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
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
How many times will you miss your sponsorship target? How many times will you scramble for rats and mice sponsorship to make up a shortfall? How many times will you ask your board to hit up their well-connected friends, because your business case isn’t getting money in the door? How… 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