The survey of over 1,000 UK football fans found that unprompted awareness of Coca-Cola (32 per cent), adidas (19 per cent) and McDonald’s (14 per cent) was strong but the remaining official FIFA partners and sponsors "failed to get on people's radar". Are consumers really connecting with the sponsoring brand? And if not, as is the case with so many badly-executed sponsorship deals, how can brands turn this around?

In such a competitive and overcrowded marketplace, brands must find the right match. For a brand to find the right sports sponsorship opportunity, they must first identify the objective for that marketing campaign.

Treating a piece of sports sponsorship in exactly the same way as sponsorship in any other sector, the first step is to couple the objective and the desired response. Of course objectives will differ enormously across sector, but basic considerations can ensure the most effective sponsorship activation. For example, who are you trying to target, who watches that sport on TV, who might be attending the live games? For brands to get the most out of a sponsorship campaign they must focus on the relevance and value for the fan.

Much more than just slapping a logo on an event, which has been the practice of old, brands really need to invest more than ever in creating powerful brand experiences that brings something more to the party. This might mean giving the fan some exclusive insight or content.

Take, for example, the work of O2 and their sponsorship of the England rugby union team. By showing your O2 phone at the match you are eligible to enter the excusive O2 customer only zone and receive a free pie and pint. This matches up perfectly the sponsorship on the shirts for visibility, and the activation through the experience areas. With a long-standing history of supporting the sport, a grass roots coaching programme and ‘rugby in the park’, O2 are well placed to make themselves absolutely integral to the rugby fan community. It is this kind of activity which gives the fan exclusivity, a great day out and an enduring positive feeling toward the specific brand.

Yet I still find it surprising that so many sponsors fail miserably to connect with their audience in a way which really reflects the brands qualities and key messages. Barclays’ Cycle Hire sponsorship is a great example of the failure of many financial services sponsorship deals. Rather than badging a piece of activity, if Barclays were to perhaps offer their customers free access to the scheme then the link would be far more logical. Only by creating a campaign that effectively marries the brand and the sponsorship, can a band gain credibility, convey its key messages in a memorable way and gain a significant competitive edge. Another important consideration for brands planning sponsorship campaigns is, of course, which sport to sponsor.

Take rugby and football - two very different environments and two very different target consumers. For many ‘non-sport’ brands rugby has offered a brilliant environment for sponsorship activation, with Heineken and O2 becoming almost synonymous with the day out. Compare that to the highly popular but also massively crowded marketing arena of football. The football environment is often more controlled, devoid of camaraderie and full of ‘official partners’ making it much harder to get an equal share of voice.

When the likes of Coca Cola, Mastercard and Nikes of this world are buying up every ad spot, how do smaller brands with a modest budget make a genuine impact? They must resist sticking their badge on a sporting event and instead create a program that is more engaging with their consumer.

Skyride is an interesting example of just this. What is striking about the Sky case is their conscious decision to invest in a different sport. In the UK we have lagged behind the rest of Europe with cycling as a participation sport. Sky identified that opportunity, created their own team of elite cyclists and an environment for amateurs to get involved in cycling events. From hero team status to amateur levels, through to family days out, Sky have taken ownership on every point. Their sponsorship activation has been planned with long term engagement and brand loyalty in mind, and Sky have effectively created an experience that not only lasts the duration of the event, but weeks, months and ideally, years after the finishing line is crossed. Brands must also be aware of the emerging technologies and media channels, in particular social media, which are forever changing the way in which people can choose to communicate and interact with brands.

When used appropriately and managed effectively, technology has the power and potential to amplify a brand beyond the event itself, creating and maintaining a lasting impression with fans that doesn’t fade as soon as the final whistle is blown. With this in mind, I believe the future of sponsorship activation is via the digital platform. As consumers are spending an increasing amount of time on social networks, this is where brands need to connect with them.

Social media is an essential part of the media mix and an effective way of maintaining communication post event. Our work with McCain at the UK Athletics illustrates this well. Through photo and video content created on the day we were able to develop a rich database as every person who downloaded their photo from the site forwarded it, on average, to six or seven friends. This dramatically improves the reach and longevity of the McCain sponsorship. Like McCain, brands need to create opportunities for themselves to become creators of content and experiences, which their customers will enthusiastically share with their friends.

In fact, many brands have been quite late to understand the need to communicate with the consumer over a long period of time. It’s about ongoing discussions; pre event invitation, experience on the day, capturing peoples data and then ongoing communication, whether that’s through a website forum, email newsletter, or social media. Effective sponsorships activation means moving every body upstream, creating opportunities for new people to come into that sport all the time, it’s about turning casual sports fans into brand advocates. For example, the English Cricket Board’s (ECB) ongoing communications campaign aims to change occasional customers into regular ticket buyers and loyal fans, via ongoing dialogue and excusive offerings.

There is certainly no “one-size-fits-all” when it comes to choosing the right sponsorship deal. But for me the most successful sponsorships are brands that are not distracting from the experience but are credible and add to the experience in that sporting environment. Whatever event you choose you need to do it well, and this means accurately matching the campaign objectives with the intended response; looking at who you’re trying to talk to and what you’re trying to talk to them about. When executed properly, sponsorship activation can be a powerful opportunity to engage fans, by creating access to unique content and experiences - which will subsequently be shared with others.

Hugh Robertson is Founding Partner and CEO of creative agency RPM