Major League Baseball and Sponsors
Think about your favorite sports team and then think about the sponsors that have associated with the organization. It does not matter what sport, just close your eyes or take a pen and paper and try and write down as many businesses that are associated with your team.
How many can you immediately name? Have they made enough of an impact to register in your long term memory? Has your impression of these brands improved since they struck a sponsorship deal? They certainly spend enough money to affiliate with a building/team/organization and the visual or stagnant advertising is just one component
So I did a little experiment on Wednesday evening and while watching ESPN, I tried to ignore the highlights and write down as many businesses as I could that received exposure, long enough for me to recognize the name and to scribble it down on scratch paper. You certainly do not tune in to ESPN to watch sponsor visibility but it is certainly a part of why sponsors affiliate with teams.
Here is what I saw from the following baseball highlights.
St. Louis Cardinals at Houston Astros
Dasani Water
Best Buy
First Community Bank
Corona Beer
Admini Staff
C&D
Farmer’s
Chicago Cubs at Philadelphia Phillies
Modells
Citizens Bank
Turkey Hall
Chevydealer.com
Milwaukee Brewers at Pittsburgh Pirates
Consul Energy
Trib
FSN
New Era
San Francisco Giants at Atlanta Braves
Sun Trust
Coca Cola
Zep
Geico
Aaron’s
Baltimore Orioles at New York Yankees
Modells
Toyota
Pepsi
Pepsi max
Sony
Hass
Casio
Avis
Ford
Delta
Ford
Mastercard
Budweiser
Corporate Exposure Seen in two or more baseball parks.
Stanley
State Farm
Stubhub
Any sane corporation is not relying solely on a static advertising program as part of its affiliation with a sports team. Those days are long gone for smart businesses. Today, It is all about activation and return on investment (ROI). Many times, the first step for a partner is to baseline or measure the amount of awareness the brand has with its fans. It then moves into programs on how to improve the brand image with the team and finally ways to sell more goods and services to the same fans. More about this in a different post.
A few other items I noticed while looking for sponsors.
* The Signs at Yankees stadium are larger than most fo the other stadiums I saw and it was easier to read the names of its sponsors.
* Exposure from company logos behind home plate received the most time in the highlights, but a few of the signs had a bad design, including one from Minute Maid, that read “Kids Free All Summer.” I really could not understand the message and it took an extra large focus to see it was in fact, Minute Maid.
* A few of the stadiums continue to have sight lines that do not support some of the signage being sold.
For Major League Baseball and Sponsors, the exposure still adds up to a winning formula for the sport.
