Thursday last week, ESA’s latest webinar was on the theme of Sustainability in Sponsorship. My colleague at Formula E Julia Pallé is a sustainability specialist who joined the panel to share her expert view:
“Sustainability in sponsorship is like getting married, you want to make sure you choose the best partner that shares the same values and the same lifestyle! Brands today are creating partnerships based on the common mission they have which is to use their expertise to improve the triple bottom line: environmental protection, social inclusivity and economic prosperity.”
I can’t describe the challenges that face us all or the solutions to them better than Julia can – in fact, I’m learning from Julia every day. However, I do know how important it is that we recognise and respond to them. The UN’s Sustainability Goals and how organisations can positively impact them came up in more or less every session I attended at the Cannes Festival of Creativity last year, whether as a brief reference or a focus. But how can we as individuals make a difference?
As a member of the sponsorship community, it struck me that the working best practices we already espouse make us ripe to take an active role in sustainability, be it environmental, social or economic. We discuss topics like purpose, evaluation, legacy, influence and communication every day. Why not appropriate those skills to make a vital contribution to sustainability goals?
Purpose
For a sponsorship to be sustainable, many (including me) would argue that both the original pairing between sponsor and rights holder and the execution of the rights package need to be purpose driven. I’ve written before in this blog that, for me, an organisation’s purpose – and its alignment with my personal purpose and values – is critical to my choice of job. (It of course helps if they want me too J).
When I take on a new role, I see it as a partnership between me and that organisation. I join forces with the existing team to deliver a wider mission and vision. It’s a responsibility and I hold myself accountable for my part. The same applies to corporate partnerships, or in fact any relationship. Even when the raw materials are there for success, each side needs to be ready and willing to invest in making that success a reality. Nothing could be more relevant to sustainability. We may not have all the answers, but we can find the way that feels most natural to us and stick to it.
Some of us may become active campaigners, but we can also make a difference through small changes in our day-to-day lives – choosing sustainable but efficient travel options, switching to a renewable energy provider, shopping in our old wardrobe rather than in stores full of new clothes or having a less meat intensive diet even for a few days a week (besides we’ve all seen the gains Netflix’s Game Changers promises). And we’re much more likely to be successful if we each chart our own tailored course – which reminds me of another key sponsorship lesson: carefully target your content to your audience.
Evaluation
Whether we’re running small scale test projects, rolling out large scale activations based on clear insight or simply going about our everyday working lives, we need to be learning. I’m sure that’s a constant mantra in your workplace just as it always has been in mine. To learn, we need to evaluate what has gone before, what worked well, what could be better and iterate based on the new information we have available to us.
This best practice, which is as potent in the sponsorship industry as any other, reminds me of three things:
- We need to pay attention to the evidence. We all know some statistics can be taken out of context and manipulated to unsavoury ends, but if we have a credible source and useful data then we should listen to it.
- It’s never too late to try a new approach. Change can be intimidating, but it can also be exciting, especially if you approach it well informed and as a team with a common goal.
- Learning is an ongoing process. Effectively monitoring and evaluating one piece of work is just a steppingstone to the next one. Like people, industries and the environment, best practice keeps evolving, we need to evolve with it.
Legacy
The dictionary tells us sustainability is “the quality of being able to continue over a period of time.” How often have you sat in a meeting discussing how to create ‘always on’ engagement, a campaign that can drive loyalty over the course of years, or an idea with a legacy? Everyone must remember the legacy plans of London 2012 Summer Olympics bursting onto the scene long before, and resonating long after, the Games themselves, clearly registering in the public consciousness as well as across the industry.
We work tirelessly to create and deliver sponsorship campaigns with that long-term filter. Sustainability is then surely a logical follow-on of this behaviour. How do we build lasting legacies? The climate crisis is a central blocking factor to long-term plans for a clean and safe future for generations to come, so let’s put it at the heart of our discussions.
