Question

• How does the sponsor need to conform to the product's brand identity?
• How can a sponsor help to augment a deficient portion of a product or service offering?

Answer 1

Question: How does the sponsor need to conform to the product's brand identity?

A Sponsor must conform to the brand identity because the whole purpose of sponsorship revolves around the belief and values which are similar to the products' brand identity. Any mismatch in the identity of the sponsor and the product's brand identity will not serve the purpose of the sponsorship. A similar identity of sponsor and brand augments each other's value proposition exponentially and if there is an identity mismatch between the sponsor and brand's identity it will defy the efforts and will lead to damage to the brand as well as a sponsor.

E.g. A sponsor whose identity is to stand for good health and better environment can not get associated with the products like a cigarette or alcoholic beverages and vice-versa an alcoholic beverages manufacturer can not sponsor any event which is known for promoting better health among citizens.

Question: How can a sponsor help to augment a deficient portion of a product or service offering?

Answer: As I already explained that a similar identity among the sponsor and the brand leads to complimentary effect and helps in augmenting the brand's identity, awareness and reach. There is very high probability that the product will get benefited from the sponsor's identity, because sponsorship means belief in product offering and if the product or service has some deficient portion that can be fulfilled by the sponsor.

E.g. An event is being organized by an NGO for helping the underprivileged segment of society to fight with cancer, but the program is not getting good support from big corporates because of the design elements of the program in which organizations feel that it is not strong enough to meet the purpose. The NGO got to secure the sponsorship from one of the big corporate of the country as chief sponsor, now this makes the task easy to get additional and associate sponsors because now other sponsors feel that the program must have something for which the big corporate is sponsoring the event. This way it becomes evident that the sopnsorhsip can help in covering the deficient portion of product or service.