Vintage ad tactic shows new life: presenting sponsorships

The idea of a presenting sponsor taking ownership of a media channel is not new. As a tactic it enjoyed its broadcast heyday between 1930 and 1960, and has popped up periodically across all media ever since. Still, as I flicked through the August 22 issue of the New Yorker it dawned on me that it’s time is now.

As many will have read, that New Yorker issue had only one advertiser. Retail giant Target, abetted by Hayworth Marketing & Media and Peterson Milla Hooks, bought every ad site in the issue and then populated those spaces with exclusive images fashioned by world-renowned illustrators. The idea was that the works could have been in the magazine on artistic merit alone, but all incorporated the Target bulls-eye in one way or another, collectively giving the retailer ownership of the issue.
On a simple, immediate level, this campaign works because it is sufficiently unusual to have the disruptive, first-mover advantage that is central to many of today’s best campaigns. The smartest marketers have realized that if their advertising makes a unique statement, either in content or placement, it will spark a media and water-cooler conversation whose value will be tens or even hundreds of times the cost of the media buy.

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