I write a lot about sponsorship – books, blogs, white papers – and virtually all of it is aimed at the frontline sponsorship and brand management team. It’s all about how they can get better results, how they can leverage more cost-effectively, how to create measurement plans, and all the… Read More
Organisations with charitable status often have enormous commercial potential, but more often than not, that potential goes unrealised. Instead, most charitable organisations make one big mistake after another, with the result being sponsorship income that is a fraction of what it could be. So, I’m going to go through some… Read More
In the past, I’ve tackled a lot of aspects of negotiation, but I haven’t really blogged about the basics of the whole negotiation process before. It’s probably about time. Many of us remember a time when negotiation was seen as largely a win-lose prospect. It was adversarial, with the ultimate… Read More
If you’re a rightsholder – particularly in the non-profit or charitable space – your board probably holds a lot of sway over your sponsorship budget, and at least one of these will sound familiar: Your organisation is planning an expansion or other costly activity, so your board increases your sponsorship… Read More
DEI and ESG have been percolating away in the corporate world for a while, but in the past few years, have exploded. The profile of these priorities has increased exponentially. Corporate commitments to them have been expanded. And consumer expectations around them have gone from almost non-existent to, for many… Read More
I’m a sponsorship consultant, undertaking sponsorship reviews, developing strategies, and building organisational sponsorship capacity. I absolutely love my job. But over all the years I’ve been doing this, I’ve figured out which potential clients are going to make the most of working with me, and which won’t. I know the… Read More
Sponsorship sophistication varies around the world. There are mature, sophisticated sponsorship markets, developing markets, and some in-between. There are even some pretenders, where the market appears to think they’re oh-so-sophisticated, because there’s a lot of money being thrown around, but the underlying approach is anything but. Developing sponsorship markets include… Read More
I get this question quite a bit. Is it better to have fewer, larger sponsors, or more, smaller sponsors? The implication is that the choice is to go for lots of easy “yesses” or work hard for a few big “yesses”. The problem with that is that, in many cases,… Read More
Just about every rightsholder in the world can run through their sponsorship portfolio, noting the great sponsors, the improving sponsors, and the sponsors that are just taking up space – the bad sponsors. You don’t hate them, and they may be lovely people, but you know they just aren’t right… Read More
I was recently involved in a debate about whether multi-year contracts are preferable to year-to-year deals. I make no bones about my preference for multi-year deals (in most cases), but there was a compromise suggestion put forward that had me, frankly, gobsmacked. One rightsholder said that their standard contract was… Read More
I’m a nerd, and I love technology. My office, home, and travel is peppered with ridiculously-specced gear, and I don’t know what I’d do without it. I’m the first to admit that the emerging/improving tech available to sponsors is staggering – and oh so tempting – but is it all… Read More
Yeah, I know. The left/right brain thing has been largely debunked. But it’s still accepted shorthand for tasks and people that are more analytic (left brain) and more creative (right brain), so I’m going with it. One of my very favourite things about best practice sponsorship is that it requires… Read More