Sponsorship Strategist

Scary, spooky sponsorship situations

Some sponsorship situations can be downright scary or spooky. Make sure you're not dressing up and taking on the behavior of these characters.

• Sponsorship Drillers. Some sponsorship sellers' and fundraisers' behavior is akin to slurping up dollars, like a giant vacuum, or natural gas drilling machinery. Sellers drill, insert piping, then frack the hard shale core of the corporate sector, pumping up all the dollars they can find in the pockets and spaces under the core before moving on to other sites. It seems exhausting, thankless, and only temporarily satisfying. The antidote is building meaningful relationships, based on trust, and co-creating for the long-term. 
• Phantom sponsors. If you're going to invest in sponsorship, do so 100%. Don't become a phantom. I was in Brussels last week and came upon these two phantom situations. Nissan apparently  sponsored a conference at the Royal Academy of Arts & Sciences, and Mercedes-Benz sponsored an art event at a hotel. It does no good to just park a car and a banner outside a building and become a phantom.

 

• Sponsorship ghosts. You find these characters on both the buying or selling side of the table. You start or develop a relationship, and then your contact disappears, vaporizes, only to be returned to the table after an elaborate seance, if at all. Don't become a ghost. Clue your partner in before they have to call Ghostbusters. If you're not interested, say "no." If you're busy or go on vacation in the middle of your work together on your actual sponsorship plans, let the other know that and how you'll meet the deadlines. Communicate proactively, respond in a reasonable amount of time to emails and calls, and be a good partner.
• Ghouls. Sometimes people who seem to have issues around control and trust suddently become ghouls, eating your flesh alive. OK, that's a bit of an exageration. But they do consume a lot of your energy. These are the people on the sponsor side who suddenly become unreasonable or begin negotiating new terms to the deal onsite at the envet. Or they are the never-satisfied changing the rules as they go along. On the property side, they are the people who never quite nail things down or fail to deliver. Deal with your issues, and don't let them play out with in your business dealings.
• The costumed. On all sides, there are always those in costumes. Fake, plastic, schmoozing, adding little to the conversation, but always somewhere holding up the process. They are found on the sponsor side, on the property side, and they are sometimes brokers or at agencies. 

Have you met any other spooky, scary characters in your sponsorship activities? 

Happy Halloween!

 

Corporate sponsorship category alert: electric car charging stations

The idea of "charging it" at the King of Prussia mall - one of the largest and swankest shopping meccas in the nation - is about to take on a whole new meaning.

via www.philly.com

Brands launching new products have long taken advantage of corporate sponsorship to put them in the hands of hundreds of thousands of prospective customers rapidly, often creating an incentive to buy. Brands launching new industries might well consider sponsorship, too.

If your event or program attracts environmentally concerned drivers (and frankly what driver isn't thinking about the environment these days?), you could spark interest (pun intended) in the electric car movement. 350Green, as this article explains, is building a nationwide network of charging stations, with 1900 to be built by the end of the year.

Part of the challenge for the electric car movement is helping to make culture change. Check out the film, "Who Killed the Electric Car?," before you approach the company, and spend time learning more about where the movement is today.

Respond or rebuff: what's your approach to customer input?

In a matter of months, Netflix went from beloved to beaten up.

Netflix customers have long raved about how easy it is to use its streaming and DVD services, and business leaders view its operations as a great model of a customer-centric approach to operations. (A client of mine, for example, recently referrenced Netflix in describing how she needed me to help her design and create a new initiative for her organization.)

This summer, however, Netflix made a series of missteps and bungled decisions, surely with all the best of intentions, that some (about a million) customers disliked. Really disliked. OK. Hated. It increased its pricing by 60 percent, separated its streaming video from its DVD shipping services, and then, the final wallup, announced a whole separate company for the DVD services, under the much maligned name, Qwikster. However, on Monday, the company hit the rewind button (except for the pricing changes), killed Qwikster, and announced to customers:

Dear Gail:

It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.

This means no change: one website, one account, one password…in other words, no Qwikster.

While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price changes.

We're constantly improving our streaming selection. We've recently added hundreds of movies from Paramount, Sony, Universal, Fox, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, MGM and Miramax. Plus, in the last couple of weeks alone, we've added over 3,500 TV episodes from ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, USA, E!, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, ABC Family, Discovery Channel, TLC, SyFy, A&E, History, and PBS.

We value you as a member, and we are committed to making Netflix the best place to get your movies & TV shows.

