Medidas psicofisiológicas

it was very difficult to isolate the return generated from sport sponsorship, thus they did not exert any effort in evaluating sponsorship arrangements. This is a widely embraced view, as the systematic literature review revealed, basically due to the fact that sponsorship is usually combined with other promotional activities (Hoek, 1999; Meenaghan, 1991; Wilson, 1997). This is what Amis et al. (1999) described as causal ambiguity, and it is regarded as posing obstacles upon sponsorship evaluation. In addition, the plurality of objectives pursued by sponsors are partially responsible for the fact that sponsorship evaluation remains a challenge for sponsors (Chadwick & Thwaites, 2004, 2005; Davies & Tsiantas, 2008; Farrelly et al., 1997; Lamont & Dowell, 2008; Papadimitriou et al., 2008;

Thwaites, 1993, 1994; Thwaites et al., 1998), even in relatively more developed sponsorship contexts that are usually characterised by a more professional approach to sport sponsorship management. Chadwick and Thwaites (2004, 2005) for example, found that despite the significant advances in football sponsorship management in the UK, sponsorship evaluation remained a problematic area for sponsors primarily due to the lack of precise and quantifiable objectives. In addition to this explanation, it could be the case that the company was purposely not pursuing the measurement of the results of their investment due to the fact that lobbying was the main objective pursued, and therefore the results of sponsorship would be visible and obvious - enactment of legislation or not.

4.1.2 Case study 2: Multinational Telecommunications Company

The focus of the second case study is one of the largest telecommunications providers in Cyprus and it is a member of a multinational mobile telecommunications company operating in more than 20 countries in three

132 continents. The company launched its commercial operations in Cyprus about ten years ago and employs approximately 400 people in Cyprus. The international group is regarded as a very experienced sponsor, not just in terms of its long-term sponsorship involvement but mainly because of the fact that the company has sponsored many football competitions as well as football clubs on a worldwide basis. The commitment demonstrated by the international group towards using sponsorship as a strategic tool for reaching its goals has been regarded as a requirement since its members are operating in several countries including Cyprus. As the communications and PR senior manager of the company revealed

“all the operations had to activate a certain sponsorship within the markets in which they operate”. Therefore, two years after its launching in Cyprus, and based on guidance provided by the international group, the company decided to sponsor one of the most successful Division 1 football clubs, and this sponsorship is still active today.

The company appeared to be motivated by purely commercial and business factors when taking sponsorship-related decisions. In a manner similar to the other international sponsor examined in the previous case study, the company did not have any ‘personal relations’ rationale to accommodate when entering the sponsorship:

As a member of an international group, what the company tries to do in the several countries it decides to operate in, it tries to align with the local market.

It tries to create the synergies that can bring it close to the particular market.

To us, at the time football was… we recognised that for the Cypriot culture it had a central role to play. And we decided that we should have a particular role in Cypriot football. We were looking for the emotional bonding that a few things can give you in Cyprus.

It is interesting to note that, the PR and communications manager of the company said that their decision to sponsor the certain club was not influenced by the competitors’ actions since:

133 At the time there was not a battle with regard to football sponsorship. Things were smoother at that time with regard to negotiations and everything. The sport sponsorship intensity that exists today was not evident at that time. We definitely saw that, at that time, company X [name of the competitor] was the previous sponsor of the football club. But this had nothing to do with the decision to sponsor. We did not want to create any problem, or to attack [the competitor]. It was a decision made very consciously for the reasons that I mentioned before.

When it comes to the renewal of the sponsorship, however, it was evident that competitive factors did play a central role in the decision to renew. This is not surprising since, based on the open systems view (Perrow, 1970; Thompson, 1967), the company is regarded as an open system that influences and is being influenced by the broader environment including competitive forces involving the actions of competitors. Interestingly, Berrett and Slack (1999) presented important evidence depicting how sponsors respond to the actions of competitors when engaging in sponsorship arrangements, either as a reaction to the competitors’

sponsorship initiatives or as a proactive action that can prevent actions by competitors. In the case study, although the company did not explicitly state that the intentions or actions of competitors did have a role to play in their sponsorship-related decisions, there is much evidence in the press dating back to the time of the sponsorship renewal indicating that the club had probably been involved in sponsorship negotiations with the major competitor of the multinational telecommunications company in an effort to ensure a bigger sponsorship deal.

This, in turn, had generated several institutional pressures upon the company to offer a bigger sponsorship amount for renewing the sponsorship deal with the club, something that eventually did happen and according to the press, this was probably the biggest football club sponsorship deal signed in Cyprus.

