Over the years, I’ve been on a lot of podcasts talking about sponsorship. I’ve been on podcasts for brand marketers and rightsholders; podcasts for CMOs, festival organisers, fundraisers, sports, the arts, local government, filmmakers, and more. It’s fun, I love doing them, and I want to do more! (I wish… Read More
I talk a lot about sponsorship leverage, but it’s so critically important to sponsorship results that it warrants a lot of attention. Leverage is what a sponsor does with a sponsorship to turn the opportunity they’ve got into the results against objectives they need. And while leverage is a sponsor’s… Read More
“Can I use artificial intelligence to write my sponsorship proposals?” I’m hearing this question a lot. And the answer is that you CAN use AI to write a proposal, but it’s not going to be good. But while I’m not a fan of trying to use AI to write entire… Read More
For years, I’ve had the same protest at sponsor workshops. I go through the benefits of sponsorship leverage and a bunch of case studies, and the creative juices are flowing. Then someone either complains that leverage is all well and good, but it costs money, or asks me how they… Read More
I get this question a lot. The expectation is that there will be some magic window where the yesses will be plentiful. The good news is that there is no window – you can solicit sponsorship all year ‘round. The bad news is that there is no such thing as… Read More
This is a question I get at least a couple of times a week. Generally, it refers to approaching multiple sponsors in the same category – ice cream, insurance, sporting goods, etc – at the same time. Sometimes, the question is about a naming rights sponsorship, and whether they can… Read More
You want more sponsorship revenue. Everyone does. The problem is that you only have so many benefits to offer, so if you want more money, you have to figure out a way to divvy up your benefits pie into smaller pieces, while simultaneously charging more for them. Common sense dictates… Read More
You’re the Chief Marketing Officer of a large multinational, or a Group Marketing Manager, overseeing multiple major brands. Whatever your title, you’re a senior executive looking at millions of dollars being invested in corporate sponsorship across your company, and you know there are problems. Some of the decisions appear to… Read More
If you read this blog with any frequency, it won’t come as any surprise that I have a few sponsorship-related pet peeves. One of my biggest issues on the sponsor side is using scorecards to assess sponsorship opportunities. The scorecard process generally looks something like this. You’ve got a scorecard… Read More
My normal approach is to write blogs and other materials that are centred on the various skills, strategies, and pitfalls around sponsorship – things that are shared across categories of rightsholders or sponsors. It’s not very often that I take aim at one category of business, but I’m making the… Read More
Selling sponsorship is hard. Even if you do it perfectly, you’ll still hear “no” more than “yes”, and if your skills are less than best practice, you’re probably not hearing “yes” very often. If you’re struggling, you probably want some way to demonstrate what great value for money you’re going… Read More
These days, sponsorship measurement is sophisticated, multi-faceted, and creates a holistic picture of the results achieved. Sponsors forego measuring mechanisms that are untethered to real results, instead measuring progress on overall marketing objectives, against their own benchmarks. Except when they don’t. And when sponsors aren’t measuring their own results –… Read More