Sponsorship

Why sponsorship is more than a “nice-to-have” and more of a “need-to-have”

In days gone by, sponsoring a local charity run or donating to a good cause might have been seen as a straightforward goodwill gesture. It was the sort of thing that people and businesses did if there was some spare budget floating around, but it was certainly not considered a business essential. Today, that’s no longer the case. Social purpose sponsorship – or social value – has become a core driver of sustainable growth, and there’s plenty of data and case studies to back this claim up.

Consider, for a moment, that consumers and employees now expect the businesses they work for and buy from to show meaningful commitment to social and environmental good. A recent Deloitte survey discovered that almost two-thirds of millennials and Gen Zs prefer to buy from companies that align with their own personal values. This paradigm shift means that social purpose sponsorship isn’t something that businesses can simply bolt on every now and then for some good PR; it’s a strategic lever that drives long-term commercial success.

So, what does it take for businesses to embed social value in a way that creates real impact? And how can doing good become a catalyst for growth in the same way that other revenue functions are?

What social purpose sponsorship is and why it matters

In the most basic terms possible, social purpose sponsorship is when a business supports a charitable cause, community project, or social initiative. This might be a wildlife trust, grassroots sport, or forming a long-term partnership with a nearby non-profit organisation.
Unlike traditional charity donations, however, effective social purpose sponsorship is something which is highly strategic. It’s about integrating social value into the very DNA of a business and living by this ethos to meaningfully align it with your commercial goals and culture.

This matters because the business landscape has changed in a significant way. Customers are now increasingly critical of surface-level or tokenistic approaches. An example of this is “greenwashing”, where environmental claims are exaggerated or insincere. In other words, if the sponsorship is tokenistic and done simply for good PR, consumers will quickly identify and expose this. Employees are also looking for meaning in their work in the same way, and more and more investors are paying closer attention to a company’s ESG performance. The bottom line is that in this emerging environment, genuine social purpose sponsorship becomes a key differentiator.

Aligning social good with business goals

Ultimately, the most impactful social purpose sponsorship initiatives are the ones which are carefully considered and perfectly aligned with a broader business strategy. When formed in this way, they create a win-win; they create tangible benefits for communities and measurable, commercial returns for the business.

If you’re still not convinced, consider the Premier League’s work through the Premier League Charitable Fund. By investing in relevant local community projects like grassroots football as well as educational initiatives, the league isn’t just giving back, it’s actually reinforcing its role as a leading cultural institution and strengthening its long-term fan loyalty.

The same principle applies on a smaller scale. Imagine, for example, a regional food manufacturer which sponsors local food banks. This isn’t just random generosity; it’s a clear alignment between what the business does (food production) and the cause it supports (combating hunger). The alignment makes the initiative credible, sustainable, and impactful, which are all things consumers and employees care deeply about.

Real-life examples

To bring all of this theory to life, let’s look at some varied examples:

• Taylor Swift’s philanthropic efforts – At first glance, this may seem unrelated to a broader corporate strategy, but by donating the profits from certain concerts to local causes, she creates goodwill and strengthens her relationship with communities, and consequently deepens fan loyalty. Brands can learn a simple lesson from this: by embedding sponsorship from the beginning, it’s possible to enjoy lasting benefits.
• Suffolk Wildlife Trust partnerships – Several businesses in East Anglia have partnered with the Trust to empower their conservation projects. For the businesses, this delivers reputational value and engages employees with meaningful volunteering opportunities, which simply cannot be obtained in any other way. For the Trust, it brings sustainable funding and expertise, making it another win-win situation.
• Unilever’s sustainability commitments – By embedding social and environmental responsibility into its product portfolio (think Fair & Lovely becoming Glow & Lovely with a shift away from discriminatory branding), Unilever has aligned social purpose sponsorship with brand growth and consumer trust.

Each example demonstrates the exact same pattern: social value that ties directly to business goals, brand identity, or customer values is the most powerful.

