Looking up the television rugby details the other day, I was reminded how effectively sponsorship has inveigled its way into our activities and enterprises. The electronic programme guide announced: Absa Currie Cup: Investec Western Province Stormers versus Mobil Blue Bulls at Securicor Loftus. 17:00 on DStv SuperSport 2. Six-in-one — not bad.
Sponsorship is an everyday phenomenon, but should it be confined mainly to sports, motor-racing or the arenas in which they take place? After all, the idea behind it is to get as much exposure of the sponsor’s name as possible. The fact that the Minardi team doesn’t get to win any grand prix races doesn’t mean Minardi drivers aren’t festooned with logos for oil, fuel, insurance companies, cigarettes. A lot of individuals and events are in the public’s eye at least as often as racing drivers, rugby or cricket teams. The sponsors don’t seem to care whether the teams they support win or lose. It’s seeing their names painted in vast letters on the turf or jerseys that counts.
‘Sponsor presence” is the ad industry term, and sponsors fight for space at big sports encounters where the television audience can run into many millions. What sponsors should recognise is that their names can enjoy prodigious exposure if attached to lesser than grand events. If it’s simply coverage they want, they should look wider. Go back a few years to a widely televised event where one participant didn’t miss a chance. Everywhere you looked at the Chris Hani funeral ceremony there were banners advertising the undertakers: on the awning above the coffin, on the doors of the huge white hearse, on the lectern used by the speakers were emblazoned the logo of City Funerals.
Sponsors need to start plastering their names on celebrities as well. Just imagine what exposure some company or brand could have got out of the recent death of popular singer Brenda Fassie. And don’t tell me that introducing commercial aspects to nationally fashionable tragedy is in bad taste. The whole Fassie decline and death was an exercise in grotesquely bad taste. It was perfect territory for the right kind of sponsor. How did our second free-to-air broadcaster miss such a break? It should have been the ‘e.tv Brenda Fassie Degeneration Hospitalisation and Death”. They could have followed up by erecting a little e.tv gravestone as a lasting reminder of how low in the barrel it’s possible to scrape.
Whatever the character or potential success of the event or individual, why don’t more sponsors step up, find suitable public figures on whom to hang their logos? They’d get a lot more focus, too. If anyone got a lot of press space it was the Independent Newspapers house plagiarist. So, why didn’t the appropriate company step in and make hay while the media sun was shining so brightly on the wretched fellow? Why didn’t he become Nashua Copiers Darrel Bristow-Bovey? He could have walked around in a T-shirt with a slogan on it: ‘Only Nashua Copiers reproduce as faithfully as Darrel B-B. Saving you time, saving you effort.”
If a sponsor wanted to see its company’s name up in every newspaper, radio or television programme, what better than a certain high-profile trial that would guarantee literally tens of thousands of sponsor name exposures a day. News reports in tabloids like the Yellow Pages Daily Sun would bristle with lines such as: ‘In the fraud and corruption trial of Durban businessman Toilet Duck Schabir Shaik, being heard before Grandpa Headache Powders Judge Hillary Squires, much reference was made to donations Toilet Duck made to Nkobi Holdings Vice-President Jacob Zuma. GEC Limelight advocate Kessie Naidu represents Nkobi Holdings Zuma. A Deloitte Scorpions investigator gave evidence this morning.”
Come on all you ‘creative” types in marketing and advertising. Get imaginative as well. In its to-the-death struggle with Airbus Industrie, can the Boeing aircraft company not do much better than attach its name in perpetuo to our peripatetic president? Imagine a reporter on CNN: ‘At the G8 meeting today Boeing Bizjet President Thabo Mbeki spoke on the need for African poverty relief. And it is believed it only cost R800 000 to fly this fuel-efficient luxury jet over here.” And don’t stop with the boss. The Cabinet overflows with personalities who get a tremendous amount of television and press exposure. So why not Virodene Nkosazana-Dlamini-Zuma; Northern Free State Beetroot Farmer’s Cooperative Manto Tshabalala-Msimang?
Large public institutions, enterprises and celebrities should also go the corporate sponsorship way. Why not the SABMiller Appeal Court; the African National Congress SABC News Department; the Johnnie Walker Road Accident Fund; the Chesterfield Mild Lung Cancer Relief Organisation; the GlaxoSmithKline Treatment Action Campaign; the Viagra Twilight Homes; the Telkom Unemployment Relief Centre; the Hoover Parliamentary Standing Committee; Mercedes Baleka Mbete, Christian Thieves Brotherhood Allan Boesak — the list could go on as long as there’s something to flog to a public ever willing to soak it up.
PS: If any readers have further ideas on suitable sponsorships, please drop an e-mail to [email protected] and I’ll publish the best ones in a later column. No prizes but immense prestige.