Sponsorship

 A common form of promotion for events is Sponsorship, Sponsorship can be defined as follows:

        ‘Sponsorship is a mutually beneficial arrangement that consists of the provision of resources of funds, goods and/or services ... in return for a set of rights that can be used in communications activity, for the achievements of objectives for commercial gain.’

Masterman, Guy (2007) Sponsorship For A Return on Investment, London: Elsevier

Objectives of Sponsorship

•   Enhancing Image/Shaping Consumer Attitudes 
•  Driving Sales
• Creating positive publicity/heightening visibility - 
• Differentiating from competitors
• Helping with good "Corporate Citizen" role
• Enhancing business, consumer and VIP relations
• Increase sales

http://www.frugalmarketing.com/dtb/sponsorship.shtml

McFly Sponsorship

McFLY have chosen 'Ice-Watch' to sponsor them on their upcoming April tour, as 'Ice-Watch' are a 'cool, young' brand they obviously would want to support something similar to them, and McFLY are obvious a big attraction to this type of target audience. By Ice-Watch sponsoring McFLY this gives McFLY fans a chance to win prizes which include t-shirts, meet and greets with the band and also tickets to the tour itself. By offering these special prizes to the fans, which are an obvious attraction as it is to do with the band, it is also giving Ice-Watch recognization as all fans have to do is click 'LIKE' on the facebook page and then enter the competition, this is easily giving Ice-Watch more viewers and fans on their own page. As McFLY and Ice-Watch are now linked together, the fans will instantly think it's cool to own their own Ice-Watch.

 When fans of the boys see them wearing 'Ice-Watch' it will be a big influence towards the fans going out and buying one, therefore 'Ice-Watch' are making a profit from this. With celebrity endorsement towards a product there is always a bigger chance that it is going to sell better.

London Fashion Weekend Sponsorship

On the other hand London Fashion Weekend take a completely different approach to McFLY, instead of having one main sponsor they have a fair few. Vodafone are the principal sponsor of the event. Instead of looking into every single sponsorship and what they do for the event, I have chosen to go into more detail with Vodafone and what they intend to do for the event as they are the principle sponsor. They are proud sponsors and customers of Vodafone are able to get unrivalled access to the world of fashion via tickets and unique 'money can't buy' experiences. Vodafone are able to offer customers the chance to buy tickets for the event 48 hours before they go on sale and be on the front row for the catwalk to see the latest trends before they hit the high street. www.vodafone.co.uk /vip

When first googling London Fashion Weekend, the first thing that actually came up was the Vodafone website. This was an instant package that users are able to purchase by being a Vodafone user. Then when you actually click to go onto the website the main message they want to give is that they are sponsoring the event 'We've joined forces with some of Britain's biggest retailers to bring you everything from out of hours shopping experiences to London Fashion Weekend sponsorship. We'll be updating these great offers throughout the year, so check back regularly to see what's new.'