The ROI of social purpose sponsorship

It’s tempting for businesses to think of social purpose sponsorship simply as another expense on top of all of their existing ones. In reality, the returns are often significant, though not always immediate. Here’s how businesses can measure and optimise the ROI of their social purpose sponsorship efforts.

1. Brand differentiation
   In saturated markets, purpose becomes a USP. Customers are more likely to choose and remain loyal to businesses which clearly share their personal values.
2. Employee engagement and retention
   It’s an obvious truth that people want to work for companies that matter and are doing good. Not convinced? Studies prove it. Specifically, they show that employees who feel their employer has a social purpose are more engaged and less likely to leave. In other words, social value supports employee retention.
3. Customer loyalty and advocacy
   Supporting causes resonates with customers emotionally. When a brand is seen to give back, customers become advocates, driving referrals and repeat sales.
4. Access to partnerships and networks
   Social purpose sponsorship often opens doors to collaborations, whether that’s with local authorities, other businesses, or influential non-profits.
5. Long-term resilience
   Businesses that demonstrate social value are better positioned for regulatory changes, investor scrutiny, and shifting consumer expectations. This makes business continuity a whole lot more straightforward.

Put simply, social purpose sponsorship is not charity. It’s a growth and revenue lever, enhancing multiple dimensions of business performance.

How to Implement Social Purpose Sponsorship in Your Business

For leaders wondering how to start (or refine) their approach, here’s a practical roadmap:

1. Define your “why”
   Why do you want to engage in social purpose sponsorship? To attract talent? Strengthen local ties? Enhance brand trust? Clarity here ensures authenticity.
2. Align with core business values
   Choose causes that naturally fit your business. A logistics firm might back road safety initiatives; a fashion retailer might partner with textile recycling charities. In short, seek relevance wherever possible.
3. Start local, scale global
   Begin with initiatives in your own community. They’re much easier to manage, deliver visible results, and create genuine connections. Then, expand into broader initiatives once momentum builds.
4. Engage employees
   Select partnerships strategically, ensuring they align with business goals and values. Once established, involve employees in shaping and participating in these initiatives. This approach keeps decision-making focused while still creating authentic engagement and shared purpose.
5. Measure and communicate impact
   Track KPIs like employee volunteering hours, brand sentiment, or community reach. Share progress transparently. This proves authenticity and avoids perceptions of tokenism or insincerity.
6. Make it long-term
   One-off donations have limited impact. Sustainable partnerships, whether they’re multi-year funding or embedded programmes, generate deeper outcomes and far stronger ROI.

Common pitfalls to avoid

• Treating it as PR only – Customers spot insincerity quickly, and sponsorship without substance risks reputational damage.
• One-off “charity of the year” syndrome – Short-termism dilutes impact, which means you should strive for long-lasting commitments.
• Ignoring employee voice – Initiatives chosen by leadership alone may fail to resonate with staff.
• Lack of measurement – Without clear metrics, it’s hard to demonstrate value internally or externally.

Ultimately, social purpose sponsorship is no longer optional. It’s a strategic imperative that touches every aspect of modern business, from marketing and HR to investor relations and community reputation.

When done well, it creates a powerful feedback loop: businesses support communities, and this in turn strengthens brands, engages employees, and drives growth.

Be sure to get in touch with our team today to find out more about how we can support your social value initiatives and ambitions.

Influencer marketing has become and will continue to be a staple in the digital world, and therefore, brands need to include as much of it as possible in their digital-first strategies for extra consumer engagement.

Sports sponsorships revenue alone has managed to grow upwards of $105.47 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $189.54 billion by 2030, while influencer sponsorships are on their way to hitting $22 billion in 2025 (Statista, Collabstr). These numbers aren’t too surprising, either, because reportedly, 63% of consumers trust influencers over traditional brand messaging.

