My first video tutorial: Sponsorship Measurement Basics in about 10 Minutes

It's been a long process, but my first sponsorship tutorial is finally finished. What an epic process!

In the end, it's what I was after - basically, a video version of the matter-of-fact advice and insights that I try to provide in this blog. My first subject is sponsorship measurement, and while I cant cover everything about sponsorship measurement in ten minutes, it's a good primer.

There are already three more tutorials in production. Thankfully, now that we have the format down, these should come through a lot faster. Yay!

In the meantime, the first video is below. Have a look and let me know what you think!



I know... the still is horrible. YouTube only provides three options for the still. Can you believe this is the best option of the three?

What I learned about sponsorship from my boxing coach

After close to a month off, I was back in the boxing gym yesterday and wow, am I sore today. Actually, it’s not the muscles I use for punching that are sore, it’s the back muscles I use for recoiling after a punch and getting ready for the next one. I was explaining this to a friend and used a line my coach has said to me countless times:

It’s not how hard you hit. It’s how accurate you are and how fast you can hit them again.

As I said the words, I realised how pertinent that concept is for sponsorship (but without the hitting).

Best practice sponsorship is built around the idea of win-win-win. The third “win” is for the target markets. The goal with best practice sponsorship is that a large proportion of the target markets should receive small, meaningful benefits through a sponsorship, not just the chance for one person to receive a giant prize.

Many sponsors have embraced this idea, which is fantastic. Providing for added-value benefits to go to the target markets brings a level of relevance, relationship-building, and even respect and appreciation for the sponsor, that is lacking from earlier generations of sponsorship.

That said, there are degrees. The very best sponsors in the world create multiple small wins in each of their leverage plans. This may be comprised of many different wins or one win that is used multiple times by each person over the course of the sponsorship (example: VIP baseball parking for bank customers). The best sponsors then ensure that nothing they’re doing in any way disrespects the event experience, which would be a “lose” for the target markets. The net effect being that the customers/consumers have an experience that is improved in many small ways by a brand who has obviously thought about their needs.

Other sponsors have gone the way of the one big gesture – providing one added-value benefit one time – for the target markets. That is absolutely fair and will be valued by the target market, but you will probably get your best result by surrounding that bigger “win” with a number of smaller “wins”. Alternatively, you can provide a string of the big “wins” across a number of sponsorships. But providing one big benefit one time only tells your target market that you thought about them, well, once.

A more comprehensive group of “wins” for your target market fosters the idea that you’re always thinking about them…

That you are providing them with benefits that are pinpointed to their needs and you are providing them consistently…

That you are making meaningful connections and making them often…

Just like boxing… but friendlier.

How to hire a sponsorship broker

A while back, a colleague of mine needed a broker for a great series of events. I has huge potential for the right sponsor, and should have been a plum opportunity for a strong broker. I was able to put him in touch with some brokers, and he chose one, who promptly sold exactly nothing. It was disappointing, but as with all sponsorship sales, factors ranging from economic condition to plain bad luck could have been at play.

The event and broker went their separate ways and my colleague resigned himself to DIY. He got a couple of hot prospects on the line and asked for my help fine-tuning the proposal, which he had based on some of the broker’s proposals. That's when it all became clear. It was awful. I’m not sure if that broker’s skills really were that bad, or if this was just an epic example of phoning it in. Either way, even if all the other stars had aligned, no sponsor was ever going to buy that first generation pile of hooey.

We worked together and redid the proposal, and while there are never any guarantees, at least he now has a fighting chance.

What this whole exercise illustrated, in technicolour detail, was that all brokers are not created equal, having a big name doesn’t mean you’re any good, and that the people who need brokers the most are probably least equipped to tell the good from the bad.

What you want is someone who will represent your event to its absolute best, to shorten the odds for a sale, to get you bigger and better sponsors than you have the time or skill to get on your own. What you don’t want is someone who has a great contacts list, but skills that are 20 years out of date; someone who doesn’t know the difference between a strategic game and a numbers game.

What I’ve done is to create a “Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Sponsorship Broker” cheat sheet. I recommend that anyone who is considering hiring a broker ask these questions, as the answers will tell you plenty about how it will be to work with them.

I am assuming that your preference is for a broker to take a best practice approach (not sure what that is? Read “Last Generation Sponsorship”.) Sponsorship offers built on best-practice principles create obvious and appealing strategic platforms for the potential sponsors. Also, any proposal built around the basics of best practice sponsorship will immediately get more attention from a potential sponsor.

Download “Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Sponsorship Broker”

The upshot is that there are amazing brokers, awful brokers, and plenty in between. If you're going to hire one, you need to be selective, and that means asking the right questions and reading between the lines. I hope the cheat sheet helps and I wish you great success in raising sponsorship!

We have met the enemy of best practice sponsorship, and it is “standardisation”

I was recently – and frustratingly – involved in a string of responses to a blog built on the premise that sponsorship seekers should be standardising the data around what they are offering, allowing sponsors to compare properties on an apples-to-apples basis.

On one hand, the approach wasn’t surprising, as the company putting forth this premise is a company that offers a sponsorship listing service where old-school metrics of household income and impressions are front and centre. Standardising data would make it easier for more events to use their service.

On the other hand, the whole idea is so backward it makes me want to repeatedly thump my head on the desk.

Just so I make myself perfectly clear:

Standardisation is the enemy of best practice sponsorship.

I believe with every fibre of my being and all of my experience, that whether we’re talking about standardising the sponsorship offer, pricing, or measurement, “standardisation” means only one of two things: The proponents either need some education as to what sponsorship is really about; or they’re trying to sell you a formula or service that is based on this outmoded, least-common-denominator view of sponsorship.

Putting perfectly good information and wonderful creative ideas through a meat grinder until they all look the same is NOT progress. It’s like turning a five-star meal into a smoothie so it can be compared with other five star meals with the least possible number of variables. Not to put too fine a point on it, but yuck! And standardisation in sponsorship is no more palatable.

Restaurants are not reviewed based on data that is irrelevant, but easily standardised, like how many chairs they have and what colour linen they use. They are judged on substance and creativity, suitability and the recommendations of prior customers, the degree to which they focus on your needs and the passion that they bring to the experience.

The same is true of sponsorship. It is absolutely possible to make an objective assessment over the suitability or performance of a sponsorship, but standardised? No. Business plans are not standardised. Marketing objectives are not standardised. Market conditions are not standardised. No one is telling CMOs that they have 15 objectives to choose from and they should tick boxes next to the ones that interest them. Sponsor needs are far ranging and nuanced. A formula will never reflect their objectives, and a formulaic solution will never meet their needs.

I have been in this industry for 24 years. In that time, I’ve seen it rise from a visibility-driven commodity to a powerful, accountable, consumer/customer-driven marketing tool. It’s exciting and gratifying to be part of an industry that has become a shining example of what marketing can and should be. There is nothing – not one argument – that would convince me that going back to an era of less (bordering on “no”) sophistication and less accountability is a good idea for the industry.

When you have a name like Kim Skildum-Reid…

…Google voice search is hilarious.

I’ve got it on my iPhone. When I said my name to test it, it came up with a whole list of links for “human skeleton review”. A friend with a much more normal name did a voice search on his name, and it came up with “spray bubble can”. Hmmm.

