came to our assembly and they named the really famous cricket stuff. And we have parents turning up because parents wanted to see him.

Richard Levy 4:49

So you're probably reaching already at 5 000 people, engaged people who you can then talk to and say this is why we're sponsoring it. We're sponsoring this event, not to sort of just put our name out there but to give something back to community. But when you say that you absolutely have to do it, and so we ran this cricket for schools, as we called it for schools one, and they get to meet the hero and then we gave them sort of tickets to the game, right, this is beyond the expectations for these kids. Now, my point about this is that we've all done sponsorships, but very few of us pay as much attention to the activation of the sponsorship as to the actual putting your name out there. And for me, if you don't activate it in a community way that gets people talking and interested and gives them an experience it's all about the experience Then it's very difficult to make sponsorship pay. And let me tell you the results of that, because there's two measurements that marketers use and I teach this when I'm at Cambridge, eric.

Richard Levy 5:48

One is people go on about brand awareness. How many people have heard of my brand? And we sort of live and die by this holy grail of it's all about brand awareness. And I'm going to be a bit contrarian and say it's not. It's about brand salience and brand that there is a difference. The brand salience is do, do I come to mind when someone's making a purchasing decision? So let me give you an example of how that works in reality.

Richard Levy 6:10

Everyone's probably heard of british airways, right? They famous british airline. And if you said to 100 people in the UK name an airline you know, I would have thought about 95% to 98% would say British Airways. So their brand awareness is probably in the high 90s. And then you say, okay, when it comes to booking a holiday for luxury, who do you think of? When it comes to booking a holiday that's good value for money, who do you think of? When you're booking a holiday and you want to get there and you want to be reliably on time with your luggage, who do you think of? Very, very few people say british airways, right? So the fact they're really well known is fine, but if people don't think of you when they're about to make a purchase, it's a little bit irrelevant. Like we've all heard of gucci and yet very few of us will ever use it in a buying situation, who do you think of to buy your wife a handbag? Honestly, I'm not going to say Gucci. Maybe in a few years, when I've made my millions, I'll say Gucci. But you get my point.

Richard Levy 7:05

It's about brand salience, it's not about brand awareness. And the good thing is brand awareness matrix don't move very often. Brand salience do, salience do, and so consequently, after that our brand say, our awareness stayed pretty much the same. We had about 94 awareness in the uk amongst our target market, but our brand salience goes from about 20 to about 58. So immediately look at the difference you're making. So now you ask the question have you heard of us? Yes, but importantly, when you're deciding who to use, our name is now coming up 60% of the time where it was 20% of the time. So really think, when you do sponsorship on its own it's not going to be enough. You've got to get that salience out there. And get the salience by going into communities and making that asset work for you in a real, authentic manner.

Eric Eden 7:56

That's fantastic. I think the idea of brand awareness versus engagement, which is creating an experience, like you mentioned, is huge, which leads to not just brand awareness, but I like the metric better of the brand salience. That's awesome and I think for growth companies, particularly those that are venture capital or private equity backed, every time you say the word brand awareness, the private equity investor slashes your marketing budget by 5% 100%.

Richard Levy 8:34

You've got it, eric. You've got it right, but we could talk. Maybe this is for the follow-up. The sequel episode is that us marketeers talk to people like the CFO and the CEO in marketing terms Brand awareness, brand equity, brand salience and I promise you they'll all nod away when you're in the room and the minute you leave the room they're thinking what is this guy talking about? You've got to talk in the language of the boardroom but, as I say, maybe that's for the sequel.

Eric Eden 9:03

Well, I think marketers need to learn to speak spreadsheets a little bit, and a lot of money gets spent on sponsorships. I'm curious the cost of doing something that is more engagement than branding, of having that famous cricket player go and spend an hour with a group of people Is that a similar expense in terms of the cost of it? Is it more expensive? Is it less expensive? I'm just curious.