Respectfully,

The Netflix Team

Clunky, awkward, uncomfortable, and very public, Netflix attempted to expand its services in ways it thought it was being valuable to customers. And it backfired. However, their reversal means they can begin again, regain customer confidence, and move forward.

Though no business wants to make mistakes so publicly, the Netflix case study is actually a great example of what hundreds of CMOs and CEOs are saying is "crucial" to their successes in the 21st century: "customer intimacy." That's according to a new study by IBM.

"The most proactive CMOs are trying to understand individuals as well as markets. Customer intimacy is crucial – and CEOs know it. In our last CEO study, we learned CEOs regard getting closer to customers as one of the three prerequisities for success in the twenty-first century. This sits squarely in the CMO's domain."

--IBM's From Stretched to Strenthened: Insights from the Global Chief Marketing Officer Study

Yes, of course, these leaders surely aspire to smoother, even more pleasant feelings of intimacy than this, but let's not forget, sometimes intimacy can be messy. Netflix deserves a lot of credit for putting its collective ego aside and responding to what its customers are saying. Er, screaming.

Let's also not forget another leader who encountered a similar situation: Steve Jobs and Apple. When the second iteration of the iPhone came out, customers who had most recently bought the first version received a $100 store credit for being early adopters of the new technology that had dropped in price by half. Mr. Jobs issued an open apology and made the correction.

Intimacy requires an openness, receptivity, back and forth. And this openness is a requirement that all businesses – even nonprofits – must grow more comfortable with. Its an exchange that corporate sponsorship is an ideal medium for fostering. 

In contrast, intimacy is not about rebuffing customers. Unfortunately, that's what I read in a quote by a spokesperson for a breast cancer organization in an AP article this morning about whether painting October pink, in support of breast cancer awareness month, had run its course. I (and others) have been saying that it has for years. But more importantly some women who have battled breast cancer hate the reminder. One woman in the article is quoted as saying the pink "drives her nuts." Yet the organizational spokesperson remains, "unapologetic." Not exactly openness.

The shifts we're facing in how we market to customers affects all of us. Learn from the Netflix and Apple examples. Foster a sense of openness and dialogue with your communities. And if you goof, respond. Don't rebuff.

 

 

3 ways Steve Jobs may inspire you

We now live in a world without Steve Jobs, and an enormous void exists.

He leaves a legacy that will inspire millions of us for many reasons for generations. I offer three ways Mr. Jobs may inspire you:

• Experience of the brand. If you've never been in an Apple store, visit one soon. It's more like an attraction than a retail experience. The feel, the vibe, the overall experience of an Apple store should be your inspiration for your sponsorship program. For businesses that sponsor events, your onsite component should be so compelling that it becomes an attraction or an event in and of itself. Eventgoers should gravitate to your area and want to hang out there, playing around with your products or chatting it up with your staff, without fear of being surveiled or pounced on by overzealous sales people. Be generous. Let people experience your brand.

For sponsorship sellers, guide your sponsors and prospects by developing ideas and ways to participate in your events so that your audiences have this level of experience with your sponsors' brand.

• Speeches. Visit YouTube, search for "Steve Jobs," and spend some time watching his speeches, especially around product launches. Mr. Jobs clearly had a sense of humor, an eye for the dramatic, and a sincere way of drawing us in, expectantly. Do audiences at your events respond like this?

 

• Joy of Apple Products. I noticed in the days following the news of Mr. Jobs' passing a strong sensation of a void in my life. I did not know Mr. Jobs, and though I've been a customer since 1987, this connection still didn't account for this void and the quality of the sorrow.

Countless other technology and cultural writers have written about creativity, innovation, and why we love Apple products; however, it was not until I read Peter Shankman's blog post about why we love Apple that it all started to make sense for me. Shankman describes how such a deep level of customer service is woven into the products that we trust – we have complete confidence that our Macintosh or iPhone or iPad or Apple TV – or other product by Apple – is going to work, a confidence we don't have in most products and services.

I'd take it one step further. I realized the void I was aware of is not just counting on the products to work but relying heavily on Apple to take care of my technology needs. I don't need to spend time wondering what I need. The design team at Apple has done the work for me and creates products that are intuitive, effortless, elegant, and truly personal. They are products that live with me in my home, in my office, and in my travels.

This is no easy task, but your organization – through its products, services, brand reputation, relationships with customers, events – might hold these same aspirations.

To Mr. Jobs' family, friends, and colleagues, my deepest sympathies. To the team at Apple, we're counting on you, and we know you have big shoes to fill. Trust your intuition and your heart.