In this solo episode of the Speak PR Podcast, host Jim James—an entrepreneur and PR veteran with over 25 years of experience—explores how sponsorship can be a powerful, yet under‑utilized, public‑relations tool for small and mid‑size companies. He begins by debunking the myth that sponsorship is only for massive brands or trivial local events, positioning it instead as a strategic avenue for visibility, networking, and brand building. James walks through a concrete case study with Action Coach, a business‑coaching firm in southwest England, describing a six‑month webinar partnership that includes logo sharing, speaking slots, newsletter article placement, and backlinking—all low‑cost for the sponsor but high‑value in audience access and credibility. He then broadens the discussion with academic research from the University of Canterbury on sponsorship congruity theory, highlighting the “AFIT” sweet spot where a sponsor is close enough to an event to spark interest without being overly obvious. Using the high‑profile example of INEOS and its founder Jim Ratcliffe’s multi‑sport sponsorships (Formula 1, sailing, cycling), James illustrates how even a chemicals company can leverage sports to lay groundwork for a future consumer automotive brand. The episode further outlines the strategic benefits of sponsorship—direct audience reach, networking with fellow speakers, content generation (photos, social media), ambassador creation, and staff/customer engagement—while noting that the true ROI often lies in relationships rather than immediate sales. James also addresses the COVID‑19 landscape, pointing out that many traditional sponsors are pulling back, creating openings for smaller brands to step in, especially in virtual formats like online festivals. He shares his own experience creating the British Motorsport Festival to give niche brands a platform when trade‑show access was prohibitive. The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to identify or create sponsorship opportunities that align with their brand values and to view sponsorship as a holistic PR strategy rather than a direct advertising spend.
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Hi, and welcome to the Speak PR Podcast.
My name is Jim James.
And I am an entrepreneur who's been running multiple businesses, and also running a PR firm for over 25 years. And on this podcast, I'd like to share thoughts and insights that I've got that I believe could help entrepreneurs and people running businesses to get noticed for what they do, using some of the tools and some of the tricks that agencies use with big companies.
And today, I'd like to talk about sponsorship.
Now sponsorship is something that many people believe is either for massive companies, or for just a local sponsorship, even of your children's event. I've taken the, the view over the years that sponsorship is a great way To get involved in an event or a campaign, and to be engaged in it, to actually get in front of people, but also possibly to make a difference.
Now, I'm interested in in sponsorship, and because I am now just working with the Action Coach team down here in the southwest of England, and we're just working on a sponsorship agreement for their webinar series where East West Public Relations will be the official partner. For their growing and very dynamic webinar series as they pivot from all the face-to-face coaching that they do. Peter and Andy are now working on making their, their company more of a distance and remote learning, but also more of a broader, even global community. And so it's this focus on business and this focus on growth that really resonates for me as a PR communicator. So why would I want to work with a, a business coaching company doing a webinar? Well, it gives me an opportunity to meet their customers who may not be directly asking for PR, but who may over time be interested in some of the knowledge and the wisdom that I would like to share that I think can add value. And along the way, then we can have some conversations about how I might be able to help their business offline outside of the sponsorship. Now, obviously, my sponsorship for this local webinar is relatively small amount of money, and we structure it whereby we'll have a 6-month term We'll have some logo sharing, and I'll have the opportunity to be on some of the webinars and also to include some of my articles in their newsletter, which goes out to their community. And that's a community I wouldn't reach on my own, but also on their website to have a link back to my website. So these are all ways that actually don't cost Action Coach any money. Because all the things that we're asking for really are profile and access. So they're in effect getting money for nothing. But what they are getting, of course, is an opportunity to position their event as a professional and sponsored event. And of course, they're not getting money for nothing because they're working incredibly hard on building a community and this fantastic content where they're doing twice a week, these speaking and webinar events with known speakers and a team of consultants on the call with business owners. Now, what about during COVID I noticed that, you know, with the sports being cancelled, the Premier League will have lost some £750 million. The Japan Olympics cancellation is reputedly worth some £2 billion in terms of losses. But not everybody is stopping sponsoring, and if we look, for example, at Formula One, we'll see that James Ratcliffe, the British founder of INEOS Chemicals, has sponsored the Lewis Hamilton Mercedes Formula One team, reportedly for some twenty million pounds. He also, it turns out, has acquired the Ben Ainsley sailing team and is sponsoring the what used to be Team Sky is now the Team Ineos. This is the the cycling team that of course won the Tour de France. Now, what is someone like James Radcliffe doing sponsoring mainstream sports when he has a 20,000-person company making chemicals around the world? Well, Mr. Radcliffe, as you may have seen, is going to be launching a new car, and it's going to be in the mold of a functional car to take over really where the Defender, the Land Rover Defender, has, has left off. So actually, INEOS on the sports cars and on the sailing boat and on the bikes actually doesn't make sense as INEOS, the chemicals brand, but it does start to lay the groundwork for what will be a consumer brand. Now, I was interested to read some research by, um, some researchers from the University of Canterbury. Now, I'm from Canterbury, so I was pretty excited that some good learning is coming out of there. Now, this paper was written by Emma Jagrade, John Watson, and John G. Watson in 2001, entitled Sponsorship and the Congruity Theory. A theoretical framework for explaining consumer attitudes and recall of event sponsorship. Now, if you don't have the time to go back and read it all, it's within an Advances in Consumer Research volume. What they've been saying, which is interesting, is that consumers don't necessarily remember the brands that sponsor the events, and the research actually shows that sometimes when the brand is wholly congruent with the event, the people that are at the event forget that that was the sponsor. And they cite an Olympics where people thought that Nike was the sponsor when in fact Reebok was the sponsor. So they have found that Sometimes when the sponsorship is incongruent, i.e., when the sponsor is entirely not relevant or related to the event, it's kind of irksome and people find it almost annoying, strange enough, because there's no relevance at all to the sponsorship and the event. And then they found that there is what they call an AFIT, which is a company that is close enough to the event but is not entirely congruent, and it sparks some interest, piques the interest of the audience as to why that company should be sponsoring. And obviously INEOS is a petroleum company, and motorsport has petroleum. Ben Ainslie is a British sailor, and Team Sky, or now Team INEOS, is also a British racing team. So that's the link. But of course, uh, James Ratcliffe is doing it because he's laying the groundwork for building the INEOS brand for his new automotive, uh, brand that he's going to be bringing out. So it creates this question then for, for me, and also for perhaps for you, of sponsorship as an opportunity. Because there will be many brands right now which can't afford to continue the sponsorship that they had before. And so there will be many events and new events popping up where the traditional brands actually can't afford to sponsor it. So if you have sponsorship opportunities or you see some like I'm doing with Action Coach, How would you structure that, and what would it bring you? So the way that I've looked at it is in terms of the value of the the audience I'm going to be meeting. And when people like Ineos pay twenty million pounds for the F1, they've got just a few decals and logos on the car. But of course, that's TV rights. And what Ratcliffe has said in the in the in the news. He was interviewed in The Times. Ratcliffe said that sporting investments had raised the profile of INEOS and facilitated business deals in territories such as China and the Middle East. So one is the, the reputation of the company, and the other is the brand awareness. But of course, anybody that's ever been a speaker at an event knows that actually often the value in speaking at an event is the other speakers that one gets to meet as much as the audience. And if you are a player somehow as a sponsor of any size, it gives you a different kind of right to if you're just an attendee. And that can translate into being really good value for money. So if there's an opportunity to sponsor or create an event and be a sponsor, then that's worth thinking about from a PR point of view. In China, when I was running the Morgan business, I was also the interim CEO for Lotus Cars in China and also the vice chair of the Chamber of Commerce. And I created the British Motorsport Festival because there was no Goodwood Festival-style event for brands. And getting into the main trade shows was almost impossible for the niche brands. And if you could get in, it was extremely expensive. So the ROI wasn't there. So I did speaking at events, for example, at universities and design shows to talk about British design and automotive engineering. But I also created a platform in the motorsport festival in order to give us an opportunity to sponsor and to bring people to us. So by the funding, I was able to get other brands to all