Social media has played a significant role in reaching these heights. Consumers are far more likely to buy a product they saw on an Instagram post or TikTok video made by an influencer or public figure they trust. This is why tech companies, restaurants, and beauty brands are investing more in influencer marketing than they are in their traditional means of reaching their audience.

To accomplish marketing milestones like this, there are four core pillars:

• Choosing the right talent
• Setting clear objectives
• Fostering authentic engagement
• Prioritising long-term value over short-term reach

Strategic Partnerships and Boosting ROI

For years, brands have relied on celebrity endorsements, using their built-in audience to promote their products. However, there often is greater potential and overall better ROI with influencers who have a similarly large audience base. Audiences are now more likely to engage with the authenticity and relatability of influencers rather than the world of celebrities and Hollywood.

The increasing ROI of influencer marketing is also backed by the numbers, as Harvard Business Review revealed that brands see an average return of $6 for every $1 invested in influencer sponsorship.

Another benefit of influencer sponsorships is precision-based marketing for Millennials (56%) and Gen-Z (58%). This level of reach thus boosts sales and creates compelling user-generated content (UGC) across several platforms.

How to Properly Use Influencer Marketing

As with most areas of sponsorship several steps are needed for any brand to maximise audience engagement through influencer marketing:

1. Define Clear Goals and Budget
Before selecting their influencer, brands need to set clear goals and a reasonable budget, whether for awareness, engagement, or conversions. Meeting these goals will measure the effectiveness of the influencer sponsorship strategy.

2. Identify Relevant Influencers
When choosing an influencer, brands need to find those who align with their values and audience preferences. For example, a sports brand likely wouldn’t have much success with a beauty influencer and vice versa. Authenticity is key here, though, as some brands become swayed by follower count and ignore the fact that how the influencer reaches their audience is more important than how many of them there are.

3. Measure Influencer Authenticity
Speaking of influencer authenticity, there needs to be a system by which brands can measure it. How are audiences reacting to the influencer’s promotion or message? What comments are being left? All of these elements help gauge the success of the sponsorship.

4. Negotiate Terms and Deliverables
Influencer marketing is very much a partnership that needs to be on solid ground. Brands need to ensure that they are on the right terms with the influencer to maximise benefits and avoid any miscommunication or conflict of interest.

5. Track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Engagement rate, impressions, reach, video performance, SEO benefits, conversions, sales lift, and click-through rates all act as the key performance indicators of any influencer sponsorship strategy. Keeping an eye on these elements provides actionable insights into the campaign’s effectiveness.

Influencer Sponsorships: A Long-term Plan

For influencer marketing to be most effective, the goal should be long-term collaborations to build consistent trust – because this approach, like traditional sponsorship, will outperform short-term reach with one-off campaigns. More brands are looking into the power of platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Discord, Twitch and more with their ability to reach a global audience while still maintaining local impact.

As marketing continues to evolve, it has become a race to see which brands will be able to adopt modern strategies like influencer sponsorships and digital engagement while focusing on authentic voices and data-driven insights.

For more on influencer marketing, get in touch with BDS. Let’s make you an effective influencer.

Photo by Collabstr on Unsplash

The fashion industry lends a hand for sponsorships to act as a powerful tool in boosting brand presence and engaging with stakeholders and potential customers. Sponsorships help take brands from the gravitas of the runway to key backstage partnerships and fashion house collaborations that drive trends and generate revenue.

With the dynamic and ever-changing world of fashion, global spectacles such as Fashion Month offer an unparalleled sponsorship opportunity that can take brands to the top of the fashion and beauty industry while raising their profiles for commercial partnerships.

Here are the best strategic sponsorship approaches for the fashion industry:

1. Backstage Collaborations

Beauty brands have partnered with artists and fashion houses for decades, since the 1990s. It started when brands like MAC Cosmetics, Maybelline, and L’Oréal began sponsoring fashion shows and having artists design runway looks. Such partnerships give brands exposure for their products in association with high-fashion trends and premium craftsmanship.

