Sponsorship works because it works within our subconscious. Forming memories, mental associations and biases towards brands. And the most fascinating piece about all of it? The consumer doesn’t even realise it’s happening.
AIG have been the proud sponsor of Dublin GAA for 9 years previously and while we have made massive progress in brand awareness and affinity, we were tasked with leveraging the 10th anniversary of the sponsorship to ensure sponsorship activities drove business growth.
Awareness (94%) and trust (88%) in the AIG brand amongst Dublin GAA fans had never been higher, however we were not seeing a proportional throughput in sales actions by Dublin GAA Fans. Fans had stated their intention to purchase, so why was this not materialising in tangible outcomes?
We found out the hard way that people don’t always do what they say they will, so we turned to Neuroscience to form the basis of our research. We needed to understand whether our sponsorship activities were generating the required brain activity required to drive purchase behaviours.
Using Neuroscience we looked at the brain activity of the fans as they interacted with sponsorship assets to quantify the cognitive processes linked to desire, memory and purchasing.
The results demonstrated that narrative-based, relatable fan content, outperformed ‘elite content’ by being more memorable, more emotive and increasing purchase behaviours by almost 50%. Using these insights, the creative team developed the ‘Celebrating Support’ concept to focus on the stories highlight the fans that make the game so special.