contribute and create a platform for Morgan, which on its own it could not have had. So is there an opportunity for you and your company to either find a sponsorship opportunity or to build and create one where it doesn't exist? And right now I think we're seeing a lot of opportunity in innovation due to the COVID-19 stopping people taking events as they normally take place and building them differently. The Festival of Speed at the Goodwood Festival this year is going to be a 1-week online event, for example, which will be a fundamental difference to the kind of events that normally takes place. So we're finding now that there are opportunities for creating sponsorship. It could be advertising, it could be speaking, it could be networking, could be access to the mailing list of those people who are building a community. And of course, if you're able to then be a participant or even to shape that event Then it's not so much necessarily that your brand is congruent. In other words, you're not necessarily trying to sell what you have directly to the people that attend that event. So, for example, Ineos is not going to be selling its petroleum to the people that watch F1. But it is also then being seen by other corporates and automotive and other, as I did in China when I was trying to start the the Lotus. One cup race, we gave space on the cars in return for money. So the other benefit of sponsorship, of course, is generation of content. We're talking a lot about social media and the need for generating content these days. And looking, for example, at Twitter and my post yesterday, the amount of content that Twitter users and followers are demanding is almost constant. And on Instagram as well, and Facebook. So the other big benefit for people like INEOS, for James Radcliffe, is the, the photo opportunities. What content is going to be created as a result of sponsorship? Those photo moments. Of course, there are opportunities to bring your corporate clients to those events. To get your special passes, as it were, for special tickets for your partners and your customers. But also you could have the participants in the event become your ambassadors for your brand. So they may be wearing the t-shirts, wearing the shorts, they may be at home even now in COVID, but as we've seen, on and on and on. Now, it's not just influencers that are important, it's people like people who are influencing other people. So participants in sport, be they the, the, the sports people themselves or the business people themselves, they are going to be influencers. They'll have their own community. So sponsorship gives an opportunity to reach out to those people as well and to engage them in your brand.
So just to finish that up then on sponsorship, it's an opportunity to get involved and to get your company involved, but also quite possibly to get your own staff and your customers all together around a cause, something that you believe in or something that resonates with your brand.
But as James Ratcliffe of INEOS has illustrated, to think about sponsorship in a strategic way. If you've got a new business or a new line that's coming out in some time to come, why not use sponsorship as a way of starting to draw an audience and getting them to be introduced to the brand without actually having to tell them too much about the product? Because sponsorship is by and large not product, it's brand. There are many organizations right now, profit and nonprofit, that are desperate to find partners both for cash and also for services in kind. I'm doing that in my own very small way with Action Coach here. Action Coach is a global organization of amazing coaches, and I've been lucky enough to get myself aligned with the local group down here in in Somerset and, uh, and Northeast, uh, Bath. But if you ask yourself, where can you align your company? Find an event or a cause that's not congruent, not something that seems to be inevitable and logical, because as the research shows, that means that the audience that sees your brand may take it for granted, or they may just think it's part of the show. But don't make it something that's so not obvious that people just question why you're there. Pick a— pick an event, pick an activity that is an indication of where your company is going, not necessarily where it's come from. And as we all move through COVID, we all need to think about where our businesses are going. And sponsorship is a great way both to get your brand out there engage your staff and your audiences, but also in many ways to get back into the market and start the energy. And that's what we're all going to need post-COVID. My name is Jim James, and thank you so much for listening to the Speak PR podcast, where I've been working to share some thoughts and some insights on public relations and getting your company noticed. I trust that you found these to be useful. And if you have, please drop me a line to jim@eastwestpr.com or find us on Twitter on @EastWestPR. Love to also hear if you've got any tales or insights or stories that you can share with us that I can then relay to other entrepreneurs that are doing their best to get noticed. In the meantime, I pray you have good health, A profitable business, and that you keep communicating. Thank you for listening.