These sponsorship trends are still present today with brands like NARS, Charlotte Tilbury, and Bobbi Brown enhancing their backstage presence and market positioning every season. Recently, Refy, the makeup sponsor for Labrum London, and Idris and Sabrina Elba’s S’ABLE Labs have tried their hand at participating in Fashion Month, leading to a 124% increase in social media views and a 130% week-on-week sales boost. This exemplifies the power of backstage collaborations in elevating brand awareness and boosting customer engagement.

2. Runway Collaborations

Using sponsorships to showcase artistic and brand excellence through runway shows is just as important as behind-the-scenes presence to build prestige and enhance credibility. Recently, many beauty brands have used their fashion week presence to launch new product lines, such as Dior who developed a “Backstage” collection after being used for the label’s shows. The entire collection is inspired by Dior’s association with runway shows.

MAC Cosmetics is another brand that has used its association with runway shows during fashion weeks with its “Makeup for makeup artists” slogan. Something this small has granted the brand extra credibility and a reputation of being desirable and high-quality.

Another effective strategy is sponsoring Key Artists to siphon off their own established reputation. For instance, hair stylist Guido Palau has partnered with Redken to showcase the brand at major shows like Dior, Schiaparelli, and Miu Miu. While Redken isn’t an official sponsor of these shows, the partnership with Palau is what has allowed its exposure and presence in these shows.

3. Elevating Event Experiences

Adding exclusive experiences during sponsorship events can give a greater perspective on consumer engagement. Using elements such as backstage influencer lounges or branded beauty touch-up stations can take your brand’s exposure and industry credibility to the next level.

4. Digital Integration

Social media is the heart of a brand’s presence now, which is why through any sponsorship deal, brands need to optimise their online presence through curated content, influencer partnerships and real-time marketing.

During events such as Fashion Month, social media engagement is essential with content such as behind-the-scenes looks, product demonstrations, and influencer collaborations. This digital mastery ensures greater reach beyond the runway.

5. Deliver Optimum Value

While following a comprehensive fashion sponsorship strategy, brands must set achievable goals like tangible deliverables, increased awareness, better market positioning, and enhanced customer loyalty. The brand’s approach must be clear in its sponsorship proposition while making distinct offers that would attract valuable sponsors and commercial partners.

6. Identify the Need for Sponsorship

Collaborating with partners brings a plethora of benefits. However, some brands choose not to make use of sponsorship opportunities if they do not align with the brand’s needs or values. For example, Hourglass, a luxury makeup brand, does not participate in Fashion Month due to its commitment to being cruelty-free and instead relies on its built-in audience. With this ideology, Hourglass has managed to achieve an annual growth rate of 33%.

Other beauty brands such as Rare Beauty, Rhode Beauty and Fenty Beauty also do not collaborate on shows to market themselves at Fashion Week. This comes down to the brand’s individual preferences and whether they consider sponsorship a necessity for their success.

Conclusion

Identifying the potential of sponsorships in the fashion industry could be a leap forward in growing brand awareness and boosting revenue. Seeking collaborations with partners, especially during events such as Fashion Month, is a tried and true method that does not seem to slow down.

If your sponsorship proposition includes all the beneficial backstage, show, and event collaborations, all while integrating social media and delivering on your promises, you can take your brand’s identity and market position to the next level.

Photo by Rudy Issa on Unsplash

Working with the UK’s foremost narrative ballet company Northern Ballet, BDS has developed a new sponsorship strategy and a resultant new sales deck designed to attract and engage prospective sponsors, outline all benefits of the possible partnership, and showcase the unique opportunities arising from working with such a prestigious cultural phenomenon.

The Northern Ballet sponsorship deck highlights the company’s commercial strengths of pushing the boundaries of ballet through extensive touring schedules and achieving unprecedented exposure of the art of dance. The proposition reflects the company’s compelling nature to partners seeking engagement, exposure, and social impact, and offers them a pathway to connect with audiences through performances, digital content, and community initiatives.

