Sponsorship is Broken, But the Solution Isn’t Sexy
There’s an unspoken rule in marketing. If you can slap a logo on it, you probably should. Jerseys, festivals, boats in the harbour, and some poor Olympic luger’s helmet. Sponsorships are our industry’s comfort food. They feel familiar, safe, and vaguely triumphant. The problem is, they’re mostly useless now. Not because people don’t notice, but because they don’t care.
Let’s pick on one: naming rights. Spark Arena, Eden Park, Sky Stadium. None of these names have meaning, and worse, they’re interchangeable. You could reshuffle the names and no one would notice. Spark could be the stadium, Sky the rugby streaming service, and no one would blink. That’s not brand building, that’s signage. And if your brand recall relies on signage, maybe you need to have the uncomfortable meeting.
But here’s what intrigued me. I fell into some research on Red Bull’s early sponsorship strategy—back when they invested in fringe sports like cliff diving and breakdancing. They didn’t just logo it up. They funded the infrastructure, elevated the sport, and made themselves critical to its growth. That made them part of the story, not the billboard over it. Sponsorship done well is less about exposure and more about enhancement. Make the thing better, and you’re not an ad, you’re a character.
What if instead of pouring money into half-hearted sports associations, we redirected it into underserved creative communities? Local dancers, film collectives, street-level tech innovators. Not for the PR, but for the participation. What if marketing showed up as a co-conspirator, not a signatory? That’s not as tidy on a media plan, but it might actually move the brand. And the needle. And a few hearts, while we’re at it.
Let’s pick on one: naming rights. Spark Arena, Eden Park, Sky Stadium. None of these names have meaning, and worse, they’re interchangeable. You could reshuffle the names and no one would notice. Spark could be the stadium, Sky the rugby streaming service, and no one would blink. That’s not brand building, that’s signage. And if your brand recall relies on signage, maybe you need to have the uncomfortable meeting.
But here’s what intrigued me. I fell into some research on Red Bull’s early sponsorship strategy—back when they invested in fringe sports like cliff diving and breakdancing. They didn’t just logo it up. They funded the infrastructure, elevated the sport, and made themselves critical to its growth. That made them part of the story, not the billboard over it. Sponsorship done well is less about exposure and more about enhancement. Make the thing better, and you’re not an ad, you’re a character.
What if instead of pouring money into half-hearted sports associations, we redirected it into underserved creative communities? Local dancers, film collectives, street-level tech innovators. Not for the PR, but for the participation. What if marketing showed up as a co-conspirator, not a signatory? That’s not as tidy on a media plan, but it might actually move the brand. And the needle. And a few hearts, while we’re at it.