Evaluation of Sport Participation Objectives within a Health-Focussed Social Marketing Sponsorship

This study assesses social marketing elements of a multi-year partnership between Coca-Cola Canada and ParticipACTION’s Teen Challenge. ParticipACTION’s Teen Challenge is a multi-year, physical activity microgrant program that was developed in 2008 and involves over 5,800 community organizations and over 500,000 Canadian teens across the nation. Using past event data over a five-year period from 2009 to 2013, the study found that community organizations which viewed partners’ collaboration as positive agreed that the Teen Challenge program made physical activity more accessible and affordable for youth. The research also found that both Coca-Cola Canada and ParticipACTION share objectives in this particular sponsorship, supporting the sponsorship literature, in suggesting that shared objectives among sponsorship partners are important for the sponsorship to achieve successful outcomes.