Swiss Sponsorship Awards presented

Almost 100 members of management, marketing and sponsorship managers responded to the call of the "Swiss Sponsorship Think Tank" to the Olympic Museum in Lausanne to select the best sponsorships of 2014. The ceremony, which was preceded by a seminar and conference program on measuring success and new international trends in sponsorship, took place for the third time.

The nine-member jury, consisting of the President of IMD Business School, Dominique Turpin, the CEO of MCI Group, Sébastien Tondeur, the CEO of Bongénie-Grieder, Pierre Brunschwig, the President of the Paléo Festival, Daniel Rosselat, the President of the Swiss Sponsorship Think Tank, Sebastian Chiappero, the Head of Marketing of IBM, Antonio Rossetti, the Deputy Head of Sponsoring at Swisscom, Simon Hofmann, the Education and Universities Manager at UEFA Thomas Junod and the CEO of CCI Cotting and IE Business School faculty member Patrick Cotting nominated three campaigns each for the Sport, Culture and Society categories in advance.

The president of the jury, Patrick Cotting, pointed out right at the beginning of the ceremony that the Swiss Sponsorship Awards wanted to recognize the best sponsorships of the year and not just those who submitted a project, as is the case with other awards. "All nominees are therefore already winners. The jury looked at a large number of sponsorships and each jury member was only allowed to vote for two projects in each category." Swisscom jury member Simon Hofmann was only allowed to vote for the best social sponsorship, as Swisscom was nominated for the sport and culture categories. When presenting their campaigns, all nominees - with the exception of the Migros representatives who were not present - pointed out what was special about their campaign: why it was done, what made it special and how it was implemented.

Five awards presented

During the bilingual event in the national languages German and French, five of the nine nominated campaigns were honored:
- Best Sport Sponsorship of the Year 2014: Ragusa (Camille Bloch) - Lara Gut
- Best Cultural Sponsorship of the Year 2014 : Swisscom - Energy Air
- Best Social Sponsorship of the Year 2014 : Migros - Program with WWF for children and young people
- Best Overall Sponsorship of the Year 2014 (Public Award) : Zweifel - Chips on Tour
- IBM Digital Activation Award : Swisscom - Patrouille des Glaciers

A hybrid program

In line with the vision of the "Swiss Sponsorship Think Tank" to encourage decision-makers in companies and institutions to professionalize the use of the sponsorship instrument, an in-depth seminar was offered in the afternoon. Yann Gurtner from Orange spoke about how Orange has defined KPIs and implemented a system to measure the success of sponsorship. Richard Chassot, director of the Tour de Romandie, Patrick Metrey from Raiffeisen and Patrice Iseli, sports manager for the city of Lausanne, discussed success factors for major sporting events. Lukas Porro from Feldschlösschen spoke about customer loyalty with the help of sponsoring, Christoph Kaderli from IBM about the latest tools at IBM and Clément Charles from All the Content about the creation of content. The seminar was rounded off with a panel discussion on the challenges of international sponsorship. This was attended by Yan Lefort, Head of Global Partnerships at IWC Schaffhausen, Alexandre Gueschir, Marketing and Events Director of the FIA (including Formula 1) and Andreas Sigle, Global Brand and Sponsorship Director of Nissan.

The President of the Swiss Sponsorship Think Tank, Sebastian Chiappero, closed the event by announcing that the fourth Swiss Sponsorship Awards will once again be held in Zurich at the beginning of February 2016.

Winners and nominees:

Sport: Ragusa - Lara Gut (winner), Swisscom - Patrouille des Glaciers (nominated), Swiss Life - Mir sind d'Nati (nominated)

Culture: Swisscom - Energy Air (winner), H&M - Caprices Festival (nominated), Zweifel - Chips on Tour (nominated)

Society: Migros - WWF program (winner), Coop - community duel (nominated), Nestlé - Athletissima (nominated)

Best sponsorship of 2014 from the perspective of all marketing and sponsorship experts present: Zweifel - Chips on Tour

Best Digital Sponsorship: Swisscom - Patrouille des Glaciers