Northern Ballet is offering the chance for extra exposure, as they now have a total reach of 12.8m across social media platforms and a digital footprint of over 800,000 unique users.

To maximise sponsorship value for potential partners, the sponsorship deck outlines key opportunities tailored for different business objectives, including brand affinity, client engagement, product showcasing, and corporate social responsibility initiatives.

A sponsorship model with Northern Ballet features four levels of partnership:

• Level 1: Official Partner
• Level 2: Official Supplier
• Level 3: Official Hospitality Partner
• Level 4: Official Supporter

The deck emphasised how each level of partnership provides its own unique set of benefits. Beyond those four levels, the sponsorship proposition reflects Northern Ballet’s year-round value packages, as they provide several partnership benefits, such as rights of association, access to the logos and imagery, presence at all Northern Ballet performances, the right to create digital content and add input into the planning of all Northern Ballet performances, accreditation in promotional materials, and much more.

A partnership with Northern Ballet allows potential partners the opportunity to demonstrate ethics and values, as they can have face-to-face access to 125,000 passionate fans and over 12 million digitally. The sponsorship proposition also promises seamless product integration and brand promotion through the Northern Ballet performances.

Focusing on sustainability and expansion, the deck emphasises the fact that partners of Northern Ballet would align with the company’s core values of inclusivity, sustainability, and artistic excellence. The proposition also includes options for tailored activations, such as pop-up events, exclusive content collaborations, and bespoke hospitality experiences at Quarry Hill, Northern Ballet’s state-of-the-art home in Leeds.

Partnering with Northern Ballet guarantees sustained brand visibility and impact, and through the comprehensive sponsorship deck, BDS and Northern Ballet have outlined a framework for attracting high-value partnerships to continue taking the art of ballet to new heights across the UK.

For more about how we can help implement sponsorship strategies for your organisation, be sure to get in touch today.

Photo by Nihal Demirci on Unsplash

Sponsorships are a cornerstone of marketing, but one common pitfall is the lack of proper measurement to ensure the sponsorship yields the optimum return on investment.

Here’s how you can ensure your sponsorship can reach new heights:

1. Set Clear Objectives

An effective sponsorship needs to follow through on specific, well-defined objectives.

Your sponsorship goals must follow the SMART framework, meaning Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. As an example, one mobile phone company’s goal could be unspecific such as to sell more units in the year, while another could have specific objectives such as increasing brand awareness by 18% in a year while increasing sales by 5%.

Such goals are defined, achievable, and most importantly measurable. This leads to the most important measuring unit for sponsorships: KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). KPIs act as a metric for specific statistics of a sponsorship’s success.

For instance, in 2001, the sponsorship strategy for the O2 Arena in Greenwich was perceived by some as simply a way to boost awareness of the O2 network, whereas the most important objective of O2 was to retain customers and reduce churn in the mobile phone industry. The sponsorship included 48-hour early access to concert tickets in the O2 before they went on general sale. The main KPI was to use this early access to retain customers and boost loyalty, not to raise awareness.

2. Research, Assessment, and Evaluation (RAE)

Your sponsorship needs to follow three phases for ideal alignment with your strategic goals:

• Research: It’s imperative that your research yields opportunities that align with your brand’s values, and most importantly, your audience. For instance, if you aim to do a big event for your brand in London, but most of your customers are from Glasgow and Liverpool, would it be effective to still hold it in London where they might not be able to go, or is it best to hold other events near your customers?
• Assessment: Your assessments need to gauge sponsorship value while combining strategic, brand, market, media, and rights values. Understanding these ensures you get meaningful returns. For example, a darts event may well not align with the values of a wealth management company, so it’s important to conduct this kind of analytics to understand relevancy.
• Evaluation: Once your strategy has produced a measurable number of KPIs, it’s important to track them through your campaign to measure brand, commercial, and engagement outcomes.

