After a very long writing and publishing process, my brand new book is finally out and available to sponsorship professionals worldwide – woooo!! Primarily aimed at sponsors, The Corporate Sponsorship Toolkit 2nd Edition, is an over 70% rewrite of its predecessor, and it’s also significantly bigger than the original –… Read More
I’ve written blog after blog after article after book about the collaborative nature of sponsorship; how it requires both broad buy-in and a commitment to leverage from a range of stakeholders; and that brand managers are generally the ones who approve sponsorship spend. So, if sponsorship decisions and leverage are… Read More
Sponsorship lies are ubiquitous in our industry. It’s a temptation to call them “white lies” because they’re usually not intentionally deceptive. But calling something a “white lie” also implies that no one is getting hurt, when you most certainly are. Sponsorship lies come in many forms. But whether you’re not… Read More
I’ve spent a bit of time over the past few years covering the traits you want and don’t want in sponsorship managers, but as important as it is to have the right people in the job, it’s even more important to have the right organisational approach to sponsorship. Below, I’ve… Read More
This is a pretty common question in my inbox, with many rightsholders telling me that they’ve left “literally dozens” of voicemails or had been following up on a proposal for months. Clearly, it’s time to address this subject, as so many people appear to be getting it wrong. First off,… Read More
Lots of sponsors hire sponsorship consultants or agencies, and I’d hazard a guess that most of them go pretty well. But if you’ve been in this industry for any length of time, I’m sure you’ve seen – or at least heard about – at least a few consulting disasters. Maybe the… Read More
You shouldn’t have. You know you shouldn’t have. But you did. You sold a sponsorship at way below market value because time was getting short and so was your budget. Most sponsors won’t take up a fire-sale sponsorship. They know that their results come not from the sponsorship itself, but… Read More
A few days ago, I did a few updates on my white paper, Disruptive Sponsorship. One of the things that needed updating was the AI sponsorship poem that had been in there. It was from early days of artificial intelligence, it was pretty bad, and I thought Chat GPT could… Read More
Being successful at selling and retaining sponsorship requires a sophisticated approach, a number of critical skills, and a replicable process. My blog, white papers, and books are chock full of advice covering all of that. But sometimes, what a sponsorship team needs more than anything else are good prompts – … Read More
Data is a huge thing in marketing. From big data forecasting to person-level customer journeys, attribution models to unified marketing measurement, conversation volume to sentiment ratio, marketing has never been so thoroughly analysed. And that’s mostly a great thing. Unless it comes at the expense of empathy, creativity, and out-of-the-box… Read More
A couple of months ago, I sat down for an interview about sponsorship with charming Irishman, Stephen Bradshaw, from the fantastic podcast, What Makes You Tick? We covered LOTS of ground on sponsorship: Changes in the sponsorship landscape, technology and sponsorship, data-driven marketing, strategy tips, advice for newcomers, and much… Read More
Sponsorship is a lot of work. Getting a sponsorship from go-ahead to delivering measurable results against your objectives requires effort, creativity, money, buy-in, and teamwork, and all of this is happening while the clock is ticking toward the end of the contract. For a good sponsorship, the results are 100%… Read More