MEDIA & MARKETING:RTÉ's struggles to find partners for flagship shows are signs budgets are being trimmed

IN MORE challenging economic times, sponsorship lacks the hard sell of a TV commercial and could be the marketing spend most likely to be trimmed back.

That's the view of Dave Winterlich, managing director of Carat, one of the biggest ad agencies in the country. Last year broadcasters were in the enviable position of having advertisers fight for premium properties, but now RTÉ is scrambling to find sponsors for two of its flagship programmes.

Halifax bowed out of its association with The Late Late Showwhen the series concluded before the summer and there's no news yet as to who will replace the retail arm of Bank of Scotland.

The sponsorship is believed to have cost Halifax around €1.3 million per annum during the two-year association and RTÉ's pitch to potential sponsors includes exclusive branding of The Late Late Showwebsite and customised RTÉ Guidecovers. Also seeking a sponsor is Tubridy Tonight, which was sponsored by Chevrolet last season.

Says Winterlich: "Who would have thought that The Late Late Show, Tubridy Tonight, RTÉ's Wednesday movie and TV3's Sunday movie would all be sponsor-free?

"In tough economic times, the idea of tying your brand into a long-term sponsorship may be seen as a luxury many advertisers cannot afford. Added to this is the fact that you need additional budget to create strings tailored to the programme environment."

However, according to Geraldine O'Leary, RTÉ's head of sales, a sponsor for the midweek movie has been found and will be announced in September. The station had been seeking a sponsor for a two-year period at a cost of €575,000 per annum.

"We didn't dramatically reduce the price," she says. "You have to hold tough on what you believe is your fair price for what the programmes deliver."

O'Leary is also confident about securing sponsors for both chat shows. She said: "Of course advertisers will always think long and hard about sponsorships in more challenging economic times. For Halifax and Chevrolet, both sponsorships had done the job for the clients, which was to launch new brands in to the market and make a statement." Incidentally, O'Leary is still on the lookout for a sponsor of RTÉ1's new reality TV show Fáilte Towers, which starts on the August bank holiday weekend.

A price of €75,000 is being sought for the 10-episode series.

Meteor has long used humour in its TV advertising to win new business and the mobile phone operator is sticking with that formula in its new campaign which debuts this evening.

The campaign's central character, the Magic Mobile Genie, is played by actor Edgar Oliver, dressed up in a bizarre hooded yellow jumper perched atop a cloud as he floats around a barbecue party in a suburban back garden.

Meteor marketing director Conor Carmody said the genie commercial is intended to get across the message that the firm's latest text and call packages are very innovative. In addition to the usual advertising media, the campaign is complemented by a specially created microsite on the Meteor website and a Bebo page, both created by Blue Cube.

If there is a second vote on the Lisbon Treaty, perhaps Taoiseach Brian Cowen could turn to Walsh PR for advice on getting out the vote.

The public relations agency recently won an award from the Public Relations Consultants Association for its efforts on behalf of Hasbro last year in launching a new Irish version of the Monopoly board game.

Hasbro's idea was to get people from different counties to vote online for their county's inclusion on the board. The counties with the most votes would be included, and the voting result led to the odd outcome that the county with the most valuable property in the game - the Shrewsbury Road slot - is Roscommon.

Amazingly, 170,000 people across the country voted for their county to be included on the Monopoly board. And, of course through the voting process, every one of those voters became potential buyers of the game.

So how did Walsh drum up interest? Over a period of four weeks, the agency ran a viral e-mail campaign targeting county councillors, politicians, games clubs and toy stores. To make the vote a 32-county affair, Walsh got the Northern Ireland Tourism Board involved too. Throughout the campaign, a live leaderboard on the website showed the positions of the counties.

One county where Walsh's PR efforts didn't work was Kildare; the county's inhabitants didn't register sufficient votes to make it as one of the 22 slots on the board.

Coincidentally, or not, Kildare had the third-lowest voter turnout in the Lisbon Treaty referendum vote.