Leveraging Rivalries in Sponsorship Activation

Notable celebrity-brand partnerships drive significant exposure in the marketing and advertising world, but a key question persists: what goes into the process behind which brands source, evaluate and ultimately select celebrity endorsements as part of a larger marketing strategy? Is this selection an arbitrary process, or one that carefully aligns with strategic objectives surrounding customer passion points, new business goals, and support for emerging product lines? Written in collaboration with Mastercard's VP and Head of Sponsorships for North America Michael Goldstein, this case examines Mastercard's overarching sponsorship strategy, summarizes notable athlete endorsement theory and models for endorser selection, and ultimately tasks students with the assignment of working through a hypothetical, but applied, endorser selection process featuring eight (8) prominent soccer athletes and their adjoining E-Poll endorser scores.

A long time sponsor of FIFA, National American Brewing Company (NABC) is fresh off a wildly successful 2014 Men’s World Cup activation when scandal rocks FIFA’s leadership group and casts a shadow on all involved. As the optics get worse and pressure mounts from media, fans, and internal stakeholders, NABC has a decision to make, one that may shape the future of their sponsorship portfolio and directly impact their business for better or worse. Students are tasked with conducting a cost benefit analysis on both sides of the issue, and creating a management recommendation to senior leadership outlining both the company’s path forward, and a communication plan to execute it. Learning opportunities abound from this real world case touching business ethics, corporate social responsibility, and sponsorship management.

For nearly a century, owners of U.S. professional sports teams have lobbied respective governmental bodies for public subsidies to build stadiums and arenas across the country, using franchise relocation as leverage. Myriad justifications have been used as a defense for the public subsidization of this private enterprise, ranging from the economic impact of capital intensive projects to the psychic regional benefit of being a host city to a professional sports franchise. But do these justifications hold up under increased scrutiny? In this case, students are placed in the position of the Mayor of Oakland as she is faced with a dilemma regarding publicly subsidizing a new Raiders stadium. Students will examine the issue through the lens of multiple key stakeholders, and will ultimately have to decide whether the city should utilize public funds to keep the Davis family happy and the Raiders in Oakland, or withhold funding for public good and risk the franchise relocating elsewhere.

Written in consultation with Bank of America's sponsorship marketing team, this case places students directly in the position of an agency partner tasked with activating a complex national MLB sponsorship contract. Armed with a typical agency brief and a set of compelling sport marketing assets, students are tasked with activating Bank of America's MLB sponsorship via the brand's #MLBMemoryBank campaign. Integrating insights about baseball, the banking category, and sponsorship best practices is a complex task, one that fosters a rich understanding of brand sponsorship pulled directly from the front lines of the sports industry.