Conceptualizing the Dissolution of a Social Marketing Sponsorship

Abstract

Social marketing organizations are embracing sponsorship as part of their external communications strategy. Like commercial sponsorships, these relationships may terminate early. We develop a case study of drink driving transgressions by professional footballers that underpinned the termination of their team's sponsorship with a road safety organization. The ensuing model links corporate credibility, reputational interdependence, and exchange theory to sponsorship. Accordingly, we assert these social marketing sponsorships are susceptible to player behaviors that contradict the key messages of the social marketing organization. Through an explicit analogy development and mapping process, we show this process is analogous to at least one form of ambush marketing. The validity of the model and ambush marketing analogy is confirmed by an international sample of practitioners and academics.