TV sponsorships have become an increasingly popular method for brands to generate awareness and credibility and align themselves to certain values by being ‘attached’ to particular programming.
They provide interesting lessons for rights holders as TV sponsorships sit midway between advertising (being similar to a traditional above-the-line media buy i.e. TV ads) and more fully-fledged ‘traditional’ sponsorships involving various rights, assets and activation opportunities.
They are often a much more simple form of sponsorship for a brand to undertake and significantly less work. As a result, when it comes to the marketing journey, TV sponsorships can often be a step on from a brand undertaking advertising before undertaking a more fully-fledged sponsorship (such as that of a particular organisation such as a team, a venue/destination, an event or an industry body) because it presents an opportunity to dip a toe in the sponsorship water.
Thus, its important for rights holders to be aware of what TV sponsorships are occurring as they offer a clear signal around the following three areas:
- What brands may be in market for a more traditional sponsorship, particularly if they haven’t engaged in one before.
- What audience a brand is trying to reach – either implicitly (such as the programming having a strong association with a particular demographic) or explicitly, such as Interactive Investor wanting to “reach a large and financially-minded audience.”
- What message they are trying to get across so that rights holders can incorporate this angle into their pitching: such as BMW driving an association with innovation through Sky Arts or Arnold Clark using Channel 4 drama to promote the idea of a hassle-free car buying experience.
So, caytoo analysed 105 sponsorships of TV programming over a six-month period (covering over 300 individual programmes) to ascertain (a) which sectors are most likely to do TV sponsorships and (b) how those sponsorships are allocated to identify patterns that rights holders can potentially factor in when choosing which companies to approach.
Some of the key findings
Among the TV sponsorships, 46% are for individual programmes while 43% are for a particular strand (e.g. late evenings) or genre (e.g. comedy). The remaining 11% are sponsorships of an entire channel (e.g. ITV).
General subject matter is the most common genre (30%) of programming being sponsored followed by reality programming (17%), sport (13%) and news/documentaries (10%).
Automotive is the most common sector sponsor – accounting for 20% of the sponsorships – followed by Consumer Goods (15%), Food & Beverage (13%), Consumer Services and Retail/Ecommerce (both 12%). Thus, the top 5 sectors account for 62% of all sponsorships. These sectors all have the need to deliver large-scale brand awareness across a wide demographic in what are highly competitive markets.
In terms of the type of programming sectors tend to favour: Consumer Goods sponsorships are nearly 2x more likely (31%) to be allocated towards reality programming than the average (17%). This is driven by personal goods and electronic products that target / help with people’s appearances.
Financial Services (50%) and Telecoms sponsorships (40%) are 4x to 3x more likely to be allocated towards sports programming (13%) than the average.
Food & Beverage (21%) and Travel & Tourism sponsorships (20%) are 2x more likely to be allocated to news/documentaries programming than the average (10%). The former is driven by food brands associating with the ‘cold’ element of weather broadcasts, the latter driven by travel companies associating with travel documentaries.
Automotive sponsorships are nearly 3x more likely (24%) to be allocated towards drama programming than the average (9%) – driven by the aim of auto brands to associate driving with excitement.
caytoo’s full TV Sponsorships report contains
- Overview
- What lessons it provides
- Definitions
- Illustrative examples
- Key findings
- Sponsorships by format and genre
- Most prevalent sponsors by brand master sector and sub sector
- Sponsorships by brand sector: format and genre
- Master list of all TV sponsors by entity sponsored, channel, format and genre
Want to see the report?
The report is available to caytoo clients, however, you can request a copy via the button below.
