Why marketing's a spectator sport
A recent survey by ARC Rynek i Opinia reveals that sports sponsorship is an efficient marketing tool in Poland. Sports fans here not only appreciate sponsors getting behind their favorite teams and events, but they are also highly aware of the brands connected with particular sports and sportspeople.
Brand awareness
The survey results show that sports sponsorship helps companies in building up a positive and long-lasting image in fans' common awareness.
For example, 35 percent of respondents consider the Lech beer brand to be the biggest football sponsor, although the brand's owner, Kompania Piwowarska, has withdrawn the brand from the sport and replaced it with Tyskie, which is now the sponsor of the Polish national football team and the Polish league champions, Wisła Kraków.
Similar behavior can be seen in Poland's second favorite sport, ski jumping. Poczta Polska is the third-most-recognized sponsor associated with this winter sport, although it has been a long time since the company sponsored the sport.
The power of sport to attract millions of viewers to follow one event for hours makes it an important marketing tool. However, in a nation where sporting heroes are held in high esteem, it is the stars that are the true marketing icons, and thus, efficient brand carriers.
When asked to point to the sportspeople that are most often associated with promotional campaigns and advertising, almost 42 percent of those surveyed indicated Adam Małysz, who ski jumps with the Red Bull logo on his head, the Milka logo on his shoulder, and Axel Springer's Fakt symbol on his ski suit.
Małysz is followed by Otylia Jędrzejczak (Idea/Orange), and Jerzy Dudek (TP SA and Adidas). With zł.13.5 million in annual payments, the latter is also Poland's highest-earning sportsman, according to the tabloid Super Express.
Brand awareness
"Investing in sports stars is profitable as it guarantees a brand's permanent presence in people's awareness," admits Grzegorz A. Kita, the president of Sport Management Polska. Kita argues that a sportsman's success is transmitted on to a company. "We need even more stars and sponsors," he adds, stressing that the cooperation between these two groups should be more professional.
Kita claims the effectiveness of sports-sponsorship campaigns on consumer behavior is even bigger than television advertising. At the same time, sports sponsorship is not as expensive as TV advertising. One market-research company calculated that had ING, which sponsored a ski-jumping competition in Zakopane in 2003, bought television advertising time in an amount similar to that of the event transmissions, it would have spent more than zł.30 million, whereas on purchasing the rights to sponsor the event it paid just a few hundred thousand złoty.
It is estimated that the annual Polish sports sponsorship market is worth zł.100 million. Worldwide it reaches $14 (zł.53) billion a year.
