There is little doubt that a tie-in between a brand and a special event can be quite lucrative. Past research often has shown that advertising typicality (how well an ad is viewed as representative of a particular product category) creates positive advertising effects. But there was no known research that examined the level of typicality with respect to sporting events.
The authors ran two pretests and one main experiment involving more than 2,200 respondents. The type of experiment—discrete-choice experiment—was used to demonstrate its reliability as a method for assessing the typicality of various combinations of event-related elements.
Key findings:
- “Event associations were transferred only when the event-related advertising messages, which communicated the association between the event and the brand, either explicitly or implicitly, were highly typical of the event.”
- “… some event elements, such as logos or taglines, improve the perceived typicality of an advertisement, so official sponsors may enjoy an edge.”
- The authors recommended “… including representative elements of the event, such as an athlete competing or a symbol of the city hosting the event” in the creative
- For non-sponsors: “results point to a direct opportunity to ambush sponsors.” That can lead to the transfer of the event image to the non-sponsor’s brand instead.
Editor’s Note: Journal of Advertising (JAR) paper preview by authors Marc Mazodier (Zayed University and Kedge Business School), Armando Maria Corsi (Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, University of South Australia), and Pascale G. Quester (University of Adelaide). The full article will be in the new JAR.