Then just the other day, some Facebook app asked if I’d like to work out my Hollywood name (think J.Lo, LiLo, SamRo, etc). Apparently, it’s “KiSkir”. I guess it could be worse. It could be “human skeleton review”.

If any of you have the Google iPhone app with voice search, say your name and find out what you get. If it’s as bad as “spray bubble can” or “human skeleton review”, let me know!

On a big tangent – but still name-related – I recently heard that there is a band in Adelaide called “Ambush Marketing’. I wonder if they know they’ve got a toolkit?

"Ambush Marketing" on YouTube

The Ambush Marketing Toolkit on Amazon (Hmm... looks a little small and plain next to the video. Better write something to make it look cooler.) THIS BOOK ROCKS!! (Muuuch better.)

Call in the Coach: Can I use the Law of Attraction to get a corporate sponsor ?

We run a few events every year and are hosting a conference for our industry later this year. My job is to get sponsors, but it has been months since any new money has come in. We’ve also lost a couple of sponsors and a couple of others are looking shaky. I’m getting desperate. Do you think it’s possible to use the Law of Attraction to manifest sponsorship?

I’ll admit it. This is probably the most unusual “coach” question I ever received. The one about getting sponsorship for a lawnmower racing team would have been close, except then I found out that lawnmower racing is a real sport. Who would have thought??

All kidding aside, there are a lot of people who believe in the Law of Attraction and manifesting their desires. I know a little about it, but I’m no expert in the area. I do know that sometimes things do happen that lay somewhere between magic and miracles, so I’m not going to judge. And I’ve addressed moral and ethical issues around sponsorship in the past – why shouldn’t I give the spiritual angle a go? So, here is my best shot...

Whether you call it the Law of Attraction or the power of positive thinking, I believe that being focused, calm, and positive is a very good thing when it comes to seeking sponsorship:

• You will be able to concentrate your efforts, because you’ll have specifically defined what you are trying to accomplish within the framework of your job or organisation.
• You will be more likely to identify opportunities to bolster your sponsorship income – even subtle or unexpected opportunities – if you believe it is going to happen.
• You will be more pleasant to be around, so you’ll have deeper, more interesting interactions with people who could be important to your goal of seeking more sponsorship, and be more likely to get referrals to other people who could be important.

That said, do I believe you can “manifest” a sponsor handing you a cheque simply through meditation and other spiritual techniques? No, I really don’t.

You could “manifest” an airline seat next to your dream sponsor, or meet her or him at an industry function or even get a call from that sponsor requesting a proposal. (Or it could be sheer, blind luck, depending on your take on this whole Attraction thing.) But as fortuitous as that meeting might be, getting an audience with a potential sponsor and getting that sponsor to sign a contract are two entirely different things.

You may – may – be able to bend your luck toward your goal, but you are not going to be able to bend a corporate strategy that dozens or hundreds or thousands believe in. Nope. Developing a sponsorship offering that meets the objectives and target markets of the potential sponsor, and doing it in a way that is compelling and differentiated from everyone else who has somehow got a proposal in front of them – that takes skill, a sophisticated approach, and effort. If you want someone to hand you a cheque that doesn’t require your skill or effort, you are not looking for a sponsor, you are looking for a benefactor, and they are few and far between.

That’s a long answer that, in essence, says “sort of”. This is a tough market and can be demoralising. You need to do what you can to stay positive and focused, and if The Secret and Co. help you to do that, then do it. But there is no free lunch. If an opportunity does present itself, you need to be prepared (skills and a strong approach) and take action (effort).

There is one of those Law of Attraction ideas that does seem very applicable, and that is, “turn it into something good”. Spiritual or not, that’s great advice for sponsorship seekers. No matter how good you are, you’re likely to hear “no” more than you hear “yes”. When you take a blow – and pretty much everyone is taking a few – think about how you can turn it into something good. For instance, you could:

• Ask the sponsor who said “no” for some specific feedback on your offer, so you can address any issues in your approach.
• Ask the sponsor who didn’t renew whether they can recommend any sponsors you should be talking to, or whether they can provide an endorsement.
• Train the sponsors who are questioning the value of their investment. Train them how to leverage and measure what they do and your value will skyrocket.
• If nothing is going right, take a hard look at your overall approach to sponsorship seeking. There has never been a better – or more critical – time to upgrade your approach.

I wish you all peace, happiness, and good fortune. And if some of that comes from a book or a movie, that’s okay.

Community engagement, cause sponsorship, and CSR

I’m putting it on record: This whole sponsorship/CSR thing is getting out of hand.

Over and over, I see sponsors writing sponsorship cheques to charities and community organisations and calling it one of two things:

• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Community engagement

Not to put too fine a point on it, but wrong and wrong.

First off, Corporate Social Responsibility is built on the premise of making money in an ethical and sustainable way. Writing cheques – even big cheques – to charitable or community organisations does not “tick the CSR box”. The only type of sponsorship that has anything to do with CSR are sponsorships that include using the expertise or resources of that charity to make real changes in the way the company does business. An example would be an environmental charity carrying out an audit on business practices and (here’s the important bit) the company committing to make the recommended changes.

As far as community engagement goes, since when does writing a cheque to a local charity “engage the community”? It benefits the community, sure, but it doesn’t “engage” them. If a company wants to really engage the community, you have to listen to the community, include the community, and reflect the community. Sponsoring community organisations can provide a platform for doing those things, but just writing the cheque and issuing a press release is not engagement.

I am all for cause sponsorship. It is an incredibly powerful marketing tool, while making a real difference in the community. But just like every other kind of sponsorship, it needs to be leveraged by the sponsor in order to get a return. Spending sponsorship money and not leveraging it is a waste.

The problem is that calling sponsorship “CSR” or “community engagement” is not only inaccurate, it tends to make sponsors think that their job is done when they spent the money and that leverage isn’t necessary. Leverage is important. It is the only way you will change people’s perceptions or behaviours around your brand. If you spend the money, you need to work the investment.

Sponsorship-driven event cancellations: The economy is only part of the story

No British Masters golf. No Masters of Asia because of Volvo’s pull-out. America’s Arena Football League has suspended play after 22 years. Australia’s National Basketball League is down to only seven teams – none of them in the country’s three largest cities. Festivals, conferences, tours, fundraising events, and more are failing all over the world, and the finger is being pointed squarely at the economy.

While the current economic situation has been hard on everyone, I think it is unrealistic to blame these failures totally on the economy.

The “global economic meltdown” hasn’t crippled our industry. What it has done is emphasise the weaknesses inherent in so many events and organisational approaches. And when a sponsor rationalises a portfolio, it’s the weakest, least strategic investments that will be the first to go.

Golf is a major case in point. Does anyone think that our industry really needs as many tournaments, as many entire tours, as we had before the meltdown? And with virtually all of them offering the same compliment of ho-hum benefits that have barely changed in 20 years, is it any surprise that they’ve been hit hard with sponsor exits as soon as times got tough?

And seriously, 34 College Bowl  games has had the smell of unsustainability for some time. I would be stunned if that number doesn’t drop considerably.

