The importance of creative match in television sponsorship

Abstract

It is one of the accepted wisdoms of sponsorship literature that there should be a good fit between sponsor and sponsored. This paper reports an exploratory study into the way in which programme audiences respond to television sponsors’ credits and to the sponsorships they announce. The study used a purposive sample of young television viewers and focused on the programmes they like to watch. It was found that, although the viewers expected a fit between the programme and the product or its image, they would accept a sponsor that added to the entertainment value of the programme. Clever or funny creative treatments that match the programme content apparently make up for a lack of fit elsewhere.

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Notes on contributors

Rosalind Masterson

Rosalind Masterson is a Senior Lecturer at the Leicester Business School, De Montfort University where she specialises in Marketing Communications (particularly sponsorship), and e-marketing. She is author of Marketing: an introduction (2004), published by McGraw-Hill.