BLINDNESS TO SPONSOR: APPLICATION TO SPORTS EVENT POSTERS

ABSTRACT Advertising posters in sports sponsorship are versatile marketing tools with significant media impact and high visibility. The purpose of this research is to measure the spontaneous recall of and attention toward busi ness brands sponsoring sports events while assessing their location and congruence level. The sample was segmented according to gender. The experiment involved 12 stimuli related to three sporting disci plines corroborating the issue of media blindness with respect to advertising posters. Consistent with the placement theory, we found that the position of the sponsoring brand affected attention and recall with no remarkable differences between genders. Furthermore, we found no significant differences in the congruence levels, reinforcing the image transfer theory. A general guideline would be placing the sponsoring brand within the effective range of the poster while leveraging the effects of articulation and the remaining mediating variables in the literature.