Disruptive Sponsorship”.)
In recent years, another benefit has joined that list of low-value, hygiene benefits:
I’ve worked with a lot of rightsholders that have told me how social media has given them “so much more inventory to sell”, and how it “modernises” their offers. Yeah… no. This approach doesn’t modernise an offer any more than carbon fibre modernises a flip phone.
Social media is a powerful tool, and when paired with a best practice sponsorship, can anchor amazing results for your sponsors and your fans. But, when you sell guaranteed mentions on your social media, you’re using it as just another place to put an ad, a logo, some tagline, or a forgettable “thank you”. It’s not really a new benefit at all, just the same old, low-value, easily-ignored visibility, on a yet another platform.
Come on, people. We’re all on social media, and we all follow at least a few teams or charities or events or whatever. How much attention do you pay to posts thanking various sponsors for their support? How much do you appreciate when sponsor ad after sponsor ad comes across your feed, all shared by the property you follow? Yeah, I don’t like it, either, and this is entirely the point.
You need to put yourselves into the fans’ shoes. Stop trying to package their experience to sell, because they’ll resent you and the sponsor, if you do. Sure, some sponsors might do amazing things with the social platform you can offer, but what about the ones that don’t? Mentions don’t discriminate. You’re giving all of them the platform whether they do anything meaningful or not.
Don’t ever sell a benefit that disrespects or diminishes their fan experience. Don’t ever sell a benefit that describes your fans as a “captive audience”. And don’t ever, ever, ever sell a benefit that makes your fans feel like a commodity you’re selling, and not the passionate lifeblood of your organisation.
Meaningless sponsor mentions are all of the above.
Let’s face it. You may have dozens of sponsors, plus your own marketing priorities. What a sponsor is going to be able to accomplish through your platform likely pales in comparison to the impact of leveraging the sponsorship across their own social media and other channels, and helping them see that is in your best interest.
You should be including ideas in all sponsorship proposals for how sponsors can use their own social media channels to increase alignment and add value to your fans. You should be working with current sponsors to understand your fans, their motivations and priorities, their favourite things and their least favourite things about the fan experience, their passions. And you should be helping them see how they can use all of that to create powerful, meaningful leverage through their own social media channels.
If a sponsor is adding value to the fan experience, or doing something really innovative, through their own channels, give them all the social media love that they deserve.
Seriously, if you’re like most rightsholders, you do one after another fan promotions, and many of them are doing little more than filling promotional space. Replace those lame promotions with genuinely meaningful sponsor leverage. It will do more for your fans and your property, and provide added value to a sponsor, and give an incentive to your less active sponsors to up their games.
If you absolutely must include some kind of social media mentions in a sponsorship, keep them to the absolute, barest minimum. But also make it clear that any leverage undertaken by the sponsor that genuinely adds value to the fan experience will be shared and promoted as much as appropriate. Bonus points if you can point to an example of a great leverage program, which was supported very heavily in your social media.
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 latest white paper, “Disruptive Sponsorship: Like Disruptive Marketing, Only Better“. Want to build your sponsorship skills and strategies fast? I’ve got comprehensive online sponsorship training for both sponsors and rightsholders. Get the details and links to course outlines and reviews here.
If you need additional assistance, I offer sponsorship consulting and strategy sessions, sponsorship training, and sponsorship coaching. I also offer a comprehensive Sponsorship Systems Design service for large, diverse, and decentralised 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.