Richard Levy 9:34

That's a good question. I'll be honest, it powers into insignificance. The cost of the sponsorship is an almighty cost. The cost of activation is what we'd call, in finance terms, a rounding error. But most people think that it just does enough. Ah, we sponsor the soccer, we sponsor the basketball, we sponsor the baseball, we sponsor the hockey, whatever it may be. And my point is that does work.

Richard Levy 9:59

But the only way it works is if you're a global brand like emirates, and you sponsor so much of it that you just become associated. So in the uk here we have a football team, arsenal, and the stadium is the emirates. On the shirt it's emirates, so it's very much associated with. I'm going to the emirates if I'm going to the game and that constantly is getting the name out there. But that's increasing your awareness. Whether it's increasing your salience or not, I don't know, that's a wider question. But the activation of it for what emirates do will be a much lower cost but, I would argue, goes hand in hand. I'm not going to say it's more impactful than the sponsorship, but it goes hand in hand with it. So, in in answer to your question, it's a fraction of the cost, but I think just as important.

Eric Eden 10:46

That makes sense. So when you're spending thousands of dollars on your Emirates plane ticket, you're really spending money on football jerseys. Yeah, yes, absolutely.

Richard Levy 10:57

Yeah, but I just think it's the sort of forgotten bit of the sort of sponsorship element. And if I may say one other point, eric, because it ties into what you're saying before, until marketeers can speak the language of the boardroom and the language of finance, the language of spreadsheets, we're always going to have an enormous issue. So if you want to do a sponsorship to tie it back to that please show the financial value, either top line with the revenue or bottom line with the profit that this thing is going to bring. Otherwise you're going to have a real problem selling. It sounds obvious, but the amount of people I've spoken to, eric, and I go, what did you get out your sponsorship? And they say, oh, we got 5 000 leads. And it's like, no, we've got all these leads and and then it doesn't go any further. And that's a fatal mistake yeah, I agree 100.

Eric Eden 11:51

And when I've done a lot of events like trade shows and conferences, both in the us but also in the uk and in particularly in the UK, a lot of the sponsorship opportunities have been around branding like buy signage at even a trade show for $25,000 or $50,000. And we'd have some really good internal debates and people said, oh, it's totally worth it to have this signage for $50,000. And it just doesn't click for me. I was like, really, but I would much rather have people get to meet the famous keynote speaker during an hour-long reception because you're giving them an experience and sponsoring something like that. That to me, to your story as an example, that turns the branding awareness into the branding salience right. It's sort of a B2B example.

Richard Levy 12:49

And to support that point, I remember going to an event we have JC Deco here, which basically all the out of home, virtually in the UK, is JC Deco. They did a marketing event a couple of years ago and they got Mark Bitson, who's a very famous marketing professor here, and Les Burnett, who's another famous marketing professor, to do the two keynote speeches. The fact, derek, that probably three or four years on I can remember who hosted the event JC Decoe, who the speakers were, tells me that's a really good sponsorship, because I remember their name as much as I remember the event. And then I go home and I look into what I want these guys to do, you know, and then it starts creating the interest and the salience that we've been talking about.

Maximizing ROI Through Boardroom Language

Eric Eden 13:31

I love it, the whole concept of turning sponsorship into experiences. I think that's a great way to make sponsorships really work. Thank you for sharing these stories. Any final thoughts before we wrap it up?

Richard Levy 13:47

Big message to marketeers learn the numbers, learn the language of the boardroom and make sure that when you go to a CFO you can actually prove that things are paying off, because then I guarantee you'll get more money. But don't talk in terms to your point of awareness, equity or brand love or any of these awful kind of terms we have within our own community, because it doesn't wash outside. I promise you, and I say that from experience- Brilliant.

Eric Eden 14:14

Thank you, Richard, for sharing this story and these insights. I'm going to link to your website in the show notes so people can go there and learn more and get in touch if they'd like to chat more with you about this. We appreciate you being on the show today. Thank you.

Richard Levy 14:29

Wonderful, really enjoyed it.