3. Key Performance Metrics

KPIs are the best indicators of a sponsorship’s effectiveness, but they are divided into two metrics themselves:

• Macro-Level KPIs: These measure the impact of the overall campaign, such as the percentage of sales increase, brand perception, and increases in brand sentiments. For example, macro-level KPIs can determine the customers’ feelings and attitudes towards your brand, their ratings, and whether or not they are a right fit for your company.
• Micro-Level KPIs: These KPIs measure channel-specific effectiveness, such as lead generation and social media engagement. For instance, a reel or short advertising your brand or company on a social media platform like Instagram or TikTok would be measurable through micro-level KPIs regarding its views, likes, comments, etc.

4. Impact Areas

The impact of your sponsorship strategy can be measured in three ways:

• Brand Impact: Brand impact can be tracked through measuring perception, advocacy, and awareness. Brand awareness does not mean that audiences are likely to purchase your product or service, it just means that they are aware of your brand.
• Commercial Impact: Commercial impact relates to the financial aspects of sales increases, customer acquisition, and market share. All of these can be boosted significantly with a good sponsorship strategy.
• Engagement Impact: Engagement can be more important than awareness, as it proves your audience is interested and interacting with your brand. This can then help track influencer reach and community relations.

5. Outcome-Based Measurement

Many businesses focus their marketing efforts on inputs such as brand awareness, but the real focus should be on outcomes like increased purchase intent, customer loyalty, retention, etc. Every strategy must contain inputs, but tracking outcomes helps assess the quality and effectiveness of your sponsorship strategy much more accurately.

With that in mind, it’s also worth noting that a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods helps paint the ROI picture much clearer. Quantitative methods include numbers like website visits, impressions, comments, etc, while qualitative methods are more personal like customer feedback, focus groups, and brand sentiment.

6. Measurement Phases

Measuring your sponsorship effectiveness is not a one-step process. For the best and most accurate results, there must be a three-step system of a pre-event stage, during-event stage, and post-event stage.

The pre-event stage deals with all the prep work, such as setting your goals, outcomes, and KPIs for the event. During the event, there must be continuous monitoring and analysis of audience engagement and expected results. As for the post-event stage, this is where you evaluate and compare your final metrics and outcomes to your initial expectations, ensuring greater insight and perspective.

Conclusion

Measuring your sponsorship strategy’s effectiveness is paramount for maximising value and guiding future decisions and endeavours. By setting your objectives clearly, doing comprehensive research, measuring your KPIs, analysing your impact areas, and focusing on outcomes, you can highlight the strengths and weaknesses of your strategy and continue to grow it to new heights.

Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash

Far too many prospective sponsors fail before they contact anyone.

The optimum way to obtain a sponsor is to get your sponsor proposition and sponsorship deck right before you approach anyone. This is not easy; preparatory work can often take a number of weeks.

The British Photography Awards approached BDS for their help in procuring sponsorship for an awards ceremony. The BDS advice was that an award ceremony by itself wasn’t worth the amount the BPA was seeking. However, we believed that reshaping the offer could achieve the sponsorship monies they were seeking, or indeed a greater amount.

Working very closely with the BPA, BDS then created a comprehensive and customised sponsorship deck that secured the mobile giant Samsung, the only prospective sponsor that was approached.

The deck was totally tailored to Samsung; it combined not just reach (numbers and data) and charity involvement, but also activation proposals totally aligned with Samsung’s latest products at the time.

Now the reworked sponsorship proposal not only offered year-round engagement but also briefly illustrated how it could be expanded into a global sponsorship property.

The main goal of the sponsorship deck was to be hyperpersonalised for Samsung. However, through its development, BDS also created a template that would be easily customisable and suitable for other sponsors. Some elements of the deck – such as the content marketing concepts – were purely aimed at Samsung, but the flexibility and versatility of the rest of the deck made it a model for other sponsorship approaches.

For more on how BDS can help identify and implement sponsorship strategies for your organisation, get in touch with us today.

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