The Importance Of Relationship In Advertising

Introduction

In the past decade, the rate of growth in sponsorship activity has outpaced that of investments in any other form of marketing communication or promotion vehicle (Crompton, 2004). In the present times, sponsorship, especially the sponsorship of sports, has become more popular and companies invest significant resources to become sponsors of different events, individual players and teams (Singh & Bhatia, 2013). Businesses have been increasing their sponsorship budgets, as the general belief is that sponsorship is an effective communication tool. Unlike advertising, sponsorships seems to be more effective as it is delivered in a more favorable and enjoyable environment which appeals the potential customers. Customers nowadays are

Crompton (2004), states that sponsorship should be measured in three stages during the communication process, measuring media exposure, monitoring changes in awareness, image or intent of purchase, and monitoring changes in sales. This last measure is the most significant one. It may be expressed as: (i) increases in traffic at retail points of sale; (ii) number of new sales leads created; or (iii) actual increase in sales associated with a sponsorship. Garland, Charbonneau & Macpherson (2008) propose to evaluate awareness and behavioral intentions. Awareness of sponsors is often the easiest way to obtain measure of sponsorship effectiveness while purchase behavioral intentions address the generic link between sponsorship and “sales activity”.

Another evaluation of effectiveness of sports commonly used is: measuring media exposure (air time on television or radio and column inches in the print media); assessment of communication results (pre- and post-tests on level of awareness and pre- and post-tests on attitudes and opinions); measurement of sales results and feedback from participating groups (Singh & Bhatia,

Semi-structured interviews will be carried out with BNP Paribas Brand and Communication Department Managers, specifically, managers responsible for events, communication strategy, branding and new technologies and online channels. In appendix B a guideline for the interviews is shown.

In addition to the information collected from these interviews, data will also be collected from the company and industry publications, documents from the organization being sponsored, and popular press