Lots of sponsors hire sponsorship consultants or agencies, and I’d hazard a guess that most of them go pretty well. But if you’ve been in this industry for any length of time, I’m sure you’ve seen – or at least heard about – at least a few consulting disasters. Maybe the consultant had the wrong skillset for the job, or there was a conflict of interest, or just a bad fit with the organisational culture. It happens to the best of us.
For my part, I’ve only been involved in two consulting disasters. On one of them, I’d been hired to review a sponsorship strategy for a government organisation, and was provided with a comprehensive brief. When I delivered a review recommending a number of changes, I was informed that they only hired me because periodic reviews were part of statutory guidance, and that they didn’t really want me to recommend any significant changes. Would have been good to know that before I accepted the job!
For the other, I had to tell the CEO that the massive flagship sponsorship he wanted was a terrible fit for both their target markets and their brand – think Lululemon-and-pro-wrestling bad – and that I couldn’t recommend that they move forward on it. He screamed at me that I didn’t know what I was talking about, and think about all the exposure their logo would get, and then told me I wouldn’t get paid. Thankfully, the CMO – anticipating this issue – ensured that I was paid before delivering that recommendation. They never did that sponsorship, and within a year, they’d implemented most of my advice.
Whether you’ve had a bad experience with the wrong consultant or agency in the past, you certainly want to avoid one in the future. That’s what this blog is all about. In it, I’ve outlined three of the most detrimental issues below, with some strategies to avoid them.
No, not that kind of tweaker. I’m talking about consultants that are hired to create or review a strategy, but the final document recommends only very small adjustments to the current approach. Tweaks.
I guess it’s possible that a sponsor could be so amazing that even the best sponsorship consultant couldn’t recommend any major changes, new angles, or significant refreshes. Possible, but highly unlikely. I’ve never seen it in my long career.
I have seen the work of lots of tweakers, however. In my experience, most of them aren’t great sponsorship strategists – not lateral thinkers, not on top of trends, not creative – so they don’t have the expertise to thoroughly analyse and make sweeping recommendations where required. They may be great at other things – comms, project management, etc – but sponsorship strategy isn’t their strength.
It usually doesn’t take very long for the sponsor to realise that the advice they’ve received is, at best, insufficient, and at worst, a total waste of time and money. On more than a few occasions, I’ve been hired to redo a strategy that was originally created by a tweaker. Most good sponsorship consultants would say the same.
To avoid wasting time and money not getting the comprehensive advice you really need, I suggest that you…
For what it’s worth, a tweaker would have been perfect for that government gig I had!
I’m a consultant, and like all consultants, we need to protect our interests – fair terms, avoiding major scope creep, licensing ideas and materials, etc. That’s not what I’m talking about here.
So, let’s say you’ve got a sponsorship agency. They’re absolutely fantastic at implementing the strategic sponsorship plan, which is right in their wheelhouse. Maybe they’re great at high-touch, on-site leverage, for instance, and you’re paying them a fair whack of cash to make it happen.
Then let’s say they wrote that strategic plan, which happens to concentrate largely on – you guessed it – high-touch, on-site leverage. Or every few years, you charge that same consultancy with doing a review of your strategy – the one that requires so much of the high cost services they’re really good at.
They may be amazing, but can you trust their objectivity? Can you be absolutely sure that they’ve explored all of the other leverage options that may be more efficient, cost-effective, or powerful? Can you be sure that their review would flag it if the existing approach had done it’s dash? Worst case scenario, can you be sure they’re not just protecting their cash cow?
I’m not bagging implementors. Not at all. I’m not bagging specialists in any manner of sponsorship delivery, who bring sponsorships to life with often awe-inspiring creativity and aplomb. But if you want a strategy – or even more, a strategy review – having someone with a vested interest in implementing the recommendations is unlikely to get you the best, most objective result.
With very few exceptions, you’re going to get a much better result if you hire specialists to be specialists. Hire a specialist sponsorship strategist to help with your strategy and reviews, not implementation. Hire outstanding implementors to deliver in their specialty areas.
There are a group of sponsorship consultants that are kind of like the sponsor-side counterpart of a sponsorship broker. Instead of securing sponsorship revenue for an organisation, they find and negotiate one or more major sponsorships on behalf of the sponsor.
What could possibly be the issue with that, you ask? If the consultant is on a fixed-fee or retainer contract, absolutely nothing. But many of these finders get paid a percentage of the eventual sponsorship deal, so unless there is some negotiated ceiling, the bigger the deal, the bigger the fee. If your goal, as the sponsor, is to get the right sponsorship for your brand, with the right benefits, at a fair price, this fee structure could undermine those goals.
Then there are the consultants that source sponsorship on behalf of the sponsor, collecting some kind of fee (flat or commission) AND they collect a fee from the rightsholder. In some cases, they may also be representing the rightsholder as a broker. In other cases, they could bring the sponsor to the rightsholder and demand a finder’s fee. This is what our industry calls agency double-dipping, and I’m not a fan.
If you’re interested in hiring someone to find a major sponsorship investment for you, I recommend you do two things to ensure that the person or consultancy you hire will indeed be working for you:
Nobody wants to get dud advice. Nobody wants to feel like they’ve been taken advantage of.
When you’re hiring a sponsorship consultant or agency, you should be doing everything you can to ensure that who you hire can deliver what you need. They should:
Creating a good brief and asking the right questions will go a long way to avoiding issues. For more on getting the right consultant or agency for the job, read How to Hire a Corporate Sponsorship Consultant.
You may also be interested in my white papers, “Last Generation Sponsorship Redux” and “Disruptive Sponsorship: Like Disruptive Marketing, Only Better“. I’ve also got a self-paced, online sponsorship training course for sponsors, covering the whole process of sponsorship strategy, selection, negotiation, leverage, measurement, and management, with lots of inclusions. Interested? Check out the Corporate Sponsorship Masterclass. I’ve also got Getting to “Yes” for rightsholders.
If you need additional assistance with your sponsorship portfolio, 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.
© Kim Skildum-Reid. All rights reserved. To enquire about republishing or distribution, please see the blog and white paper reprints page.