Sponsorship Strategist

Jackson Hewitt: Think sponsorship

If ever a marketing campaign cried out for a sponsorship component, it's this one. Check it out.

 

 

Jackson Hewitt, how about a dance party on April 16 for all new and existing customers?

Join me in Boston for a wicked good sponsorship seminar

I'll be presenting a seminar on Thursday, February 2, 2012, 7:30-10 a.m., for the Boston Business Journal, called Creating More Powerful Partnerships & Sponsorships, and I hope to see you there.

Whether you buy or sell sponsorship, in a nonprofit or for profit setting, you'll leave with lots of ideas on how to improve your sponsorship results.

The networking opportunities will be tremendous – how often do you have the opportunity to get together with other sponsorship specialists, on both sides of the table? – and definitely worth getting up early for.

If that's not enough for you, check this out. Everyone who registers will not only learn a lot and meet new people, but you'll also

1. receive a new one-year subscription to the Boston Business Journal which you'll need to stay abreast of business news to gain a competitive advantage over other sponsorship sellers;
2. receive a copy of my guidebook, How to Jump-start Your Sponsorship Strategy in Tough Times, which you'll also need to be armed with good strategies;
3. eat breakfast, an essential ingredient for a new day;
4. get to the office around 10 a.m., smarter about sponsorship with new ideas.

To learn more and to register, visit the Boston Business Journal's event page. Please pass the word to your friends and colleagues in and around Boston. Thanks.

 

Aesthetics matter

Seth Godin wrote an interesting post last week, predicting a deterioration of the quality of marketing – a "coarsening," he calls it – as marketers increasingly prefer direct response advertising, clickable and measurable.

"Coarse" is a great term to describe the Kraft strategy I described in the previous post, "Big is not a strategy." No nuances, no subtlety, no human touch. Just a big noodle. A big hot dog. 

Some sponsors skip over activation entirely, which is like buying a TV or radio spot and not giving the station the spot. In other words, it's a waste of money.

Some marketers bemoan the measurability of sponsorship, expecting instant results from a qualitative medium, when perhaps they are unsure what to look for.

Setting up a jumbo noodle in a park is like the equivalent of speaking louder when having a discussion with a person who speaks a different language. It doesn't mean you're getting through.

Godin ends the post by saying, "Measurable isn't always the only thing that matters." True for sponsorship, too.

A novel approach to engaging corporations in your city or cause

As you head out for the weekend, here's some inspiration on how you might engage corporations in your cause or in your community. Norte Beer of northern Argentina flips social conventions, cleans up towns, and makes girlfriends fall in love with their guys, out with the guys. Enjoy!

Sponsorship 2.0: Resources you should know about, Part 2

Earlier this week, I introduced you to Emily Taylor and SponsorPark.com, which she co-founded. Today, meet Kris Mathis and his creation, SponsorPitch.

Kris has more than 10 years of experience in sponsorship marketing both selling to, and representing, Fortune 500 brands. He started his career with Edelman in New York City, representing clients, such as 20th Century Fox, Johnson & Johnson, and Siemens. Prior to starting SponsorPitch, Kris served as International Product Manager for Paris-based mobile gaming startup, Gameloft, at the time named the fastest growing company in Europe by Business Week. Along the way, he has been featured in Advertising Age, Bloomberg TV, MarketWatch, and Sports Business Daily. 

SponsorshipStrategist: Why did you create SponsorPitch?

SponsorPitch was initially born in 2008 from a collection of my experiences buying sponsorships for an agency here in New York. After spending a few years in grad school, I started talking to some of the sponsorship people I knew about what resources they used and to my surprise/horror found that some amalgamation of CD-ROM’s, hardcopy sourcebooks and vastly overpriced contact lists were still the norm. It didn’t really seem right. Whereas most every other industry had seen a rapid transformation in efficiency between 2000-2010, the sponsorship powers that be really didn’t evolve much over that time for one reason or another. So I thought let’s try to create a resource in the cloud that shares sponsorship information and connects people in a targeted, time-sensitive and cost-efficient new way.

