Verbier blow: Nestlé ends sponsorship
mainThe Nestlé coffeemaker Nespresso has pulled its cast out of the Verbier Festival.
The annual drip was worth quarter of a million Swiss francs and more still in prestige.
Nestlé, as Salzburg well knows, is a blue-chip sponsor.
The company issued this statement overnight: ‘We have decided to end our collaboration with the Verbier Festival.’
Generally the sponsor seeks to gain prestige from the sponsorship as well. If that’s not happening…
This IS bad news. Verbier is a fine festival. Let’s hope some cashed-up philanthropist steps in the fill the void. All those squillions hiding in Swiss bank accounts….
Fill in the void …….why ?
It’s a business,jf Verbier can’t make ends meet it should shut down .
Sponsorship isn’t the same as patronage. The patron spends money because he “believes” in something or someone and wants to promote it disinterested (in the best cases). However, sponsorship is business. Enterprises like Nestle don’t do it out of the goodness of their little hearts, but in the hope of bettering their prestige or for image advertisement. Hence the check the results of their sponsorships very often – and obviously Verbier didn’t produce good results for Nestle.
It’s sad, but it means that in Verbier they shouldn’t just to the great crying and teeth gnashing, but they will need to think what they can do to get a sponsor better results (and how far they’re willing to go for their sponsors).
It’s a tricky business – and I’m rather glad I’m out of it (I did some sport and cultural marketing and sponsoring in former times). 😉