Marketing Public Relations and Sponsorship Marketing

Marketing Public Relations and Sponsorship Marketing

This chapter focuses on tools a company can use to create goodwill between the company and its publics. This chapter specifically focuses on the following tools: marketing public relations, crisis management, sponsorship, event sponsorship, cause related marketing and corporate image advertising. These efforts are aimed at various corporate constituencies, including employees, suppliers, stockholders, governments, the public, labour groups, citizen action groups and consumers. In other words, most public relations (PR) activities do not involve marketing per se, but rather deal with general management concerns. This more encompassing aspect of public relations can be called general PR. For example, the aim of the PR function of a sport’s organisation such as Cricket Australia may be to manage and maintain a good reputation in the eyes of all stakeholders. Maintaining a good reputation may be challenging, as was evident in the recent incidents of inappropriate misbehaviours of some athletes. In 2018, the misbehaviour of individual cricketers tarnished the reputation of Cricket Australia. During the Australian’s men’s third test against South Africa in Cape Town, three players were involved in ball-tampering. David Warner was found guilty of planning the attempt to alter the surface of the ball with sandpaper. Steve Smith admitted to being aware of the plan and Cameron Bancroft was found guilty of following the instructions of Warner and of concealing evidence. Warner and Smith received a 12-month suspension from all national and international cricket, and Bancroft received a nine-month suspension. Although Darren Lehmann, the coach, was not aware of the incident, he stepped down from his role. Marketing public relations (MPR) is similar to public relations; however, it focuses more narrowly on issues likely to affect the relationship between customers and product sales. Relating to the Cricket Australia example, MPR would focus on how this inappropriate behaviour may impact on consumers’ perceptions of the brand. Publicity involves establishing positive contacts with the media. This might include press releases and press conferences in the form of product-release statements, executive statement releases and featured articles as part of content marketing. For example, all three cricketers involved showed their remorse. Warner tweeted his apology, while Bancroft and Smith attended press conferences in Perth and Sydney respectively. Establishing relationships with other publics includes fostering goodwill with the many constituencies listed above, such as shareholders. As we indicate later in this chapter, negative publicity regarding a brand can impact on the associated sponsors. For example, Cricket Australia lost a large endorsement deal due to the ball-tampering incident. Magellan Financial Group terminated its three-year contracts worth $20 million with the cricket team. It is thus important that brands should be conscious of their relationships with their stakeholders. Monitoring public opinion is very important given the nature of general PR and is sometimes contracted through opinion research suppliers. Indeed, Cricket Australia announced their commitment to investigate and improve the culture and conduct of Australia’s cricket in the wider community. This also may involve measuring blogs and social media for sentiments (i.e. the net of positive versus negative postings), as captured by firms such as Google Analytics, Nielsen Social and Radian6. Finally, there is a miscellaneous category of general PR duties, including educational efforts, speakers, scholarships, corporate donations and other philanthropic activities.

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