And if you think the sponsees’ degree of sophistication isn’t a contributing factor, I challenge you: The next time you hear about an event falling over, go immediately to the event website, navigate to the section that talks about sponsorship, and you will probably find something that looks suspiciously like gold-silver-bronze, with each level made up of some set combination of logos on things, tickets to things, hospitality, and endorsement. When a sponsor has to make a choice between sponsoring a good event that offers a crap sponsorship opportunity and a good event that creates highly strategic, customised opportunities, the old-school events will go every time.

And it’s not just cancellations, but event shrinkage. By their own estimations, MLB attendance predicted to be down 17-20% and both clubs and the League are bracing for sponsor exits. Given that baseball is the least expensive of the major sports of North America to attend, and provides one of the longest leverage windows, it’s quite possible that the fact that something like 107 players have now tested positive for steroids has contributed to the drop.

IEG has come out predicting that sponsorship spends will increase by 2.2% this year – the lowest increase in 25 years. Maybe this is some kind of industry rah-rah to keep us all thinking positive, but I reckon they’re dreaming.

Sponsors are spending less. Let’s just be realistic here...

• They are dropping sponsorships that aren’t working for them.
• They are dropping sponsorships that offer uninspired, set benefits.
• They are dropping sponsorships that are overly cluttered or where the event is duplicated ad infinitum.
• They are dropping sponsorships that are one-sided and where the sponsee has no grasp (and doesn’t seem to care) what the sponsor is trying to accomplish.
• They are dropping sponsorships of organisations who don’t know how to market themselves.
• They are dropping sponsorships of organisations who are riddled with scandal and show no signs of fixing the problem.

Certainly, there are some events that have simply been victims of corporate failure or reorganisation, and that’s really regrettable. But I still ask myself, if a really great sponsee – one with a sophisticated, partnership-oriented approach – fails because one major sponsor tanks on them, they were probably too reliant on that one big cheque. As always, hindsight is 20/20 and not very helpful.

Back to the issue at hand…

If you’re a sponsorship seeker and you’ve lost – or are in danger of losing – a significant proportion of your sponsorship income from multiple sponsors, you need to stop blaming the economy. Yes, the economy is terrible, but all it’s really done is make your weaknesses more evident. You need to look to your own approach and fix the issues that made you one of the investments your sponsors walked away from, and not one of the investments they have kept.

Check out the free white papers on our Free Stuff page. You may also benefit from getting your hands on a copy of The Sponsorship Seeker’s Toolkit 3^rd Edition.

“Sponsorship” vs “partnership”… again

Doyenne of the UK sponsorship scene, Karen Earl, has reignited the old sponsorship vs. partnership thing. What do we call what we do? What is the future? Karen comes down squarely on the side of “partnership”, but I really don’t agree.

Clearly, the industry’s approach to sponsorship has shifted to one that is partnership-oriented. The problem with shifting to the word "partnership" is that a) it means something different to every department within a company; and b) it has a very specific legal definition that goes way beyond the relationship outlined in a sponsorship contract.

Truly, I'm open to another name for it, but I don't think "partnership" is ever going to be redefined in the general business vernacular, and that is what we're talking about. Our industry needs a term that is specific to what we do and is recognised as the same thing from the CEO to marketing to finance to sales to HR and beyond. 

Until or unless some better term comes along, I think "sponsorship" is immediately recognisable by people across the gamut of organisations. And as certainly as the terms "media" and "public relations" mean something different now than they did five or ten years ago, the meaning of "sponsorship" has grown – and will continue to grow – as our industry changes.

Or, we could just call it “Bob”.

Got a vote? Got a suggestion? Drop me a line, I’ll tally it up, and update you!

Click here to vote for “sponsorship”  

Click here to vote for “partnership”  

Click here to vote for “Bob”  

The spamsorship proposal strikes again!

Last year, I was absolutely stunned to receive a “proposal” via e-mail, offering me the “opportunity” to spend US $300,000 on sponsoring an Indy Car only three weeks before the Indianapolis 500. To say I was less than impressed would be putting it mildly. I don’t know how many of these spamsorship proposals the guy sent, but he definitely didn’t hit the mark with me:

• I’m in Australia.
• I’m a consultant, not a sponsor.
• Even if I were a sponsor, only someone with a very limited grasp of what sponsorship is all about (not me) would spend that much money sponsoring a race car – sponsoring anything – without sufficient time to leverage the investment.

I wrote about it in a blog back then, and got a response from the bloke telling me I was damaging my credibility because I didn’t understand the millions of dollars worth of exposure one of these sponsors would get. In other words, he told me in giant, red, neon letters that his skills were about twenty years behind the times. Poor bloke.

Months past, and no spamsorship proposals. Excellent. Until last month, when I received two of them in the space of just a couple of days. Another one a week later. Two the week after that. Not excellent.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what are these sponsees thinking? Do they really think that a blind email that is one big uncustomised pitch and a 4Mb attachment is actually going to sell anything? Especially when they are sending these spamsorship proposals only a few weeks before the event? The event may be fantastic – and a lot of them are – but with no time to leverage it, no sponsor with any nous is going to take it up.

Plus, considering that it is apparently too much work to actually put my name on it, take a little time to see what my company actually does, where I’m located, and oh… I don’t know, actually think about what might be in it for me (or any sponsor), you’ve got those giant, red, neon letters spelling out, “I have no idea how to be a good partner”.

Is it a sign of the times? Probably. Is it helpful in raising sponsorship? Probably not. Does it damage your credibility? Absolutely.

If you are considering sending a spamsorship proposal, this is what is likely to happen:

• You will be broadcasting that you are desperate. This is not a good idea at the pub, or the bank, and definitely not how you want to be seen by peers and potential sponsors.
• You will be either discounting your sponsorship offer to the point where you devalue your event (or whatever you’re selling sponsorship to).
• You will be showcasing that you don’t understand one of the basic tenets of corporate sponsorship (and not just best-practice sponsorship): That when a sponsor invests in a sponsorship, they are investing in opportunity. It is leverage that provides the results. If you are selling with no time for leverage, you are selling opportunity with no chance for the sponsor to get a result.
• Any sponsor that might have a short-term tactical agenda will ream you on price, bully you, and not renew.
• You will lose credibility with sponsors who may have been genuine prospects for future events with more lead time.
• People will blog and tweet and gossip about you, and believe me, all publicity is NOT good publicity.

Consider yourself warned.

For maximum impact, forget the event, concentrate on the event experience

Sponsors, have you ever lamented that some of the events you sponsor only last a day, a weekend, or a week? Wondered how you were ever going to leverage enough or establish enough relevance to justify the investment in that short timeframe? Have you ever felt hamstrung by the limitations of the event or your sponsorship level?

Sponsorship seekers, do you wonder how you’re going to sell enough sponsorship to an event or program that only attracts a few hundred or a few thousand attendees? How to juggle all of your sponsors’ various agendas within the scope of your event without overcommercialising it?

Here’s the trick: Stop talking about the event and concentrate on the event experience. (Geez, did I give it away in the title?)

The event – and I’m using that term generically to refer to whatever you are sponsoring or selling sponsorship of – is usually finite. It happens in a particular place during a particular timeframe with x number of people there and, depending on what it is, possibly a larger audience participating via the media. It’s limited, often crowded and cluttered, and to stand out, many sponsors resort to being loud and annoying, rather than meaningful and relevant.

