The Psychology of Sponsorship #1

Most books on sponsorship make large assumptions about the psychology of sponsorship. Back in the day, the phrase ‘brand value transfer’ was thrown around liberally to explain how sponsorship works, with no little authority, of course!

But in the last 10 years in particular, our understanding of the emotional processes of sponsorship has evolved significantly. A clearer understanding of this helps us with every dimension of sponsorship practice — and sales, of course.

T. Bettina Cornwell’s book ‘Sponsorship in Marketing‘ deals with the psychology of sponsorship with more depth than any others we’ve seen so we’ve incorporated many of her thoughts here, alongside our own psychological understanding.

Sponsorship is psychologically rich — richer, we would say, than any other marketing model. Playing out in the real world — with all of the psychological complexity that entails; purposefully tapping into strong emotions of affect and identity; powerfully experiential at times; and with the ability to overlay on all of this the best of advertising practice — sponsorship is surely the opera of marketing models.

So here are a few learnings and thoughts from psychological thinking and research that help explain the richness and persuasive value of sponsorship — mainly from social psychologists interested in motivation, curiosity and the impact of emotion on decision-making.

Robert Zajonc’s Mere Exposure Effect

The first and most fundamental is the mere exposure effect, also known as the familiarity principle. The impact : we can develop a preference towards brands (in this case) even if we are unaware of seeing them. Most of the time, the mere exposure effect happens subliminally, or at a subconscious level.

The mere-exposure effect shows that communication impacts go beyond “explicit memory”, measured with the traditional measures of (aided) recall and recognition.

Social psychologicist Robert Zajonc articulated the mere exposure effect in 1968, and since then the theory has been studied hundreds of times and is robust. In fact, researchers found that the effect is more powerful when we are unaware of a stimulus.

In 1970, Daniel Berlyne qualified Zajonc’s findings : his research showed that familiarity affect will become more positive until a point when boredom occurs and the frequency-affect curve turns downward.

Huge endorsement for sponsorship of course, the value of media, product placement and branding visibility likewise. Understanding this dimension of the psychology of sponsorship has major implications for evaluation and regulators. The critical point in this case belongs to Berlyne : when does familiarity become contempt?

Classical conditioning

Yes, Pavlov, dogs and drool.

Classical conditioning explains that consistent association between two or more stimuli — bells and food, sponsor and excitement — will elicit an acquired or learned response.

Bettina gives the example of how Olympic partnership could imbue brands with feelings of optimism and hope — while many sponsorships will reinforce feelings of sponsor dominance, strength and even ubiquity.

Hebb’s Rule

The neuroscientific explanation is Hebb’s Rule, which dates back to the early 1970’s. It actually refers to the increased connection of neurons which are persistently activated together, but the impact of the rule is commonly summarised by the phrase : neurons that fire together, wire together. The more you run a neural-circuit in your brain, the stronger that circuit becomes.

Hebb’s rule is commonly applied to learning but conscious learning is not the only thing that can strengthen the connections in a neural network. Our brain is also designed to detect recognizable patterns in our environment and encode them in its neural networks automatically. The same destination: conditioning.

For our sponsorship practice, it raises the question of the best ways to imprint emotive brand attributes via sponsorship.

Heider’s balance theory

Fritz Heider was an Austrian psychologist focused on the psychological processes that influence human social perception.

Balance theory is another undisputed principle in understanding human in the psychology of motivation and again, very simple. It ultimately rests on the psychological truth that human preference is to avoid uncertainty and conflict and in positions of conflict, we look to restore balance.

To use a simple example : if I don’t like you, but you’re good friends with my best friend, I have two choices. I soften my feelings towards you or distance myself from my best friend. Obviously, this is not a law of physics and in reality, there may be a wide range of responses to this situation. But in essence, this principle holds true.

Balance Theory suggests that association will inevitably bring sponsor into the ‘triangle of friendship’ and it will serve in many cases to drive levels of reappraisal. This psychological principle of sponsorship is also useful to bear in mind in framing communications.

Damasio’s Somatic Markers

Momentum has building over the last 30 years in support of the position that rational decision-making — in the sense of a purely cognitive process — is a fallacy; and that emotions influence our thought and decision-making processes to a far greater extent than we realise.

A mountain of work has emerged from the notion of cognitive biases, as introduced by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1972.

The greatest recent influence is the work of Antonio Damasio, a Portuguese-American neuroscientist who heads the University of Southern California’s Brain and Creativity Institute. Damasio has authored several books, exploring the relationship between the brain and consciousness. His research in neuroscience has shown the interconnectedness of feelings, reason and the body and that emotions play a central role in social cognition and decision-making. His TED talk on consciousness is excellent.

As physiological changes (such as heart rate, endocrine release, posture, facial expression, etc.) occur in the body, they’re relayed to the brain where they’re transformed into an emotion that tells the individual something about the stimulus that they have encountered. Over time, emotions and their corresponding bodily change(s) become associated with particular situations and their past outcomes.

Sponsorship’s ability to engage the emotions gives sponsors a psychologically powerful tool to form a deep imprint in consumers’ mental processes.

Taken together, neuroscience and academic research show clearly that the psychology of sponsorship needs to be taken seriously. It can generate positive feelings towards brands at many levels — beginning with the affect that is generated by familiarity and leading to the unconscious introjection of specific attributes and positive associations. Each of these can and will positively mediate decision-making processes related to the brand.

That doesn’t automatically translate into sales, of course, but it certainly builds competitive advantage.

For more posts looking into the psychology of sponsorship, please visit We ❤️ Storytelling, The majority of sponsorship doesn’t work and Projection and brand theory.