You more than likely are not sponsoring an IndyCar team, but you might be sponsoring a golf tournament, a soccer club, the local 4-H Fair, Junior Achievement, the Boys and Girls Club, etc. There is no end to the number of sponsorships available to corporations who are willing to dole out marketing dollars. Just like the Indianapolis 500, marketing is the mother's milk of these events, regardless of their size. But just how effective are sponsorships? Before we get there, I would first ask another question: what are your goals in sponsorships? If your goal is to sell a lot of products at a sponsored event, unless you are selling food or beverages, that might be hard to do. If you are trying to make the participants at a sponsored event more aware of your business, your products, or your services, that may be more realistic.

Sponsorships are what we designate as awareness marketing. You want people to know who you are, recognize your brands, and have good feelings about your business. Sponsorships can help you do this. If you have the right event that is memorable, fun and well branded (see my article, The Big Event), you can expect to come away with a really great awareness marketing sponsorship.

Many sponsorships are tied to charities. That does not mean that you necessarily have to toss out the awareness marketing just because you are sponsoring a not-for-profit organization. In fact, this is where some of the best awareness marketing can take place. For years, McDonalds Restaurants have sponsored Ronald McDonald House Charities, where families of children, being treated in hospitals, can stay for free. This all began in Philadelphia in 1974 when a local McDonalds sold green milkshakes during St. Patrick's Day (they became known as Shamrock Shakes) to raise funds to buy and refurbish a house near the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. There are currently 305 Ronald McDonald Houses around the world. Today you cannot mention Ronald McDonald House without someone praising the corporation for their generosity. They have successfully turned a charitable sponsorship into a superb awareness marketing promotion that uses their brand and engenders good feelings about the corporation. "Now wait a minute," you might be thinking. "Isn't this exploiting people at their time of greatest need in order to sell more hamburgers and fries?" If you truly get on board with a charitable cause and are serious about raising funds to help other people, sponsorships need not look or feel like exploitation. This is where your public relations communication has to work hand-in-hand with your marketing efforts. When McDonalds began to sell the Shamrock Shakes in 1974 to fund the first Ronald McDonald House, they did so with the support of many other community leaders. In particular, there was a football player for the Philadelphia Eagles, Ken Hill, whose young daughter Kim was being treated for leukemia. Ken Hill became an advocate for families who were going through the same thing his family was experiencing with Kim. It was the Hill's who brought the idea for a place for families to stay to live, and McDonalds who came up with the marketing campaign to sell green shakes - the colors of the Philadelphia Eagles - to promote awareness of the need and to fund the solution. Whenever you can hitch your sponsorship to a cause that is that big, you will get a bounce out of it.

Interestingly enough, the Boys Scouts of America were the primary sponsor of Alex Lloyd's number 19 car in the Indianapolis 500 this year. The Boy Scouts are a charitable organization looking for some bounce in their brand after a rash of bad PR lately. If you do sponsorships right, they are great for awareness.

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TV ratings droop near all-time low for Indy 500, by IBJ Staff and Associated Press , IBJ.com, May 28, 2013