Does Sponsorship Work? Ask Volvo.

I get asked a lot whether sponsorship actually works. Whether it can hold its own against other kinds of marketing spend. Apart from the metrics which show that sponsors can achieve great ROI from this form of promotion, another way of answering the question is to point to companies that obviously believe that it works.

Take Volvo for example. Volvo have taken the Round the World Sailing race and made it their own, with innovative media treatment and professional activation. But Volvo sponsor all kinds of things, so many in fact, that they have launced a website dedicated to their sponsorship activity.

A visit to the site reveals that Volvo sponsor Sport, environmental projects, culture at a global, national and local level. volvoinsponsorship.com delivers news, views, information and results from all points of the compass.

From prestigious professional golf championships such as the Volvo China Open and the Volvo Masters to the worldwide enthusiasm of the Volvo Masters Amateur, the sponsorship portal augments tournament site-specific websites, giving a flavour of the on-course drama, meets the men and women at the centre of the stories with exclusive insights behind the scenes.

Then there is sailing; the Volvo Ocean Race, Volvo's flagship round-the-world race, setting sail in October 2008 on a seven-team, nine-month, 37,500nm, four-continent 10-country, 11-port ocean odyssey sets sail from Spain on October 4th.

The Volvo-sponsored Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and the Gothenburg Opera both strike the right chord with Volvo's cultural campaign and volvoinsponsorship.com will hit all the high notes from the concert halls and opera houses at home in Gothenburg and abroad.

And it's ‘Green for Go,' with Volvo's environmental initiatives, the Volvo Environment Prize, the most coveted ecological award on offer and its junior equivalent, the Volvo Adventure with the youth of the world finding environmental improvement simply eco-logical and the sponsorship portal gets to the heart of the environmental action.

The very best of the rest comes from Volvo's support for Swedish motorsport, burning eco-fuel of course, exhibitions, conferences and awards around the world, equestrian excellence at the annual Göteborg Horse Show, featuring the full sponsorship spectrum from Volvo.

Commented Steven Lefebvre, New Media Manager at Volvo Event Management in Brussels, "The new sponsorship portal provides a global platform with which to pull all the strands of Volvo's various sponsorship activities together."

He added, "With our portfolio of dedicated event-based websites such as volvochinaopen.com, volvomasters.com, volvooceanrace.org, volvomastersamateur.com, volvomastersofasia.com attracting millions of sport-specific aficionados to their in-depth coverage, we are endeavouring to reflect the broader and more diverse elements of Volvo's worldwide sponsorship activity and offer a different perspective for those engaging with us either for the first time or in a broader way."

The strapline for the new site is "bringing sponsorship to life."