Week 9

Sponsorship and event management are probably the two concepts I came into the course with, however since I have learnt they don't solely define PR. Sponsorship is the purchase of specific rights and benefits associated with events, organisations or individuals. Also sponsoring an event generally means the company expects a return, monetary or other. According to the text there are 3 types of sponsorship:
1Philanthropic: generally associated with the arts, medicine, education, research and closely linked with donating.
2Corporate:normally of an event or activity.
3.Marketing: cash and goods in return for tangible revenue, very results orientated.
Associated with this last point is something I found very interesting-Ambush marketing. This is when a company mis-represents itself being associated with an event when it has no official, legal or moral right to do so. This is something I have never even thought of, however such things are fair game. It might be morally wrong to write Powerade in the sky over a Gatorade sponsored event but gee it would attract some attention, maybe even media coverage. As a PR consultant when managing an event I guess vigilance is the key because in the end it comes down to what happens on the day. Event management has four facets:
1.Feasibility- checking the cost, expected revenue, publics effected, reasons for sourcing and time of the event.
2.Planning: creating a plan by working backwards from the date and scheduling it properly.
3.Execution:following the critical path and carrying everything out smoothly on the big day.
4.Evaluation: including a debriefing meeting, event assessment and business activity assessment.
In the end however, even with this in place success comes down to the circumstances that arise on the day!