Sports No.1 Choice in Cause Marketing for Brands

In recent times, we are increasingly seeing brands promoting different socio-cultural causes as part of their marketing strategy. There are a couple of reasons for this:

• By aligning with different causes, brands get to position themselves as socially responsible entities and not just ones which exist purely to make business
• Consumers love such brands who effuse values that they share and identify with, and as a result, tend to develop a stronger preference and loyalty towards such brands

As a result, in the coming years, discussions surrounding cause marketing can be expected to consume far more time during boardroom meetings. In this blog post, we look at why brand managers should give a serious thought towards executing such cause marketing campaigns through sports.

MARKETING IS MORE EFFECTIVE THROUGH SPORTS

As seen in the link, experiential sports marketing events are far more immersive for the intended consumers than other types of marketing. Moreover, the fact that brands can deliver a message to their target audience at a point of maximum vulnerability in a stealthy and highly impactful manner ensures that such sports-based marketing tends to be more effective than marketing done through other types of events.

CAUSE MARKETING + SPORTS: A POTENT COMBINATION

As mentioned previously, cause marketing has the potential to holistically enhance a brand’s perception and get the target market segments to identify with the brand. Now if cause marketing is conducted through the medium of sports, the effect is bound to be greatly magnified, since as seen in the previous point, sports-based marketing has a higher effectiveness.

GREATER AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT WITH THE CAUSE

While there are certainly benefits of cause marketing, it is not a totally altruistic exercise. Brands seek to enhance their brand recall value by associating with causes. And therefore, not only do they intend to increase the degree of engagement with every involved member of the audience, but they also want to ensure that the engagement is high in numbers. And while this may serve the brand, it also ends up promoting the cause. The following are factors which make sports the ultimate medium of choice for brands to conduct cause marketing campaigns through:

• Sports events are attended by audience in large numbers. So, there is possibility to involve a high number of people in the cause marketing campaign
• During sports events, fans of similar players and teams tend to experience herd mentality to some extent. Thus, when you engage with few people as part of the cause marketing campaign, more people at the event will be drawn towards the campaign
• Sportspersons tend to be role models for fans. By involving sportspersons in the cause marketing campaigns, brands can get a high number of people to engage in the campaigns

The reasons mentioned above establish why brands would be well-advised to consider sports-based cause marketing as part of their brand-building exercise.