Sportstar International David Kelly is the recently appointed Marketing Director of Sportstar International plc. The company is multinational marketer of sports equipment, selling a range of well-known brands in virtually every part of the world. As a company, and somewhat unusually compared to competitors, the company has never considered commercial sponsorship for the company or any of its brands. In fact, several of the company's branded products are used by leading sports persons in a number of sports. For example, Mia Rees (currently the world's number 1 female tennis player) uses the company's 'Spinner' brand of tennis racket. Similarly, most of the Australian cricket team use the company's 'Century' brand of bat. Their basketball brand 'Bouncy' is the official ball of the American Basketball Association. None of these brands or usages are connected in any way with any form of sponsorship. The company has considered sponsorship on several occasions, particularly as it has seen its major competitors use this form of promotion to good effect. The main reason why the company has not considered sponsorship before is that the chairperson, the original co-founder of the company, feels that any form of sponsorship is demeaning to the company and its products. The view held by the chairperson is that a good product will sell itself, in some ways a viewpoint substantiated by the selection of many of the company's brands by leading sports persons and sports organizations without any sponsorship. In addition, there was a feeling in some parts of the company that sponsorship through product endorsement by a leading sports person was not particularly effective in as much as everyone knew that this person would be in receipt of large sums of money for endorsing the product. In other words, there was a source credibility problem. Finally, there was always a concern about what would happen to the company's brand image if there was some sort of scandal with the sponsored party. David Kelly is a firm believer in sponsorship. His previous company used it to good effect. Sportstar spends large amounts of money on advertising and sales promotion. He has decided to make his case to the rest of the Board for introducing sponsorship as a major part of the promotional mix. He needs to prepare his case for the next Board Meeting.

Prepare David's case for the company investing in sponsorships.