The event experience, however, provides the scope, longevity, and flexibility to create amazing, bespoke sponsorship programs. How? Think about this… Do people stop being fans of a team when the game ends? The season? Does the concert really start with the first crushing chord and end when the lights go on? Is your Louvre experience over when you re-emerge into the Paris dusk? Do you stop caring about the charity once you’ve finished the walk-a-thon? Do you have to attend a conference to be interested in the content? No. No to all of it.

The way most sponsorship is done, however, you think the event itself was the be-all and end-all. The fundamental reason for this is the flawed (and outdated) idea that the primary relationship is between the sponsor and the sponsee, hence, the focal point is the event. In reality, the primary relationship is between the sponsor and their target market(s) – with the sponsorship seeker in the role of “conduit” – so the focal point must be the people who make up the markets, and for them, the event is only part of their event experience.

The event experience starts the moment an event comes into consideration and doesn’t end until the last memory fades, the last story is told, you turn the concert CD into a coaster, the t-shirt into a rag, or simply decide to care about something else. The event experience is longer, broader, and deeper than the event itself. It encompasses anticipation and memories, logistics and mementos, it is emotional, functional, educational, social, and so much more. The event is created by a production company or team or association. The event experience is created by individuals. And because there are so many ways to have an event experience – so many components, so many touch-points – many people create one for themselves without even attending the event.

I am not talking about simply running a sales promotion (or whatever) that is anchored on the event, but happens outside of the event, although that certainly can be part of a leverage program. I am talking about extending the basic concept behind best practice sponsorship – that sponsorship is now win-win-win, with the third win being the target market – across the entire event experience.

Creating those “third wins”, those small, meaningful value-adds for the target market, falls into two main categories: Amplifying or extending the best parts of the event experience and ameliorating the worst parts of the event experience. There are as many ways to do this as there are aspects to an even experience, but here are some ideas to get you started.

Amplifying the best stuff – could you…

• Provide sponsorship-driven advice, tools, inspiration, or information
• Give the target market access to behind-the-scenes information or exclusive content
• Create ways for them to have input into the development of the event (content, location, etc)
• Create a way to experience the event online for people who couldn’t attend
• Create a promotion offering content or souvenirs from the event (eg, mp3 downloads with proof of purchase)
• Create a keepsake that can be shared with others – photos of people at the event (downloadable later?), post-event content sent to phone or e-mail, etc
• Create ways for people to post reviews, stories, etc relating to the event
• Create ways for people to post their own related content (eg, they can post their “best bike stack” videos around a mountain bike event), and people might be able to vote on the best one

Reducing the worst stuff – could you…

• Create an event guide or planner, so people can create their plan of attack for a larger event based on their own interests
• Offer VIP ticketing before they go on sale to the general public
• Create ways for people to participate in the pre-event promotion – submit questions for a press conference, participate in a live web chat with a star/expert/whatever
• Provide more convenient access or parking
• Create pre-event forums asking for people’s concerns, questions, things they want changed
• Offer specialised packages tailored for the target market – families with young kids, older people, teens who travel in packs, etc.

This is really just the tip of the iceberg, but the starting place is always, “What are all the ways people interact with this event, sport, artistic endeavour, charity, or whatever?”. Use the scope of the event experience to give your brand the flexibility you need, the clear space to operate, the longevity to create a consistent bond.

For sponsorship seekers, use the event experience to create a larger, more valuable platform for your sponsors and potential sponsors. Give them ideas for leveraging outside of the event itself. They will thank you for it.

What should a corporate sponsor do when a major scandal strikes?

If you’re anywhere within cooey of Australia, you’ve heard about the recent implosion of Rugby League team, the Cronulla Sharks. I keep trying to write a response, but I get two paragraphs into it and something else happens. It’s very, very ugly – defcon 1 ugly – and as the scandals and allegations piled up, I struggled to find sound angles for strategic advice. The condensed version is, “stay well away”, but to be fair, there is something to be learned from a meltdown of this magnitude.

To bring all of you non-Aussies up to speed:

• In August 08, star player, Greg Bird was arrested for allegedly “glassing” his girlfriend in the eye. He tried to pin it on his best friend, who was not impressed. In late April, he was found guilty of malicious wounding and false accusation. (Click here for more.)
• Player Brett Seymour was fined $20,000 for his drunken antics one memorable evening out. Not his first incident.
• In early-May, a young New Zealand woman accused Sharks players of group sexual assault in a Christchurch hotel room seven years ago. While Sharks players did not deny it happened, they maintain it was fully consensual. Apparently, this group bonding activity is so common across the League that players even have a name for it. It belies belief that the whole of our region all now knows what a “bun” is. Only one former player (and current major media star) was named, but up to 12 players were involved, casting doubt on everyone who made the trip.
• On 15 May, after a week or so of frenzied muckraking, several sponsors ended their association with the club, for a total loss of $150,000 per annum.
• Then it came out that the CEO accidentally punched a female staff member in the face in a “shadow boxing incident” last year. She was paid $20,000 and no longer works for the Sharks.
• Almost simultaneously, it was alleged that a local “porn king” had entered the locker room on a game day with two prostitutes. It is also alleged that players were supplied with their pick of adult, er… novelties, to bring home to their wives and girlfriends. The “porn king” in question has denied all of this, as has the team.
• And on 20 May, star player, Reni Maitua, had a second sample test positive for a prohibited performance-enhancing substance, likely earning him a two-year ban.
• On 21 May, the club’s major sponsor, LG, pulled their reported $700,000 sponsorship after nine years, citing club scandals as a major factor in the decision.
• Finally (we hope), Captain, Paul Gallen fined $10,000 for using a racial slur in last weekend’s game against the Dragons.

The Sharks were on the brink of financial disaster before this appalling run of scandals.  It looks like their only hope of survival will be if the NRL bails them out or they find a cashed-up buyer. But are they worth saving? Is the club culture so toxic that they no longer have any marketing value? Have they alienated so much of the community and so many sponsors that they are no longer viable? Reports are that attendance is down 30% this year, and while some of that could be attributed to poor on-field performance, there is no question in my mind that the scandals would be a contributing factor.

And what about the League? With sex, booze, and drug scandals cropping up across the League with increasing frequency, they were already dealing with plenty of tarnish on the sport. How do they manage when sponsors and fans are wondering whether these aren’t just isolated occurrences - whether every team is like the Sharks – and we just haven’t heard all the ugly details yet?

Will it all fall to bits? I really don’t know, but with major sporting events and even entire leagues folding around the globe, it’s not outside the realm of possibility. Honestly, I don’t think the NRL will fail, but it will require a cultural reinvention of epic proportions, and they should be prepared to see some key sponsors exit both the NRL and clubs. There are certainly plenty of rumblings to that effect in sponsor-land, and when budgets are under pressure, dumping an expensive, scandal-plagued sport seems like a strong option.

All bets are off for the Sharks. I don’t think they’ve lost their last sponsor. Bailing would be the smartest move for many of the brands on their current roster, as reflecting their target markets’ and employees’ outrage and taking a stand probably provides more marketing value than the team does.

