themessage: How Tangerine struck gold with its Raptors sponsorship

With year one of its 20-year sponsorship deal as Official Bank of the Toronto Raptors coming to a close, online banking brand Tangerine could be forgiven for entertaining thoughts—or maybe even concerns—about having to come up with a repeat.

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All of this activity has contributed to a 50% spike in traffic to the Tangerine website and a 20% increase in customer sign-ups in the immediate wake of Raptors game days, said Riley, adding that she expects a significant increase in customer activations once the playoffs are over. “The busy time will be in activating all of those customers in the queue,” she says.

Roger Breum, director of marketing for the San Diego-based sponsorship analytics and valuation company Hookit, says that longer playoffs runs, not surprisingly, mean more exposure and fan engagement for sponsors.

While Hookit doesn’t have specific metrics for Tangerine, he says that the Raptors have mentioned another of their sponsors, insurance brand Aviva, 35 times on social media since the start of the playoffs, leading to 650,000 fan engagements.

The Golden State Warriors, meanwhile, have mentioned their sponsor Kaiser Permanente 41 times on social since the playoffs began, driving 3.4 million fan engagements on those posts.

“The benefits of a team staying in the playoffs are clear for sponsors,” says Breum. “The playoff period extends the exposure period and typically during playoff times, fans are more engaged with team content.

“This extra time and higher engagement rate gives the team more chances to share the brand messages of their partners with improved impact for the brand. The whole system benefits from a long playoff run, from the fans to the team and the sponsors.”

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