Sponsorship and Festivals: Through the Looking Glass

About the event

In India, with the lack of cultural funding from the government, brand sponsorship has been a lifeline to many a festival. Both homegrown and international brands have supported festivals. Brands ranging from banking to beverages and oil to automotive support some of the biggest names in the festival sector.

The session, Sponsorship and Festivals: Through the Looking Glass, explored the dynamic role between brand sponsorship and festivals and its changes in recent times. The panel included Jobin Mathew, Media, Digital and PR Head at Asian Paints; Ravi Deecee, Founder, Kerala Literature Festival and CEO at DC Books; and Udit Mediratta, Director, Brand Marketing at AB InBev.

Jobin spoke of the association of Asian Paints and St+art Foundation and how they have collaborated for multiple festivals and projects across the past decade. Ravi explained the sponsorship model of the Kerala Literature Festival (KLF), which does not have a title sponsor. The KLF has numerous small sponsors and well-wishers who support them through F&B, hospitality, and travel. Udit Mediratta from Ab InBev was looped into the conversation by the moderator of the panel discussion, Rashmi Dhanwani, Founder, the Art X Company. Udit addressed concerns around finding the right partners to support festivals, integrating the brand identity indirectly through festival experiences, and the importance of co-creating cultural projects.

The panel also discussed the social objectives of brands in their support of festivals and the metrics they use to decipher the value of a cultural project. They also explained how they revamped their strategies during COVID-19 to support the cultural organisations they partner with to ensure the continuity of projects. The discussion closed with a Q&A with the audience, which comprised festival directors, managers and other cultural professionals.

This session was held as part of the British Council’s Festival Connections in partnership with ACRI (an Art X Company initiative), an annual programme of expertise, knowledge, and networking between India and the UK