A critical evaluation of the reward of sponsorship of French rugby events for companies' brand equity

Résumé du document

Rugby has been confidential for a long time, only reserved for players. It only had interest in its practice, it had an initiatory dimension. The values of solidarity, sense of sharing, courage, humility, self-sacrifice are the foundation, the essence of the sport. But the promotion of rugby has been accelerated with the development of the interest from the media and more specifically the development of its television coverage that began in 1960-1970. The rules of the sport are constantly changed to seduce televisions, in favor of the attack and the show. Moreover the halftime mutates from 5 to 15 minutes to extend the advertising on televisions.

Historically it is the media success of the second rugby World Cup, especially in rich countries, who dazzled the Anglo-Saxon television businessman, Rupert Murdoch. Who after a few messy attempts to professionalize the rugby by various interest groups, provides for 550 million dollars a year of exclusive TVs rights for the Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans Federations to organize, mainly for its private channels its own competitions, called the Tri-Series, which is a triangular tournament with away and home games and the TOP 12 which is a tournament bringing together the provinces of these three nations. This is the first private competition of the history of world rugby.

Extraits

[...] Crimmins and Horn (1996) analyze the sponsorship as a process of persuasive communication. According to these authors “sponsorship is a way of persuasion that is fundamentally different from traditional advertising. Sponsorship persuades indirectly.” Sponsorship improves the perception of the brand by combining our beliefs and linking the brand to an event or an organization that the audience likes a lot. "Sponsorship creates in the mind of the consumer a link between the brand and the event or organization highly valued by the target consumer." Lots of research has been conducted to evaluate the effects of sponsorship in terms of recall and recognition. [...]

[...] ) that could limit the visibility of sponsors' logos or to reduce the rate of attendance at an event? Or in contrary could hellish conditions favor the memory of such an event and therefore the action of the sponsors? More generally, what is the role played by the environmental factors (music played, the role of speaker, behavior of groups of supporters . Another interesting research would have been to make cross-cultural comparisons in terms of effectiveness of sponsorship. The importance and popularity of a sport can change from one company to another, as well as reactions to sponsorship activities. [...]

[...] (2001), The Impact of Sports Sponsorship and Consumers'Brand Attitudes and Recall: The Case of Nascars Fans, Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising, vol 23-31. MEENAGHAN, T. (2001) Understanding sponsorship effects, Psychology & Marketing, vol 95-122 OTKER T., HAYES P. (1988), Evaluation de l'efficacité du sponsoring. Expérience de la coupe du monde de football de 1986, Revue Française du Marketing 13-40. PETTY R. E., CACIOPPO J. T. (1986), Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion”, Advances in experimental social psychology, New York, Academic Press Vol p123-205, 83p. Edited by Berkowitz, PETTY R. [...]

[...] Thus, according to Raphael Niemi rugby allows Societe Generale "both to stay at some point in a form of legitimacy, of continuity but to become a partner of the World Cup has also injected a new dynamic" for the company . If we have a look again at the assumptions made in advance and confronted them with the results of these two studies it will tell us about the validity of these assumptions. Hypothesis The companies' sponsors of French rugby are little or not known through their sponsorship activities. [...]

[...] I am responsible of sponsorship at Societe Generale. In the direction of the communication, I am responsible for the definition and implementation of the strategy of sports partnerships of the Group: This includes the recommendation of strategic partnerships and contract negotiations (with rugby and golf), the promotion of the brand visibility, creation of advertising & media planning, relations with the press; management of the internal communication: editorial content, animations, web tools and community management Finally, the definition and deployment of the use and internal governance on sponsorship. [...]