And any clued-up company wouldn’t even consider investing at this point. While being a sponsor at a time when a major scandal erupts may shrink the marketing platform that the sponsor can leverage, reducing the value of the investment, it doesn’t tend to reflect on the sponsor. The view is that they were just a blindsided as the fans. Embarking on a sponsorship of a club in the midst of scandal, however, is very risky, as the brand can look like they are sanctioning the culture. I wouldn’t consider sponsoring a team in crisis until – at the very least…

1. Their board and senior executive team are replaced. In this case, the board who presided over the near financial ruin of the club and a culture that could spell its death knell are hardly the right people to turn it around. But with management absolving the board of responsibility, and at least one board member taking a permissive stance when it comes to a top player accused (now convicted) of domestic violence, it’s looking unlikely.
2. A zero-tolerance, no-dickheads policy is instituted. (several Australian teams now have a no-dickheads policy.)
3. Player management overhauled and individual and team accountability for behaviour substantially raised.
4. Enough scandal-free time had passed to show progress. The problem for the Sharks is that they may not survive financially to the point where their commercial value starts to rise again.

Whether the NRL bails them out will be entirely to do with whether they’re viewed by the League as a liability or a wake-up call. It could go either way, but if the NRL did frame this as a wake-up call and save the club, it would also mean admitting that their current efforts to curb inappropriate behaviour haven’t worked and reinventing – again – their approach to the sex/drugs/violence culture within the sport. It would probably be easier for them to simply classify the club as a malignant anomaly, cut them loose, and hope to God this is the last of the major scandals, but I’m not sure how realistic that approach would be.

The other option would be a white knight buyer or major sponsor owned by a cashed-up, long-time supporter with a bit of a hero complex. A local entrepreneur (and passionate fan) stepped in just in the last week or so, sponsoring the club with his company, InterPark, for the remainder of the season. As already mentioned, I think this is a strategically risky move for the sponsor, but it’s also risky for the Sharks. Pursuing benefactor-style sponsorship before the dust has settled on the issues – before they’ve had a chance to regroup – smacks of desperation and could impact on their appeal down the track.

I know, I know… this is a long, rambling blog that covers a lot of ground, yet doesn’t provide a lot of advice. The situation is both so bad that there isn’t a lot of strategic worth to say, and so big that the implications for sponsorship across major sporting codes is going to be substantial. This blog has been written and rewritten so many times I’ve lost count, and if I thump my head on the desk in frustration any more, I’m going to leave a dent.

The upshot is that I am trying to find the lessons to learn from a situation so ugly that it belies belief, and a situation that feels for all the world like there is another shoe still to drop. I hope I’m wrong. I hope it turns around and that all of the ardent fans, hardworking staff, and good blokes playing the game don’t pay the price for the selfish, moronic acts of a few.

Ambush marketing: In praise of ambushing up

We all know ambush marketing is divisive. Some consider it to be opportunistic, while others categorise it as parasitic. There are ethical, moral, and strategic arguments around it, and while it’s great fun to wade into the debate, that’s not what this is about.

No matter where you fall in the would-vs-wouldn’t ambush argument, there is one kind of ambush marketing that any company can do without any ethical dilemma whatsoever: Ambushing up. I love ambushing up, do it with virtually all of my clients, and highly recommend it for any corporate sponsor. In an era when every dollar spent is under huge scrutiny, it’s an even better idea.

Ambushing up is not about undermining or usurping the marketing value from another sponsor. It’s also not about leveraging an event you don’t sponsor for marketing gain. No, ambushing up takes the techniques of the world’s best ambushers and puts them to work on your genuine sponsorships.

Why “ambushing up”? These ambush techniques are most potent for small- to mid-sized sponsors who use them to create such huge, relevant, and resonant marketing impact that they look like much bigger sponsors than they are. It does tend to upset the bigger sponsors on the scene, who will whinge nonstop about being outdone by someone further down the hierarchy. But frankly, if they’re not using the larger platforms they have to their absolute fullest, then they need to raise their own games, not carry on about sponsors who play better than they do!

There are a few basic premises for ambushing up:

Don’t sponsor higher than you need to

It’s time to put the corporate ego on hold and realise that your logo being bigger than everyone else’s does not automatically equate to getting bigger results. Instead, go into the negotiation with your (big, audacious) leverage plan firmly in mind. Do not focus on the level, just negotiate for exactly the benefits you need to accomplish that plan. Remember, strategic ambushers can get a return with NO benefits – you can accomplish a great deal with a few of the right ones!

Concentrate on the event experience

What you can do with the event itself is probably limited, and the lower your sponsorship level, the more limited it will be. What you can do with the event experience, however, is almost limitless.

The event experience is the event, plus everything else around it. It starts the moment someone in your target market becomes interested in an event and ends when the event has faded from memory. The experience includes the information they get, the input they have, the (in)convenience they experience getting there, the atmosphere, the feeling of being a fan, and everything else that goes into every individual experience. Don’t just leverage the event – which may just last a couple of weeks, days, or hours – look to the experience to give you a leverage platform of real critical mass.

This is where ambush marketing lives. Strategic ambushers have virtually no access to the event itself, so create opportunities to add value to their relationships with their target markets within the event experience. The brands who just try to smuggle their logos into stadiums, rather than operating with virtually free rein outside of the event, but within the event experience, are either egomaniacs or amateurs. Ignore them. They’re mugs.

Negotiate for IP

Here’s the deal: Hierarchy has more to do with the amount of finite benefits you get than anything else – how many tickets, signs, how much hospitality, how much exclusivity. Negotiating for more of those things will cost you quite a bit, as they are in limited supply, so the key is, negotiate for stuff that’s easy for the sponsee to provide and is in relatively limitless supply and has a ton of scope for creative leverage. My favourite thing to negotiate is IP – expertise, behind-the-scenes information, blogs, photos, whatever – because it’s flexible and can be used over an extended timeframe.

The upshot is that one of the smartest things any sponsor can do, especially when money is tight, is to think like an ambusher. One of my favourite examples of this is Weetbix – www.weetbix.co.nz. This leading brand of breakfast cereal is one of the smallest sponsors of the New Zealand All Blacks – New Zealand’s national rugby team (and almost a religion in NZ) – but they have an enormous impact because they have embraced every one of the basic tenets of ambushing up.

If you want to know a lot more about ambush marketing – how to do it, how to stop one, and all the techniques you can use to ambush up – you might want to check out my book, The Ambush Marketing Toolkit.

Five telltale signs of a “magic wand” sponsor

“Behold the magic of sponsorship! You too can achieve success and riches by using the time-honoured techniques of the mystic arts. Hold still while I sprinkle you all with magic fairy dust and you will get the sponsorship results of your dreams while doing nothing but letting people buy you lunch, erasing your voicemail without listening to it, and getting your picture taken with world-renowned athletes!”

I’m thinking of using that as the opening of a new keynote. What do you think? A bit much?? Honestly, I wish it were. But this reflects the apparent approach taken by more corporate sponsors around the world than you can possibly imagine. I call them “magic wand” sponsors because they seem to think that all you have to do is be a sponsor and results will magically appear. Their tricks are many and varied, but here are a few they use over and over.

Strategy levitation trick

This is a personal favourite. This stunning feat revolves around the concept of creating a sponsorship strategy when there is no overall marketing plan or other brand strategy in place – in a sense, levitating a sponsorship strategy with no means of support.

