Its interactive phone-in and text voting platform meant that it was particularly attractive to telephone network providers making the Dreams association look even more incongruous.
David Charlesworth, head of sponsorship at Channel 4, admits the association might look surprising but explains the celebrity version is a very different product to Big Brother. ‘Celebrity Big Brother only runs for three weeks so it's all about timing. Dreams wants to increase its brand stature and the sponsorship will help it do that,' he says.
The fact that brands are using sponsorship for short-term tactical brand objectives is revealing - historically a TV sponsorship used to be seen as one of the most significant parts of a marketing campaign and many were both long-running and big budget, as advertisers invested considerable money in ensuring that the creative fit between brand and programme was seamless. For example, Bailey's sponsorship of Sex and the City repositioned it as a drink for a younger market all year round while Gordon's Gin's sponsorship of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares has developed into a partnership with Gordon Ramsay himself, who is now an ambassador for the brand across all of its marketing collateral.
Oliver Croom-Johnson, director at SPP, the sponsor division of Walker Media, says that as sponsorship has become a part of the wider marketing mix and used in a strategic way rather than its central plank. Equally, as the Dreams example also reveals, the investment in bespoke and distinct sponsorship creative is no longer as prevalent as it once was.
Gary Knight, the sponsorship, content partnerships and interactive sales director at ITV, says that those advertisers that do not do this could be missing a trick. He says that a key area of sponsorship is convincing the brand to do great creative and have an affinity with the show. ‘Increasingly we are spending more time with creative agencies. If they don't get the creative right they run the risk of diluting the relationship the brand has with the consumer. A brand needs a high impact creative to convince consumers and some agencies can be slow of the mark in embracing this.'
Of course the growth in the number of channels means that there are more sponsorship opportunities for advertisers and more ways to target the right audience. But what does remain consistent with the pioneering days of sponsorship is that the sponsorships that work hardest for the brands they represent are those that have a strong link to the show and tie into an integrated marketing campaign. Sponsorship is getting more sophisticated, but it can't make a big impact without a strong marketing strategy to support it.
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