Sponsoring fashion, growing the economy
Sanlam's headline sponsorship of South African Fashion Week (SSAFW) 2006 will take SSAFW countrywide with the inaugural Sanlam South African Fashion Week Collections in Cape Town, Durban and Pretoria in August - allowing Sanlam to expand its sponsorship while further showcasing the Fashion Week collections of young designers. According to sponsorship design brain, Kaelo Worldwide Media, the deal ensures that Sanlam will become a major player in South Africa's burgeoning fashion, clothing and textiles industry, which currently contributes about R27.2 billion to GDP.
"We have been the commercial sponsorship partner to South African Fashion Week for the last two years, and knew that headline sponsorship presented a previously untapped opportunity in an uncluttered space," says Courtney Baxter, head of the special projects division at Kaelo Worldwide Media.
"Sanlam is an ideal partner to South African Fashion Week as it has truly relevant values, ideas and positioning. This is a strong step for the Sanlam brand in a clear direction, and provides Sanlam with an opportunity to form positive associations with a distinctive industry through a unique sponsorship property."
Through its partnership with SSAFW, Sanlam is involved in the Department of Arts and Culture national craft and design fusion workshops, which see nine established designers team up with 27 up-and-coming designers and 25 crafters to create designer collections that will be exhibited and sold at the 2006 SSAFW.
A natural fit
Sanlam marketing executive Margaret Jenks explains the marriage between finance and fashion, "We felt strongly that the fashion industry, which is focused on individual expression, is a natural fit for us. We, too, are focused on individuals in terms of their financial needs. Together we can turn catwalk collections into clothing realities, helping to keep jobs and grow the South African economy while promoting this vital industry both in this country and internationally."
"The Sanlam South African Fashion Week sponsorship allows Sanlam to make a brand statement rather than purely badging their involvement with branding," says Baxter. "We worked together with Sanlam for over six months, presenting a range of creative options, analysing the properties that existed and what properties may need to be created to further enhance the development of fashion and Sanlam's association with it. Regional events were born out of this thinking."
SSAFW director Lucilla Booyzen, who has built up this fashion event over the last ten years, concludes, "Kaelo Worldwide Media's expertise has made a great difference to the future of South African Fashion Week by helping to bring the right sponsorship partner on board and showing us how to make this event work as a sponsor property. The partnership with Sanlam will bring sound business knowledge into the mix with the creative design industry, and will be essential to its growth."
