Sponsorship and cause related marketing 1361 European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 35 No. 11/12, 2001, pp. 1361-1385. # MCB University Press, 0309-0566 Received May 1999 Revised February 2000 June 2000 Linking sponsorship and cause related marketing Complementarities and conflicts Michael Jay Polonsky School of Management, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia, and Richard Speed Melbourne Business School, University of Melbourne, Carlton, Australia Keywords Sponsorship, Cause marketing, Leverage, Communications Abstract Sponsorship activities have become a mainstream component of the marketing mix. As such, there are attempts to make these activities more effective by leveraging them using advertising, sales promotions, or in an increasing number of cases, through cause related marketing CRM). This paper explores the relationship between sponsorship and CRM and identifies the potential opportunities that arise from leveraging sponsorships using CRM. The paper also examines the limitations of CRM as a leveraging strategy, puts forward a typology for categorising CRM and identifies some future research issues related to CRM-leveraging of sponsorship. Introduction Sponsorship programs of various descriptions are of increasing importance in the marketing activities of firms around the world Bird, 1998; Cornwell and Maignan, 1998; File and Prince, 1998; Meenaghan and Shipley, 1999). This presents opportunities for both businesses and business consultants/advisers, which has been recognised by advertising agencies such as Saatchi & Saatchi who have established special units concerned with integrating sponsorship and social issues into promotional activities Richards, 1998). It has been suggested that academics have generally slow to examine sponsorship and thus assist businesses to understand how better sponsorship decisions can be made Cornwell and Maignan, 1998). Although this appears to be changing with a number of journals publishing special issues examining sponsorship-related topics Asia-Australia Marketing Journal 1997), International Marketing Review 1997), Psychology and Marketing 1998), International Journal of Advertising 1998)). The most recent of these special issues was European Journal of Marketing 1999), covering a broad range of sports and marketing issues including sponsorship Amis et al., 1999; Bennett, 1999; Meenaghan and Shipley, 1999; Nicholls et al., 1999), sports marketing theory Erickson and Kushner, 1999; Mason, 1999; Ferrand and Pages, 1999) and consumer behaviour Hopkinson and Pujari, 1999). In addition, sponsorship-related topics The research register for this journal is available at http://www.mcbup.com/research_registers The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emerald-library.com/ft The authors would like to thank the participants at the Sports SIG Meeting ± 1998 AMA Summers Educators' Conference, Dennis Sandler and the anonymous EJM reviewers for their useful comments in the revision of this work.