Don’t laugh. I’ve seen it a hundred times (and been hired to do the levitation for them on a number of occasions). There are plenty of companies who seem to believe this is possible.

Here is the rub: Sponsorship is just another tool – albeit a unique and powerful tool – to achieve overall marketing objectives. If a company or brand can’t articulate the marketing objectives, how on Earth can a sponsorship plan be developed to help achieve them? It’s like trying to give directions to get to a destination that hasn’t been decided yet.

Without actual magic powers, about the best you can do is get away from what you know are not the objectives, plan for flexibility, and press “pause” until at least a draft marketing strategy is completed and a destination decided.

Leverage invisibility field

Now you see it, now you don’t. Probably the most popular magic trick of all time and definitely the most common trick for sponsors.

Putting it into marketing terms, this is when a sponsor makes an investment, doesn’t leverage it effectively (or at all), and expects to magically achieve objectives. Tah-dah! Hail the magical powers of the leverage invisibility field!!

Unfortunately, unless you’ve got Barbara Eden in a bottle, this just isn’t going to work.

When you invest in a sponsorship, all you are buying is opportunity. You are not, repeat NOT, buying results. The results are achieved by using this opportunity in a myriad of ways to:

• Make your brand more meaningful to your target markets
• Add value to your relationship with your target markets
• Add value to your target markets’ experience with the event (or whatever) you’re sponsoring
• Make your existing marketing – advertising, electronic communications, website, PR, HR, loyalty, retailer, etc – more relevant, exciting, and meaningful to your target markets

That requires actually getting off your bums and doing something creative with your investments. You can do it. It’s really not that difficult. If you’re totally at a loss, hire a consultant, but DO SOMETHING!

Pay no attention to the sponsee behind the curtain

This is another all-too-common feat of prestidigitation: You totally ignore your partners, or worse yet, treat them like dirt, and you expect them to go out of their ways to give you lots of extra stuff just because you’ve got the money.

Newsflash: Sponsorship is not a one-way street. If you’re managing it that way, you are at best wasting the huge opportunity that comes from having a totally bought-in partner, and at worst, you’re being a bully. Your partners are the conduits through which you will be connecting with your target markets and that position in your marketing efforts does need to be respected.

If you expect to get great results, you need to both nurture and add value to your relationships with partners. You simply can’t expect that treatment from them and not reciprocate. It’s bad business (and bad karma).

Cut the lovely sponsorship budget in half trick

With the economy in flux, this trick has gained in popularity manyfold, and involves indiscriminately – as opposed to strategically – cutting sponsorship budgets.

How budget cuts are handled says more about an organisation’s sophistication in this media than any other single indicator. If an organisation believes that sponsorship is a “luxury spend” and/or that it is the most expendable of all marketing activities, then they totally do not get what sponsorship is about and they’re probably better off without it.

That said, I’m a realist. I know times are tough and you may need to rationalise your portfolio. If so, do not just cut whatever is coming up to renewal because it’s easy. Instead, take it as a cue to undertake a proper sponsorship audit. That way, you will know where the dead wood is, what is delivering, and what the potential is for your underperforming sponsorships. My experience is that a proper audit will both save you significant money and amplify your results.

Pull the measurement report out of a hat

Even sponsors who haven’t resorted to the magic wand throughout a sponsorship tend to resort to unknown mystical forces when it comes to measurement.

Using the old magician standby “people know what they see”, sponsors compile a list of the most visible parts of a sponsorship only, assign some arbitrary value to each of those, compare it to the amount spent on the sponsorship, and call it ROI.

“Hmm… well, we got tickets and they were worth about $12,000. Then there was the suite. We paid for the catering, but still, the suite would have cost about $8000. Then there was all that exposure. The logo-counting company we hired came up with a media equivalency figure of $2.4 million. And it only cost us half a million. Wow. That sponsorship was a huge success!”

Did anyone new try our brand? Were there incremental sales? Were they sustained? How do the brand perception figures compare with our ambient consumer research? How about loyalty, purchase intention, or advocacy? Did it move the pin on employee morale and pride?

Those are just a few of the important questions that a measurement report should answer. Measuring the “visible” only measures how visible the sponsorship was, not how it performed.

So, if you stand squarely in the baffle-them-with-bull camp, go ahead and present the report with the magic numbers, complete with full-colour bar charts, media clips, and the ubiquitous rapturous crowd shots. Note, the truly death-defying version of this trick involves presenting the magical report to your board or executive committee. (See also related topic, “Watch sponsorship manager put head in lion’s mouth”.) But know that the first time a senior executive asks what the sponsorship actually achieved, the jig will be up and you will look like a chump.

Sponsorship requires work. It requires planning and creativity and getting buy-in and measurement. Just spending money on it doesn’t mean you’re getting results, just like having a gym membership or walking around in track pants doesn’t mean you’re fit. There is no magic wand for love handles and there is no magic wand for sponsorship.

Okay, I’m done.

What should you do when your board sets unrealistic sponsorship targets?

If you’re a sponsorship seeker, at least one of these will sound familiar:

• Your organisation is planning an expansion or other costly activity, so your board increases your sponsorship target, or
• Your government funding is cut, so your board increases your sponsorship target, or
• Your donations have dropped, so your board increases your sponsorship target, or
• Your attendance has dropped, so your board increases your sponsorship target, or
• One of your competitors scores a big sponsorship, so your board increases your sponsorship target

We have all been in this position at one time or another, but the current economic situation has everyone under pressure, and when many boards don't understand how sponsorship works, and that sponsors are not a font of easy money, the pressure on frontline sponsorship seeking staff is as high as it has ever been. 

This just-get-more-sponsorship approach is so common right now that it borders on normal. But as common as it is, all of these rationale for raising sponsorship targets are inherently flawed.

As an organisation – board included – the first thing to take on board is that your commercial value (ie, the amount you can raise in sponsorship) has absolutely nothing to do with your financial need. Your commercial value may be a lot more than you need, or it may be a lot less. If those figures work out roughly the same, consider it a rare coincidence. The upshot is, just because you need or want more money doesn’t mean you will be able to raise more sponsorship.

The other thing to take on board is that sponsorship revenues seem to naturally level themselves out. If your organisation is taking a certain approach, with a certain set of resources, and working hard at it, you are probably raising close to as much as you will ever raise within the bounds of those circumstances. Doubling the number of phone calls you make won’t double your sponsorship, and neither will doubling the price tag on your sponsorships. In fact, the only likely result will be a target unmet and resentful, demoralised staff.

As much as dollars in the door are numbers, increasing sponsorship is not a numbers game. The three biggest factors in determining your success at hitting a much bigger target are getting real about your commercial value, being flexible with funding, and the sophistication and creativity behind your approach.

1. Getting real – You need to take a good, hard look at your organisation and your events. Even though you need money for everything, not everything is sponsorable, which brings me to…
2. Getting flexible – Rather than chasing money for individual events or programs, it may be a lot more effective to go for one or more larger sponsors across a range of your activities. Or you may find one or two events that have huge commercial value, and should be flexible enough to maximise the revenue off of those and shift any overage to other, less commercial programs. 
3. Getting sophisticated – Upgrading your approach to best-practice sponsorship is the single biggest thing you can do to increase your commercial value. Sponsors are looking for best-practice partners – partners who really understand how sponsorship works for a brand and for the brand’s target markets and can deliver to their goals. That’s still rare. If you’re one of those sponsorship seekers, you are immediately more valuable to potential sponsors.

