One thing I’ve learnt throughout my internship at Corporate
Sports Australia is the importance of sponsors and sponsor relationships for
the Chevron City to Surf for Activ.
The Chevron City to Surf is a not for profit event, the entirety
of the registration fee goes towards the Activ Foundation- without sponsors it
would be impossible for the event to occur.
As you may have already guessed, Chevron is the naming rights sponsor of
the event. There is also 7 other major
sponsors, 4 media partners, 9 supporting sponsors and 3 civic partners as
pictured in the link below.
In return for sponsoring the event, sponsors receive
invaluable public and media exposure, both leading up to and at the event. Sponsors also associate themselves and their
brand with a worthy cause, thus placing themselves in a positive light in the
eyes of society. On event day it also
became apparent to me the intense amount of influence sponsors have in signage
alone!
Following the event I was involved in creating ‘Exposure
Granted’ documents – these are prepared for each sponsor and essentially
consist of screenshots of each instance when the sponsor’s message or logo is
mentioned throughout our internal communications, such as the;
- · Official website and media releases
- · Official event-guide
- · Email communications and e-newsletters
- · Facebook page
It took my fellow intern Stacie and I an entire day to go
through our internal communications for each sponsor and create individual
documents for each. It was great to
work on this task and it allowed me to gain further insight into the
sponsor/sponsee relationship.
Following the event we also send out a post-event survey
where participants can give us feedback on the event. One of the responses stated that the event
was no longer a ‘fun run’ and instead it had become corporatised and all about
the sponsors. Something else in regards
to this aspect was how small the Activ logo is in comparison to the Chevron
logo in the Official Event logo, pictured below;
On one hand it may be seen as sad that the sponsors sometimes
gain more attention than the cause they are raising money for, but on the other
hand sponsors poor thousands of dollars into the event, of course they deserve
recognition and credit for that fact!
Managing sponsor relationships is an important aspect of
Public Relations particularly in regards to staging large not for profit events
such as the Chevron City to Surf for Activ.
In today’s society the relationship between the sponsor and the sponsee
is becoming even more complex but if done correctly can create a mutually
beneficial relationship for both parties.
