In many respects, broadcast sponsorship is in the process of shaking off its traditional image as nothing more than an advertising buy bought by a brand owner's advertising agency and little different from a 30-second ad or radio spot.
The broadcast industry is going through one of the biggest revolutions in its 80-year history with the prospect of on-demand programming becoming the predominant way that viewers and listeners access content from the small screen in the corner of the living room or through mobile, iPod, and other listening devices.
And despite the penetration by other interactive platforms, such as web TV and mobile TV, these emerging platforms have as yet to make any significant impact on traditional brand communication and sponsorship activities.
However, one of the key forces for change within traditional broadcast sponsorship is behaviour and the psychographic changes that are currently taking place within the audience will have a major influence over the shape of broadcast sponsorship in the future.
Change in audience behaviour
In essence, the behaviour of the audience is moving from passive to active participation so that TV watching or listening to radio in the future will be a very different and less sedentary experience than it has been in the past 80 years.
The problem is no one told the folks at Ofcom that the revolution was coming.
In fact, it's already here.
PVR and the interruption model
Given that the traditional interruption model of TV advertising is no longer as effective as it was a decade ago, and coupled with the rise of personal video recorders (PVR) that permit viewers to record programs free of advertising, broadcast sponsorship is potentially more attractive for brand owners than traditional advertising.
However, given the saturation usage of broadcast sponsorship, this technique is increasingly starting to look more like advertising or a media buy masquerading as sponsorship.
As a result, brand owners and their agencies have started to explore other hybrid-broadcast sponsorship models, such as product placement, advertiser-funded programming (AFP), as well as controlling their own TV and radio channels -- what I call brandcasting.
Why Ofcom is behind the times
Convergence isn't just about technological devices talking to each other. It's also an attitude of mind.
In the media landscape that's increasingly fragmented, it's small wonder that brand owners are creating new platforms for brand communication and re-wiring their communication channels in the hope of connecting with an increasingly transient and loyal-less audience.
If we stick making distinctions between where advertising stops and where sponsorship begins and vice versa, we'll start to look like we're in some kind of time warp. The world isn't black and white, is it? Instead, it's converged.
Ofcom would be better served revisiting the Communications Act 2003 and perhaps suggesting amendments to it rather than slavishly applying increasingly meaningless distinctions that can in fact damage its reputation and standing with brand owners.
Let's face it. The world's a far different place than it was in 2002 which might as well be a quarter of a century in internet years.
Convenient?
It's convenient for Ofcom to carry this on and it's easy to discern why.
From the regulator's position, simply add rules that currently apply to programme sponsorship and mix. After all, it can look like that you're not creating new regulations or more bureaucracy as well as keeping in with Brussels by toeing the line with the EU Television Without Frontiers Directive. So everyone's happy?
Well, no. Those same rules are hopelessly behind the times.
Proposed regulations
I'll take just one proposed regulation for channel sponsorship that illustrates this point: "Ensure channel sponsorship arrangements are transparent"
On the face of it, nothing wrong with that, is there? Except when you peel back the regulation, lurking behind it is the restriction that the sponsor's name can't appear in the title of the channel. Eh? I can't think of a better way of being transparent, can you?
And the reason? The need to maintain separation between sponsor and programme content.
So if Gillette World of Sport can be sold in over 200 countries for the last 20 years, why can't they have their own channel providing sports content, news, information and programming of the same name if they want to?
It's a bit barking to treat the audience in a way that they need to be protected from any blurring between content and brand communication.
If this is the case, why then is the video game TOCA Race Driver 3: The Ultimate Racing Simulator that features the new Honda Civic model launched this year such a commercial success?
Kids today are much more brand aware and media literate, not less.
So who are Ofcom trying to protect by clinging to increasingly vacuous distinctions between sponsorship and advertising messages?
Ultimate power isn't with brand owners or even with broadcasters. And it certainly shouldn't be with Ofcom.
It's with the viewer. And it's the on/off switch.
Solution?
Ofcom needs to move with the times rather than try to shoe horn out-of-date regulation that's so out of place in the modern and fragmented multi-channel environment.
Submissions to Ofcom's proposed recommendations can be made by visiting:
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The closing date is April 20 2006.
Ardi Kolah is strategic consultant specialising in brand communication and sponsorship. He is independently ranked in the top 50 marketing thinkers in the world by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (Guru Gallery ) and created the concept of brandcasting in 2000.
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