If you want a step-by-step approach to best practice sponsorship, you really can’t go past the brand new edition of The Sponsorship Seeker’s Toolkit. Yes, I know, I’m one of the authors. But we wrote it with you in mind. We want you to succeed. We want you to have an edge. We want you to meet your targets and keep your job.

You can get The Sponsorship Seeker’s Toolkit 3rd Edition at good bookstores and online booksellers worldwide, or you can just click to order it from Amazon.

Should I hire a valuation service? If not, how do I get to the right price?

I get this question a lot. There are a lot of people out there who really don’t understand pricing, and plenty of others trying to sell them some formula-based valuation service.

If you’re wondering whether a valuation service is worth the investment, my opinion is that you should save your money. Don’t spend anything on a valuation service, as it doesn’t actually capture the value of what you’re offering. It’s like trying to encapsulate the value of owning a car by adding up the value of each part individually. It’s the cohesive opportunity that has the value, not the bits and pieces that go into it.

Anecdotally, sponsors really don’t have a lot of time for that approach either and I’ve seen more than one roll their eyes at the mention of a “certified valuation”. They know, as I do and you should, that anything that uses a rate card approach will have to be a) arbitrary; and b) based on stock standard, non-creative benefits. I also know of a few sponsees who have contacted me saying that they have had certified valuations done, but it really wasn’t working for them – it didn’t allow for the high degrees of customisation their sponsors were after and sponsors they were approaching weren’t putting much stock in the figures provided.

What a sponsor wants is a highly customised and creative offer that gives them immense opportunity for leverage. Developing those opportunities requires doing your homework on their needs and customers and some creative brainstorming. It’s more work up front, but it is worth it. Seriously, imagine having fewer, larger sponsors who are really into it and helping you to build your event and your audience – that’s what you will get!

As for pricing a creative, best-practice offer, you can be assured that the value of that will be substantially higher than an uncustomised, standard package, but no rate card-style valuation will capture the value accurately.

There are some great techniques both for building the offer and pricing it right. The basic steps I recommend are below.

Establishing a baseline figure

Add up all of the costs of selling the sponsorship, delivering the benefits, and adding value to the sponsorship as it goes forward and double or triple it (tripling is better).

This exercise does NOT get you to the figure you should ask. It simply ensures that you know your bottom line – the point at which it is not worth your while to pursue the sponsorship – because if you’re not going to make some profit that you can put back into your event or organisation, why bother with the headaches of sponsorship?

Adding market influencers

This is where it get tricky. You want to take into account a number of factors that will influence what you can ask for a given sponsorship:

• Other major sponsorship activity in the marketplace (eg, if the Olympics or a World Cup are coming to your region, the likelihood is that it will temporarily depress the value of other types of sponsorships)
• The amount of lead time before the event – The longer the lead time, the more fully the sponsor can leverage the investment. A very short lead time means the sponsor will get a lower result and the sponsorship is worth less
• Demand trends – What are the hot topics, social concerns, sports, fads, or trends of the day? They will attract more sponsorship. On the other hand, if a type of sport, event, or organisation has been hit by controversy, it may depress pricing.
• Portfolio fit – If the sponsorship is a natural portfolio fit for the sponsor, without duplicating something they already have, you may be able to charge more, as it already fits with their direction. You could get bonus points by getting more creative than any of their other partners and positioning yourself as a testing ground for new ideas that could be rolled out portfolio-wide
• Me-too factor – If you suspect a sponsor is considering a sponsorship at least in part because their competitors are already in the space, you may be able to ask more
• Equivalent Opportunity Cost – What would they be able to buy in main media that would do a similar job. If the answer is “nothing can do what this can do”, ensure your price reflects that. If you’re offering basic exposure and tickets (and I hope you’re not), you are competing directly with media, which will offer more bang for almost any buck

Ask trusted colleagues

This is the most important part of this process, but the one most seekers baulk at.

Here’s the deal… you need to get over yourself and realise that no two sponsorship seekers are offering the exact same thing. Once you realise that, you open yourself up to non-competitive relationships with like-minded sponsees. Send your proposal, with draft pricing, to a couple of non-competitive colleagues for their opinions. If you really must, refer to the sponsor as Company X.

The input you will get will go miles toward giving you a firm price.

Is it worth all the effort to price it like this? When it comes right down to it, you don’t have a lot of choice. Eventually, you will get a strong feel for pricing based on true value, but until you do, this is really your best option.

What you never, ever want to do is go in high and then discount. That doesn’t get you to the right price, it puts you in the position of looking like an idiot who doesn’t know the true worth of a sponsorship. You also look weak when you have to knock down a price.

If you do everything right and the sponsor comes back to you and says, “We don’t have the budget. Can you do it for 30% less?”, you have to say no. Be prepared to negotiate to a lower price for a lesser package, or incorporate contra or in-kind, but never, ever do a straight discount.

You may want to consider getting your hands onto the brand new third edition of The Sponsorship Seeker’s Toolkit. It goes through the whole process step-by-step and will only cost you about US $25. Yes, it’s my book, but I’m not recommending it to make me money (I only get about a dollar a book!!) Here is a link to it on Amazon:

The Sponsorship Seeker’s Toolkit 3rd Edition

Good luck!

Corporate sponsorship lies (and what they really mean)

This industry is full of little white lies. Sponsors and sponsorship seekers alike are guilty of telling them - some because you want to be nice, others to deflect blame. Whatever the reason, it's not helping anyone. So, consider this your primer on the real meaning behind some of the industry's most common little white lies.

THE LIE “We aren’t renewing because we didn’t get a good return”

THE TRUTH: “We leveraged and/or selected the sponsorship so poorly that we didn’t get a good return”

THE FIX: Stop passing the buck and take responsibility for it going wrong. That’s the only way you’re going to be able to learn from it and do it better next time.

It’s not a sponsorship seeker’s job to get you a return. It’s their job to provide you with the raw materials – the benefits and target markets – so that you can leverage it to get a good return. If you selected poorly, that’s not their fault. If you agreed to a package with benefits that aren’t appropriate to your needs, that’s not their fault. And if you didn’t leverage well, that is also not their fault.

But I see sponsors who keep moving from one inappropriate or poorly leveraged sponsorship to another, all the while blaming the sponsee for it not performing. Until they own up to their own failings, they are destined to stay on that same path and never become an effective sponsor.

I am not saying for one second that you shouldn’t exit a sponsorship that isn’t right for your brand. You may also want to exit a sponsorship that has been under-leveraged (and thus under-performing) for so long that it no longer has internal buy-in. What I don’t want you to do is to blame the sponsee if it wasn’t their fault.

THE LIE: “All our funds are currently committed”

THE TRUTH: “Your proposal wasn’t good enough for us to consider allocating funds to it”

THE FIX: Raise your game. Pure and simple, you either approached a brand that wasn’t right for your event or what you offered was not compelling to them. Fortunately for you, most sponsorship proposals would fall into this category, which means that if you learn how to target sponsors more accurately and create offers that are both creative and customised to each sponsors’ needs, your proposals will rise to the top of the stack. There is never any guarantee of a “yes”, but skilling up will shorten your odds considerably.