At the same time, the interviewee admitted that the decision to become involved in football sponsorship was highly guided by the international group. As she said

“we also had instructions by the group that we move to football”. It is probably interesting to note that at the same time, the international group was involved in negotiations for sponsoring a global football event, in which they eventually

134 succeeded, and thus part of the job of the sponsor was to promote the international sponsorship arrangements within the country of Cyprus as well as to enact sponsorship linking the company to the sport of football. Apart from the decision to endorse football-related sponsorships, however, the selection process was assigned primarily to the company operating in Cyprus and the international group was simply kept informed about their decisions as indicated by the interviewee. According to her arguments, “based on an examination of what was available in the market at the time, we saw that the highest visibility, the best emotional bonding, the best return on investment could be given by football”. In addition, the interviewee indicated that the original proposal was developed by the marketing department in cooperation with several other functional sections such as the finance department, and it was subsequently submitted to the top-level management in Cyprus for approval. The decision-making process outlined by the respondent seems to fit with the independent approach to sponsorship decision-making as described by Cousens & Slack (1996) in which a national division of a multinational company is given total freedom to control the sponsorship selection process. This approach has been regarded as encouraging the range of creative sponsorship activities that is specifically designed to fit the specific needs of the local business and enabling the latter to establish good relationships with the local community (Cousens & Slack, 1996).

In addition to the above, the decision-making process that the company followed in choosing its sponsorship partner was systematic, well-structured and professional. Specifically, the company seems to have used a rational process based on screening procedures and clear and well defined criteria enabling them to choose the most appropriate sponsee. Interestingly, the company had to choose between two of the most successful clubs in Cyprus, which are the two clubs representing the right and left wings and whose relations have been characterised by a traditional mutual resentment and antagonism, as mentioned in the previous case study. Unfortunately, the fact that those clubs, but also sport in general, is used by politicians in Cyprus as a platform for their political agendas

135 (Charalambous-Papamiltiades, 2011a) is a factor which fuels hostility especially between the fans of the two clubs. Contrary to the widely shared view in Cyprus that it is dangerous for a sponsor to be associated with one of the two clubs, the multinational telecommunications company examined in this study decided to choose the club with a better fit to their image, audiences and products. According to the interviewee, the main reason for pursuing a single sponsorship was that:

We believe that sponsoring many different teams limits sponsorship potential.

If you really want to have an alignment for both the followers and the brand, I believe that being everywhere will end up being nowhere. Thus, we have chosen to sponsor one club, and through this particular club, to really invest.

And we continue to believe that. There were some concerns regarding the brand, and maybe the creation of other perceptions [negative perceptions]

around the brand through sponsorship, but we felt that through appropriate activation and appropriate activities around the sponsorship we could mediate that.

However, the company was concerned about the hostility and a possible reaction of the fans of the other clubs:

We thought of this [hostility]. It is what I said earlier. There was a concern, because we were new sport sponsors, so, about the effect it [a single sponsorship] was going to have on our brand. Because, as you know, Cypriot football has to do with politics, political parties etc.

One of the main selection criteria employed by the sponsor was the performance of the club. In addition, the interview revealed that they also considered the size of the fan base but more importantly the characteristics of the fan base, and media coverage. What was clear throughout the interview is that the company was looking for a strategic fit between the company and sponsored property, and this is depicted in the fact that the interviewee emphasised that key criteria for selecting the sponsorship involved an image match with the brand, audience match, and the spending power of the audience reached through sponsorship. As the PR and communications manager commented:

136 We were looking for a club with followers, competing in the first division, so that it could match our increasing performance in the market at that time. We examined several clubs. We found that we wanted to have a brand alignment with club X [name of the football club]… I mean the brand match…

with regard to the audience of the specific club and the emotional bonding with it.

More specifically, reaching a certain target audience was one of the essential conditions for selecting the sponsored property, as illustrated in the statement that follows:

It was related to the audience that we were looking for at that time. We saw that the business audience belonged to the specific club [name of the club]

and we wanted to reach that audience at that time, and this had a central role in deciding to sponsor the club.

The crucial role of target audience fit is also illustrated in the following comments:

We have seen, based on research, that the club had followers who were achievers in our segmentation language. And “achievers” was a target audience that, at the particular time we eagerly wanted, it was an audience whose spending power was very high, so we wanted high value customers, and we thought that this was [sponsorship of the specific club] a nice way to approach… to reach them.

Together with target audience fit, the company was also pursuing an image fit between the brand and the sponsored property:

Brand match, as I said earlier. I mean, we were a relatively new company in the market. The club was rising in the national championship at that time, and we wanted to… we were the “challengers” brand, and we considered the specific club as having the same image. And we believed that, ok… and with the right audience matching, we believed that here is the alignment we were looking for.

Ensuring fit with the sponsored property has been regarded as an essential component of the sponsorship selection process, and this is logical if we consider that the literature review in this study provided much evidence suggesting that fit, or congruency between the sponsor and the sponsee is a factor that can actually

137 define the success of a particular sponsorship (Barez et al., 2007; Grohs &

Reisinger, 2005; Grohs et al., 2004; Gwinner & Eaton, 1999, Koo et al., 2006b;

Mason, 2005.). Therefore, it is indeed surprising that the multinational company examined in this study seems to be one of the rare cases explored in this multi-case study that appeared to place such an emphasis on fit when selecting their sponsored properties. However, considering fit at the selection stage seems to be a characteristic of a more comprehensive and strategic approach to sport sponsorship that has been evident in more developed contexts such as the USA (Farrelly et al., 1997; Shanklin & Kuzma, 1992), the UK (Liu et al., 1998;

Thwaites, 1993, 1994; Thwaites & Carruther,1998), and Canada (Thwaites et al., 1998). Hence, it could be the case that for an experienced multinational company involved in many different sponsorship arrangements with prestigious clubs and competitions world-wide, it is reasonable to assign importance to a strategic alignment with their sponsored property as part of a more experienced, systematic, rational and strategic sponsorship approach. Furthermore, the complexity of the particular context, especially in relation to the politicisation of football, is another factor that is regarded as raising a need for the adoption of strategic decision-making.

