AI is already replacing sponsorship research. Is creative activation next?

In a recent Adweek article, Mark Ritson pointed to Anthropic’s claim that 65% of marketing tasks could eventually be replaced by AI. His argument was not really about ad copy or image generation. It was about the less glamorous but highly important work that underpins modern marketing: research, analysis, planning and strategy. In sponsorship, that future may already be starting to arrive.

Research is already being automated

Rich Johnson, a sponsorship strategist, has created a low-cost AI tool called Sharmidon, designed to help partnership teams research and activate sponsorship. Rather than simply returning generic information, the tool is built to surface the details that matter when assessing fit: business priorities, existing sponsorships, tone of voice, competitor activity and the wider context around a brand.

In that sense, Sharmidon is a very real example of what Ritson was talking about. Sponsorship research, which has traditionally taken hours of manual digging, can now be done in minutes. As Johnson puts it: “I’ve always been frustrated by how many proposals aren’t bespoke or well researched on a brand.” His answer was to build a tool that forces that research to happen first.

Not just a research tool

Where things get more interesting, and more uncomfortable, is that Sharmidon does not stop at research. It also generates strategic activation ideas based on what it has learned about the brand, its objectives and examples of what has worked in the market.

That matters because research feels relatively easy to hand over to AI. Creativity does not.

If a tool can assess a sponsor’s priorities, understand the environment it operates in, and then suggest activations shaped by proven past approaches, it begins to move beyond support work and into territory many in the industry would have assumed was more protected. As Johnson says, the tool can do “about 80% of the heavy lifting around strategy and research”.

A clear advantage for lean teams

Today, the most obvious benefit is for smaller rights holders, smaller agencies and lean brand teams. In sponsorship, plenty of organisations still have one-person or very under-resourced commercial functions. For them, a tool like this can dramatically improve output.

Instead of staying up late researching and scrambling to develop activation ideas, lean teams can quickly develop campaigns far more aligned with a brand’s objectives. In practical terms, that helps level the playing field. Smaller players can now produce work that looks smarter, sharper and more informed than their resource levels would normally allow.

The bigger question is creativity

The real debate this technology opens up is if AI can already replace large parts of sponsorship research, can it also start to replace creative strategy?

Today, perhaps not fully. Today, tools like this still look like assistants, helping lean teams get to better answers faster. But AI does not stand still, and the direction of travel is obvious. What is useful for one-man commercial teams today could quickly become an essential tool for even the most experienced sponsorship teams.

If an AI tool can learn from successful past sponsorship campaigns, connect those patterns to a sponsor’s stated objectives and suggest ideas accordingly, then creative strategists, both in-house and agency-side, have to ask themselves a serious question: how defensible is their role over the next few years?

New competition has arrived

AI replacing sponsorship research already feels real. That much is increasingly hard to deny. Whether it can replace human creativity, taste, originality and instinct is much more open to debate.

There will be many in the industry who argue that the best ideas still need human imagination, nuance and judgment. They may be right. But even if AI does not fully replace human creativity, it is clearly becoming a serious competitor to it.

Sponsorship Masters

Rich Johnson will be sharing more on brand activation and storytelling at The Sponsor's upcoming event, Sponsorship Masters, a closed-door working session for sponsorship professionals on how to cut through and turn investment into impact. With only 50 places available, you can secure your seat here.