The Art of Corporate Match-Making

AUSTRALIA BUSINESS ARTS FOUNDATION: New report 'Arts and business: partnerships that work'  

The Australia Business Arts Foundation (AbaF) and the Australia Council for the Arts have jointly published a new report, Arts and business: partnerships that work, which hopes to provide insights for arts organisations who want to develop 'smart' new corporate sponsorships and partnership relationships or deepen existing ones.

The report came out of the results of a qualitative study conducted by Repucom International of business leaders from 36 major companies, some of whom currently support the arts and some who do not. BlueScope Steel, Clayton Utz, Metlink, Qantas and Wesfarmers were some of those who currently support the arts. Some of those surveyed who don’t currently support the arts included Harvey Norman, Medibank Private, and Vodafone.

The aim was to look at the strategic importance of arts partnerships for the corporate sector, their motivations for getting involved, what factors influence and decide their sponsorship strategies, and what benefits they are looking for. It also looked at why the arts don’t appeal to everyone.

The perceived benefits in arts partnerships, perhaps unsurprisingly, relate to purpose. Developing a relationship with the arts ‘works’ for companies who want to link themselves in people’s minds with the same qualities generally projected on the arts, qualities such as creativity, innovation, community participation and intrinsic artistic worth. Sponsoring the arts in other words is seen to have brand benefits.

These are qualities that arts organisations can capitalise on. It’s what differentiates sponsoring an arts organisation from say a sports team or a charity. An arts organisation is a very different ‘product’, which is valued by and reaches different ‘demographics’.

The specific arts organisation or field of the arts can be, for some companies, less important than the image it reflects on the company or what it hopes to achieve. Some companies are looking for national coverage; others for the new and experimental. Some want to be associated with community-based projects that strengthen links with a local community while others wish to be seen as supporting culturally significant organisations.

Sponsorship agreements to some businesses are about gaining hospitality opportunities. And then there are those who are looking for something unique, personally tailored to their needs, which offers a deeper and more enduring partnership.

The Sydney Theatre Company has developed a very loyal base of corporate support says Anna McPherson, STC’s Corporate Partnerships Manager, in part because they engage key executives in the artistic process. ‘They are often asked to meet the cast and creative teams during rehearsals and are given scripts to read in order to assist them in aligning their support to specific productions,’ she says. ‘I suspect the intimacy of the art form lends itself to this personal attachment.’

‘The challenge with larger sponsorships is to maintain that level of authentic engagement and yet be very pragmatic in creating commercially viable sponsorship models,’ says McPherson.

Another example, which shows how a sponsorship program can ‘fit’ with an company’s objectives is the relationship that the National Gallery of Victoria has developed over the past six years with Goldman Sachs JBWere (GSJBW) through the Top Arts exhibition.

The Top Arts exhibition, which shows the visual artwork of the previous year's VCE students who have achieved outstanding results, combines both the artistic and community areas that GSJBW concentrates on when looking for sponsorship projects, outlines Donna Lewis, Goldman Sachs JBWere’s Director, Corporate Sponsorships. The NGV itself is a sophisticated organisation that offers corporate hospitality opportunities and the exhibition fits with the company’s focus on education and disadvantaged youth.

The sponsorship package goes beyond merely attaching the company logo to signage and collateral. It includes a private viewing for GBJBW staff and their guests, the GSJBW People’s Choice Award which goes to the winning artist’s school and last year the NGV arranged for a selection of the exhibition’s works to be installed in the firm’s Melbourne offices at the close of the exhibition says Andrew Boyd, Manager, Corporate Partnership, NGV. 'This provided the artists with the opportunity to display their works in a corporate environment and extending the company’s involvement beyond the three-months of the annual exhibition.'

A majority of those surveyed in the AbaF report perceived a significant difference between a sponsorship and a partnership. A sponsorship is increasingly seen as a branding exercise, basically as advertising through prominent logos. A partnership on the other hand is seen as providing two-way benefits, as being a working relationship with shared goals. Partnerships are more likely to build over time and withstand the vagaries of the market cycle, particularly where strong relationships across organisations have been built and the parties are flexible.

The biggest challenge an arts organisation faces when trying to form effective corporate relationships the report discovered was communication, being able to understand and pitch to a company in a way that could be immediately seen as positive. Companies are unlikely to respond to generic, mail-merged proposals – of which they may get hundreds. It’s the professional proposal that demonstrates a clear understanding of a corporation’s business needs and objectives and shows how a partnership will achieve those objectives in a quantifiable way that will get noticed. Every relationship just like every job application has to be approached with the individual characteristics of both parties in mind.

Getting the pitch right is especially important for smaller and emerging arts organisations. Around a quarter of companies in the survey were open to the idea of partnering with new and emerging talent, especially small-to-medium sized companies who perceived them as less expensive and thereby more cost-effective. It is the small-to-medium sized corporations too, that rely on arts organisations to approach them, as they don’t have the capacity to have dedication staff working on seeking sponsorships.

A number of respondents said they were most likely to be interested in proposals that were the result of personal conversations, just showing the ability to make an individual approach impresses. Even if such an approach doesn’t have an immediate result, it feeds into the reputation of an organisation.

Networking contacts proved to be highly valued source of information for sponsors considering various sponsorship proposals. The reputation of an arts body, its history, credibility and personnel are part of the package that a company may wish to be aligned with, particularly for large corporations.

Only around 40% of the companies who weren't currently supporting the arts expected, for a variety of reasons, that they would not be changing their sponsorship profile. So a huge 60% might support the arts if the right proposal came along. It’s a result, which should give AbaF considerable reason for optimism.

In another AbaF survey, measuring private sector support for the arts it was found that sponsorship exceeded $100m for the first time in the 2008/09 financial year. Overall private support for the arts has doubled since 2001-02 to approximately $212 million, which is 9.3 per cent of total income. Meaning, private sponsorship is an important and growing component of arts funding, though it is still relatively small and falls behind the level of private ‘givings’.

Hearing what businesses think is an important part of further developing corporate partnerships, which done well can be highly beneficial to both parties. Arts organisations can’t afford not to listen.

Arts and business: partnerships that work can be downloaded from www.abaf.org.au and www.australiacouncil.gov.au/research.

Further examples of successful partnerships are highlighted in AbaF’s Gold Book - Award Winning Business Arts Relationships, relationships such as that between the Bangarra Dance Theatre and Boral Limited which won the Marsh Partnering Award.