Clever Sports and Auto Cross Promotion

Just ran across a clever cross promotion idea for an English football (soccer) team.   Anyone driving an Audi can apply to have a FREE parking spot at any game during the current season.  The article doesn't say if this promotion is sponsored by Audi or a local dealer but it is a brilliant activation strategy for the sponsor.

Assuming the fan profile closely aligns with the Audi owner profile, it provides great profile for Audi, provides a high perceived value for the fan and offers a great way to cross promote both parties throughout the season.

This type of promotion offers real value to the sponsor as they get more than simple name recognition at the game.  Among the Audi owners, there will be a willingness to promote this among friends through social media including Facebook or Twitter.  For Audi, this will help solidify the relationship with customers and reinforce positive opinions about the brand.

It is likely many sports franchises don't have surplus capacity to offer free parking. There are other ways to execute this idea that still offer opportunities to add value to their sponsorship packages.  These might be free shuttle service to and from game from an offsite parking area, exclusive seating area in arena or stadium, or exclusive pre or post game networking event with members of the team and sponsors.

This type of promotion is really well suited for product or service brands which customers already have a strong affinity to.  It is more likely to be of value where there is an existing core of customers that "love" the product (e.g. Saturn owners would have been a great target) but is exclusive enough to offer value to the sponsor (Jeep owners, Volkswagen Jetta owners, etc).

This example clearly highlights the opportunity to stand out and offer sponsors something different.  I'd be interested in hearing of other creative sports sponsorship ideas you have deployed or have run across.