Rightsholders’ Guide to Using AI for Sponsorship

“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 proposals (more on that below), there are some things around the sponsorship sales process – including parts of proposals – where AI can be very useful.

Below, I’ve outlined some of the best and worst ways to use AI in the sponsorship process, as well as some recommended prompts, so you’re most likely to get the information you’re looking for.

Sponsor research

Before you approach a sponsor with an offer, you need to do a lot of research on the sponsors. This can be a fiddly and time-consuming process, but AI can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. That doesn’t mean it will be fully complete, because that’s unlikely, but it’s going to go some way to understanding a brand, their objectives, and their markets. You’ll then be able to much more quickly fill in any gaps. AI can also provide breadcrumbs for interesting sales angles you can explore.

Like anything AI-related, it’s all about the prompts. You want to be as specific as you can. I’ve been using prompts like this:

• Who are the key target markets for [brand] in [location]?
• What psychographic segments is [brand] targeting in [location]?
• What are [brand’s] key marketing objectives in [location]?
• What are [brand’s] key marketing messages in [location]?
• What are [brand’s] current priorities in advertising and promotion in [location]?
• How does [brand] describe itself in [location]? What is the brand personality?
• Please provide a list of everything that [brand] currently sponsors in [location]

Note, I’ve included the location because if you’re targeting a global brand in Canada, it’s not going to help you to get insights from Sri Lanka. If the brand only operates in your country or market, you can probably leave that part out.

I’ve tested the above prompts on lots of brands and found them to be generally pretty useful, with a few limitations:

• The first target market question tends to result in a list of demographic-ish segments, which are moderately helpful. I got reasonably good psychographic segments on a couple of brands, but most of what I got for that prompt was a rehash of the first question.
• The key marketing objectives were a real mix of actual marketing objectives, overarching business objectives, and values statements. Some were too general to be useful. Others, however, were very enlightening.
• Used the marketing messages and advertising/promo priorities questions to try to get deeper into their marketing objectives and priorities. It was about 50-50 whether I got anything more useful.
• The brand personality question was a good one, and seemed to bring out some more creative, useful aspects of the brands.
• The sponsorship list question was reasonably fruitful, although the completeness of the lists varied a lot.

The result of all of this is that you’ll probably still have to do some manual digging, but not nearly as much. You might also find some absolute gems that make your offer development and sales process easier.

Brand architecture and market segmentation

A lot of rightsholders lack any kind of brand architecture, but you really need it to understand the fan experience and motivations, so you can relate that to potential sponsors. The way I teach rightsholders to do this around their properties is a simple, but quite specific, brand bullseye exercise. (You can get the whole process in The Sponsorship Seeker’s Toolkit 4^th Edition or my online training, Getting to “Yes”.)

This is an exercise that starts with brainstorming all of the perceptions of your property. It works best if you have some qualitative survey or focus group data, and if you work in a group. If you don’t have qualitative feedback from your fans and/or you’re working alone, AI can be useful to pull together a draft list of those perceptions.

I tested this on a bunch of disparate properties, using these prompts:

• Give me a list of words and short phrases that describe [property]. These should include both functional things and emotional things, like why people like [property]. I’d like at least 50 words or phrases in a list format, with one per line
• Are there any negative descriptive words or phrases for [property]? Please provide in list format

This isn’t going to give you a perfect list, but it will give you a running start. It will also be more objective than you’re likely to be.

Once you’ve completed your draft brand architecture, pulling the primary motivations for people to care about your property – your psychographic segmentation – is pretty straightforward. That said, you can always ask AI for their take:

• What are the 4-5 main reasons people are fans of/attend [property]?

Again, this isn’t going to be perfect, and you’ll still need to flesh out descriptions, but it can be a good start.

Brand matching

Matching with potential sponsors on the perceptions and motivations that emanate from your brand architecture is another good use of AI. Going through your attributes, use prompts like these:

• Provide a list of brands in [location] that describe themselves as [attribute] or a synonym of [attribute]
• Provide a list of brands in [location] that claim they solve [negative attribute (like “dirty”)] or a synonym of [negative attribute]
• Think broadly, using these prompts for all of your more specific attributes, even if they’re not the main things you’re about. You should skip ubiquitous attributes like “family friendly”, “community”, “fun”, “high quality”, and “exciting”, as you’re not going to get strong matches.

You’ll still need to research brands to ensure they’re a good fit with your markets and other aspects of your property, but it’s a starting place.

Sponsorship proposals

I can’t recommend using AI to write your entire sponsorship proposal, or your proposal template. It’s just not going to work, and you’ll end up with an unsalable mess. But there are some places where it will be useful.

In this section, I’m referring to the proposal structure I advocate, which can be found as a template in The Sponsorship Seeker’s Toolkit 4^th Edition. I also do an overview of the structure in my tutorial, Sponsorship Proposal Basics in About 15 Minutes.

Overview page

The first substantial page of a sponsorship proposal is the overview page, and it stumps a lot of people. Seriously, a lot of people tell me this page is just painful to write. Thankfully, this is an area where I’ve found AI to be really helpful. Use a prompt something like this:

• Write one page about [property] in [location]. First overview [the property] itself, then talk about what it means to people and all the reasons people love it

Honestly, the results I got were pretty damned good. I wouldn’t just copy-paste them into a proposal, but it probably won’t require too much tweaking to get something strong enough for your proposal template.

Target markets

As noted above, AI can be useful in helping define your psychographic segments. I don’t think you’re currently going to get a great result in actually describing those segments, but it will give you someplace to start.

Leverage ideas

As good as AI is for your overview page, wow is it ever terrible for leverage ideas! All of the ideas AI provided were massively outdated, focused solely on the in-person audience (no remote fans, no sponsor markets), and super-boring. Sorry folks, but AI isn’t going to save you from having to do the work on this one.

There is one huge shortcut that I do recommend, which is The Invention Test. Get a good overview on that linked blog, and the full process for developing creative and customised leverage ideas in The Sponsorship Seeker’s Toolkit 4^th Edition or Getting to “Yes”.

The upshot

I’ve found AI to be absolutely woeful at answering questions about sponsorship, with answers stuck in the early 90s. Until there’s a lot more best practice content online for these machines to learn from, that’s unlikely to change.

But AI is an amazing tool, and if you use the right prompts – prompts that have nothing specifically to do with sponsorship – you can get some very useful insights and ingredients for creating strong sponsorship offers and materials. Now get experimenting!

Need more assistance?

For all you need to know about sponsorship sales and servicing, you may want to get a copy of The Sponsorship Seeker’s Toolkit 4th Edition. You may also be interested in my white papers,  “Last Generation Sponsorship Redux” and “Disruptive Sponsorship“.

I’ve also got a self-paced, online sponsorship training course, covering the whole sales process, with lots of inclusions. Interested? Check out Getting to “Yes”.

If you need additional assistance, I offer sponsorship consulting and strategy sessions, sponsorship training, and sponsorship coaching. I also offer Sponsorship Systems Design for large and/or diverse organisations. Please feel free to drop me a line to discuss.

Please note, I do not offer a sponsorship broker service, and can’t sell sponsorship on your behalf. You may find someone appropriate on my sponsorship broker registry.

© Kim Skildum-Reid. All rights reserved. To enquire about republishing or distribution, please see the blog and white paper reprints page.

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