In addition to the concept of fit, other signs illustrating the well-structured decision-making and selection process employed by the telecommunications company were reflected in the fact that it was guided by clear motives, it considered alternative sponsorship opportunities, and the selection was based on concrete and well defined criteria being linked to specific objectives. All the aforementioned factors are regarded as being essential components of a systematic and proactive approach to sponsorship selection (Chadwick & Thwaites, 2005; Furst, 1994). In addition, many of the criteria employed in the particular case study correspond to the recommendations made by Irwin and Assimakopoulos (1992) for an appropriate sponsorship selection that can be rationally located within the broader marketing plan of the company. Moreover, it seems to coincide with suggestions made by Meenaghan (1991) who argued that the sponsorship decisions should

138 reflect the company’s vision and the products the company promotes, and that it should provide the vehicle to fulfil organisational objectives.

This latter point is further supported by the fact that the company had managed to pursue several contractual components aiming at enabling the company to reach their objectives, such as size and prominence of logos and hospitality opportunities provided through the sponsorship arrangement. The components of the contract that featured among the most important requirements of the sponsor, however, were exclusivity as well as designation issues:

What we wanted definitely to clarify is how our level of sponsorship is distinguished from the rest of the sponsors - shirt sponsors, club sponsors etc. So, we clarified that the mega sponsor of the club was differentiated from the rest of the sponsors.

The company also placed much weight on coverage and visibility issues, as well as on the longevity of the sponsorship arrangement. According to the respondent, the company intended to invest in the long-term to maximise the returns from this sponsorship: “from the very beginning of the sponsorship we stressed that we were not talking about a one-year or two-year sponsorship. Instead, it was a long-term investment”. Another component upon which the company placed much importance was related to sponsorship management activities and practices.

Specifically, the company was not only concerned with the opportunities provided for managing their investment in the best possible way, but it was also very proactive with regard to the club’s contribution in the management of sponsorship.

As the PR and communications manager commented:

Some other elements of the contract included the rights that we have, especially regarding sponsorship activation, their [the club’s] involvement in the plan that is developed at the beginning of the year and how sponsorship is activated. It has to do with content related issues.

The importance assigned to sponsorship activation and leveraging activities at the selection stage is indeed impressive, especially when considering the evidence

139 provided earlier in the literature review indicating that sponsorship leveraging is poorly conducted in most of the sponsorship cases (Chadwick & Thwaites, 2005;

Thwaites 1994, 1995; Thwaites & Carruthers, 1998; Thwaites et al., 1998; Yang et al., 2008).

The realisation of the company with regard to the crucial role of leveraging practices in the success of sport sponsorship is also attested by the solid, rigorous and comprehensive activation plan as presented by the marketing department, as well as by the actual activities undertaken throughout their long-lasting sponsorship involvement. Evidently, the general consensus within the company is that the activation plan should coincide with the objectives pursued by the company, as evidenced by the internal documents provided by the marketing department indicating detailed actions and initiatives for each single objective.

The use of varied leveraging practices that correspond to the different objectives set by sponsors is not very commonly found in the sport sponsorship literature, apart from some singular exceptions such as the study conducted by Séguin et al.

(2005). Interestingly, one of the three large corporations that adopted such an approach was a telecommunications company, suggesting that this particular sector may be keener to adopt an advanced and systematic approach to sport sponsorship. Similar findings were reported by Papadimitriou and Apostolopoulou (2009) who found that the telecommunications sector adopted more dynamic sponsorship leveraging programs and sponsors in this sector were more able to approach sponsorship as a means to create competitive advantage.

In addition to frequently employed leveraging practices such as advertising, use of symbols and logos to the sponsor’s products and services, hospitality opportunities to key clients, organisation of events, sponsorship-themed products and packages, and several other promotional activities conducted within the stadium using promo-teams and competitions, the focus of the company explored in this case study was upon activities conveying a sense of exclusivity to their customers that can generate excitement within their customer base. In the words

140 of the PR and communications manager, they wanted to offer “something that will be able to excite our subscribers… something that will demonstrate that, it is not just a logo on a T-shirt”, and she added “we try to give them the excitement that is compatible with the personalities of both brands”.

In order to excite our customer base, in all of the important moments of the club [name of the club] we are giving the opportunity to our subscribers to be

In order to excite our customer base, in all of the important moments of the club [name of the club] we are giving the opportunity to our subscribers to be