The Brundtland Report’s definition of sustainable development reads: “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” All good partnerships are mutually beneficial; you consider your own needs alongside those of the other party. You could argue that when we act sustainably, we are treating future generations as our partners, for now we may be the ones looking out for them, but before too long they’ll be the ones looking out for us.
Influence
If we want to be influential, we need to be trusted by those we are talking to. Even mid-pandemic, Social Chain predicted the influencer marketing industry would be worth $15 billion by 2022. Edelman and Kantar have equally released recent data to show that social media engagement is up 61% in the later stages of the pandemic and 63% of 18-34s trust what an influencer says about a brand over what the brand says itself.
When we work with influencers, we see that their communities look, yes for great content aligned to their passions, but more importantly for voices that feel honest, relatable and unfiltered. We can learn from this. For us to be effective ambassadors of sustainability, we need to find our authentic passion points within the debate. We don’t need to know everything (no one ever does), but we can talk openly as we learn and share the good, the bad and the ugly with our communities.
This approach will make us more accessible. We may even find we have cheerleaders keeping us on track as we make changes to our comfortable routine (something we’re getting increasingly used to at the moment) and become increasingly credible spokespeople for the cause.
Communication
Some time ago, I asked an interview candidate about ways of building effective relationships at work. They responded by referencing Dr Gary Chapman’s Love Languages. There was a moment of mental pause on my side while I got up to speed with where the conversation was going, which was quickly rationalised when I understood the point being made.
For anyone who isn’t familiar with Dr Chapman’s work, he explains that to create an effective partnership you need to understand which love language best resonates with the other party. You can’t simply treat them as you’d want them to treat you, since what is important to one party may differ from what is important to the other.
He highlights that even when we know that what we’ve embarked upon is the right partnership and why we’ve invested in it is equally well placed (due to that shared purpose and values), we still need to focus on how we work together and bring it to life. In the world of sponsorship, this insight applies to how we communicate with our partners and how also we communicate about our partnerships to increase awareness, engagement and loyalty.
Chapman delineates five languages: gifts, acts, words, time and touch.
NB: let’s clearly remove touch from a working context – although when we consider sustainability, tangibly playing your part in planting trees or helping to protect biodiversity are of course excellent ways to contribute.
It may be no surprise to anyone who reads these blogs that a 5-minute online quiz tells me that ‘words’ are the language that resonates most profoundly with me. My takeout though is that I need to spend time considering what is most important to others, not impose verbosity upon them. (Do we think I’ve learnt this lesson yet…?)
The above lessons apply to our work in sponsorship and equally apply to our role in tackling the climate crisis. Global warming is a fact. Never has its impact on wildlife and the planet been clearer than during this period of lockdown as we see the world around us start to breath more freely.
It is our duty to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and we must start now. If we don’t cut down global emissions by 75% by 2030, the world as we know it will no longer exist. It is predicted we would suffer extreme temperature rises, increased climate catastrophes like droughts, wildfires or tsunamis and resultant social implications such as population displacement.
Moreover, to ensure some level of international parity is maintained, countries with more developed economies and technological infrastructures need to step up and reduce their emissions by more than 75% to allow growth in developing nations while still hitting the global emission reduction target. We can’t ignore this evidence; we need to embrace change and keep learning. To come back to where I started – I’m not a paragon of sustainability in any of its forms. I’m still at the start of my journey to understand how I can best play my part personally and professionally. There’s a long road ahead but I’m determined to learn and make an active contribution. The brake we need to jump on to make the necessary difference is huge and heavy and will need a lot of weight applied, but I’m ready to do my bit (and make mistakes as I go), using the lessons I’ve learnt as a sponsorship professional to guide me on the way.
Katie Traxton is an ESA Board Director and Chief Communications Officer at Formula E. She was previously Managing Partner at WeAreFearless, ESA’s Pan-Europe Sponsorship Agency of the Year.