As a start, you may want to get your hands on The Sponsorship Seeker’s Toolkit 3^rd Edition, which will take you through the whole process of best practice sponsorship. Then roll up your sleeves and prepare to take a whole new approach.

THE LIE: “This event has broad general appeal”

THE TRUTH: “We haven’t bothered to do market research”

THE FIX: Do market research. For every event (program, charity, etc), there is a certain group of people we’ll call “true believers”. They will attend, support you, or whatever – they just need to know where and when. There is also a group – probably a lot larger – who will never, ever attend, donate, etc. These are your “nevers”. The people you will market the event to will be the ones in between – the ones who haven’t made up their minds yet, as marketing is really about influencing decisions and perceptions.

Sponsors really need to know exactly what kind of people you will be targeting for your event and what kind of people have historically attended. You need to define various sub-groups by psychographics (who they are), not demographics (what they are). Telling a sponsor you target “women 24-39” doesn’t tell them anything about what kind of people you’re trying to get to your event. “Health-conscious fitness enthusiasts”, “busy, overworked urban mums”, and “nightclub party girls” may all fall into that age bracket, but are completely different markets – different for you and different for your sponsors.

Think about the primary motivations for people who attend your event – you should be able to think of at least three or four completely different motivations – and start your target market descriptions from there. While you’re at it, start working up a target market survey and/or focus groups to help you augment your understanding.

And remove the phrase “broad general appeal” from your vocabulary. It’s a total cop out.

THE LIE: “If you sponsor us, you will be giving back to the community”

THE TRUTH: “We can’t think of a good reason for you to sponsor us, so we’re going with ‘guilt’”

THE FIX: First off, guilt is never a good selling point. It ticks sponsors off, so you need to get off that angle quicksmart.

Second, if you’re going with the community-investment/guilt approach, compelling a sponsor to invest in the community is not the same thing as compelling them to invest in whatever you’re doing. They have a lot of options. They need to know why yours is the right one. Which brings me to…

Third, do not ever create a sponsorship offer without ensuring that there is a target market fit (we target at least some of the same markets as the sponsor), an attribute fit (our brands have a natural affinity), and that you have done your homework to understand the sponsor’s objectives and created an offer that meets those objectives (that would be your objective fit). It is only by taking that approach that you will have built an actual, defensible business case for the investment. I don’t care how good a cause yours is, sponsors have thousands of good causes they could sponsor and you need to make a real case.

THE LIE: “We got a return-on-investment of 4:1”

THE TRUTH: “The executive bean-counters want to see a dollar return, so we took a wild guess”

THE FIX: Stop taking shortcuts and learn to measure results properly.

Counting logo exposures and multiplying that times some media equivalency figure does not tell you if the sponsorship worked. Adding up the a la carte prices of various benefits and comparing it to what you paid might tell you if you got a bargain, but it won’t tell you if you got a good result. And adding up incremental sales from a sponsorship-driven promotion will give you a dollar figure, but it clearly does not reflect the entire result from a good sponsorship.

Your job as a sponsor is to change people’s perceptions and their behaviours, and in the end, that all translates to sales and money. Smart sponsors have embraced the idea of measuring multiple perception and behaviour changes, using multiple methods, to create a report that reflects the real results in whatever currency.

• Incremental sales, case commitments, new customer acquisition, etc will probably be measured in the currency of dollars
• Other sales-related measurement may be in percentages or raw numbers, such as the percent of key retailers that used the promotional merchandise and/or put our brand on special during the promotional period
• Perception changes will be measured via research and be measured in the currency of percentages – Eg, “Our ambient figure for ‘most trustworthy tyres’ is 28%, but 54% of people who attended the event rated our tyres as ‘most trustworthy’”
• Employee satisfaction changes will probably be in percentages as well, measured via surveys, employee turnover figures, etc
• Market capitalisation will be measured in dollars (this is really only pertinent for major sponsorship investments)

The list goes on and on. The basic idea is that some things can be measured in dollars, but a lot of extremely important measures really can’t, and any attempt to turn them into dollars will end up as just some meaningless, arbitrary figure.

Given all of that, how are you going to get the bean counters on board? In my experience, the key lies in getting all the various departments who are participating in the sponsorship – leveraging it – to measure the results. They do it all the time, know how to measure those things, and know how to benchmark. What’s more, those are the figures that go to the bean counters all the time, so are accepted. Involve these people in the leverage planning and measurement and you will be able to collate a report that will make any senior executive sit up and take notice.

Social media dos and don’ts for sponsorship seekers

I’m really loving the whole social media space. I’ve been doing Facebook and LinkedIn for a while, have been blogging for years, and have recently started on Twitter.

By and large, it is fantastic to be able to interact in real time with people all over the world, with all their disparate interests, passions, and challenges. When it comes to sponsorship seekers, though, the people involved with social media seem to be either getting it very right or very wrong, with hardly anyone in the middle.

I’m not an expert at social media, but I am definitely an expert in corporate sponsorship, and though the communication channels seem to be under almost daily change, the principles of best practice sponsorship seeking still hold true.

Here is my advice for sponsorship seekers using social media:

Do…

• Use social media to make connections with both well-connected industry influencers and industry newcomers looking for advice.
• Use social media to demonstrate your industry knowledge by providing, or making reference to, a range of useful information and resources.
• Use social media to demonstrate your approach to sponsorship – partnership-oriented, creative, flexible, and more about the needs of the sponsor and the target markets than your own needs.
• Use social media to demonstrate that you are helpful, insightful, professional, and human.

Don’t…

• Use social media to directly flog sponsorship opportunities. You will never touch the degree of customisation and sophistication being demanded by sponsors in a tweet that reads, “Need sponsor cash for snowboard tour. I will wear your logo and love you forever if you send me a cheque.” Ditto for LinkedIn headlines. I don’t care how desperate you are, this is highly unlikely to net you any money and highly likely to damage your credibility with potential sponsors.
• Use social media to hunt down potential sponsors and badger them until they crack. First off, they are far less likely to crack than to simply block you from contacting them. Go ahead and seek out potential sponsors, but control yourself (see the list of “Dos”). Doing the social media equivalent of glad-handing them will be a huge turn off.
• Use social media to badmouth other sponsorship seekers. They’re colleagues, not competitors – you don’t have the same brand and you don’t offer the same target markets, benefits, or creative leverage ideas. Putting them down as an attempt to build yourself up will make you look unprofessional.
   

Channel 9 must be desperate!

I just received a form letter from Australia’s Channel 9 (one of the Big 3 networks) with the headline, “See yourself on TV in Sydney for less than $7,000 a month”.

Good heavens, they must be desperate!!

Any sales letter that starts off “Dear Sir/Madam” is a non-starter, as far as I’m concerned, but that’s palls in comparison to the untargeted and flatly stupid nature of the pitch.

Seriously, why on Earth would anyone think that a small corporate sponsorship consultancy with a global clientele would need TV advertising in Sydney? If they had done even one skerrick of homework, they would have known:

• My name
• That I’m a woman
• That TV advertising is totally inappropriate for my business

Channel 9, you get a big, fat FAIL on that one.