By Samantha Cook

I’ve been a MasterChef fan for a very, very long time. I watched the original British format religiously (with added excitement when multiple episodes were screened after one another), promptly got addicted to the sexy new MasterChef Australia competition format, and I have been thoroughly enjoying the local South African version. But over the past month or so, I’ve noticed something odd. I am now incapable of even thinking about the show (or sometimes even the act of cooking itself) without thinking of Robertsons Spices at the same time. It’s not exactly the world’s biggest mystery, considering the show is sponsored by the brand, and as such, has access to the prime cuts of advertising space during the show’s broadcast timeslot on M-Net. But this speaks to more than just the power of advertising – it’s now about the power of brand-media partnerships, and the advantages that they supply to both parties.

It’s a win-win situation, regardless of the way you look at it. For platforms like television channels, the added advertising revenue allows them to produce or obtain broadcast rights for high-quality material without detracting from the viewing or listening experience of the audience. For brands, the benefits are even more substantial. In addition to primetime ad space, the brand has the potential to be associated with the sponsored show itself – and by extension, with the ethos of the show itself.

According to a study conducted by Thinkbox, a British marketing body for commercial television in the United Kingdom, there is more to this relationship than initially meets the eye. The study, which was conducted in the form of an online quantitative survey, assessed 1 600 respondents’ attitudes to a number of brands and live sponsorships, focusing on their attitudes to brands and how the sponsorships related to the advertisers and the programmes. Key take-outs from the study, however, have revealed that viewers make deeper associations with brands that make use of this form of sponsorship.

“The research found that brands can take on aspects of the personality of the programmes that they sponsor. We’ve termed this ‘brand-rub’ as the programme aspects literally rub off on the brand. The phenomenon was particularly pronounced for fans of the sponsored programmes who tended to use words to describe the brand that were more closely aligned to the programme than non-fans [did].”

Results of the survey also showed that the content of the sponsor’s advertising is significantly less important than that of traditional television advertising, which continues to thrive by the ethos that ‘content is king’.

“Perhaps the most fundamental finding is that sponsorship has a far more profound effect on the emotional, implicit mind than on the rational or conscious mind. This is unsurprising when you consider the shorter time-lengths of sponsorship messages. Indeed, it was confirmed that sponsorship bumpers do not convey significant levels of brand information or instil particularly high levels of emotion in the viewer even when they are creatively linked to the programme and placed within the right context. Instead their power comes from the association made between the sponsor and the programme (thus making it more difficult to track).”

According to Alicia Morgan, account executive for SABC TV sales, there is an intensive thought process behind each show-brand partnership, ensuring that the relationship is symbiotic and that the values or message of the brand in question are well-matched with those of the sponsored programme. “First, we get the schedule from the channels informing us of what is coming in the months ahead,” she explains. “Then we look at brands that could fit with the shows: we match the client’s target market to the programme’s target market and put packages together for potential sponsors. With locally produced programmes like Isidingo we look at the storyline and find moments or scenes in the programme/s that will fit with a message that the client would like to get out to viewers about their brands.”

Morgan adds that a lot of work goes into ensuring that there is synergy between the show and the brand. “We marry the target markets, and then we look at the episodes in advance if need be and use a play on words in the stings and billboards. For example, with Smirnoff and Desperate Housewives, the clients use [phrases] like ‘Wisteria Lane, bring out the party’.”

What are your thoughts on tailored programme-brand sponsorships and their effectiveness? Do you find them less or more interruptive than traditional television advertising, which you’re likely to see across multiple channels and timeslots? Let us know on our blog.