Our model has evolved over time, but the basic premise is as true today as it was when we started: better research and more targeted relationships lead to better ideas.

SponsorshipStrategist: Tell us about how SponsorPitch works.

After joining at sponsorpitch.com, you’re asked to create a basic profile about your experience in the industry. In creating a profile, you can list whether you are working with any brands (i.e. sponsorship buyers) or properties (sponsorship sellers) as well as any sponsorship deals that you’ve done in the past, your networking interests and contact information. This gives others in the SponsorPitch network an idea of your level of experience, which brands and properties you are either currently representing or have worked with in the past and how best to contact you.

Once you’ve created your profile, you can search properties and connect with their sales executives using Sponsor Pitch’s Property Index or search, filter, research and connect with sponsors using SponsorPitch’s Sponsor Index.

Since SponsorPitch is a network, our information is indexed coherently so you can see long-term patterns like new categories, spending trends and activation ideas taking root, but it’s updated in real-time so you get the information specific to your needs, as it happens, by following people, properties and sponsors that you’re interested in.

You can also browse through new jobs, follow the industry’s latest happenings on our blog and a few other things. From the CMO suite to your first internship, there really is something for everyone.

SponsorshipStrategist: What are the patterns you’re seeing now? Who is signed up already? What is the ratio of sponsorship buyers and sellers? Nonprofit and for-profit? And what kinds of properties do they represent?

SponsorPitch is used by sales professionals at most of the major sports leagues and many front office teams – agencies like IMG and Octagon; live music pros at places like Live Nation and AEG; the biggest theme parks in North America; municipal marketers and of course, many non-profits. Marketers from brands like UPS, Sony, GoDaddy, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Sports Authority and many others use SponsorPitch, as well as ad agency professionals representing a whole host of other brands.

Earlier this month, we welcomed Major League Soccer to SponsorPitch. Through a new partnership with their league office here in New York, front office executives at all 19 MLS teams will have access to professional membership. You can read more about how they’ll be using SponsorPitch here.

And then there are some patterns that we never imagined when we re-launched earlier this year. For instance, while we knew the Sponsor Index would be a huge hit with sponsorship sellers, we didn’t think about how marketers would use it to keep track of the activity in their business category. For instance, the sponsorship manager at a major automobile company now has access to a real-time snapshot of what 40 other auto manufacturers are doing with less than three clicks using SponsorPitch’s Sponsor Index. Now replicate that across 1,500 other brands.

One of the earliest a-ha moments was when we saw how popular our blog and twitter feed were becoming back in 2009. I’d throw a few things up with the “#sponsorship” hashtag that I had read and found interesting. Then we’d come back the next day and be amazed at how many new people started following our updates and reading our blog. It kind of snowballed from there as we started to see that sponsorship professionals were starved for real-time information, for new leads, deeper connections – at a time when most of the big players in our industry were still trying to figure out what social media was. At the time, we didn’t have the website infrastructure to organize and customize all this information for them. Now we do.

SponsorshipStrategist: How do sellers use it?

SponsorPitch helps sponsorship properties accomplish in minutes, with the help of others, what used to take hours in isolation. Our research shows that sellers typically spend about two hours researching a brand prior to sending a proposal, and probably spend just as much time trying to determine which brands might be a good fit in the first place. Now imagine a place where a lot of that work is already done for you. Starting a sponsorship search from scratch is tough. Rather than seller’s recreating the secondary research of their peers throughout the world, they can come to SponsorPitch and in seconds see which brands are in over 300 business categories, who their competitors are, what they’ve sponsored, who makes sponsorship decisions within the company, how to submit a proposal, who within the network has worked with them in the past and more. From the seller’s perspective, that saves a lot of time and let’s you get to the point where your addressing business challenges for qualified leads that much faster.  Here’s an example of how professional members research at the speed of SponsorPitch.

Functionally, here are some of the things you can do with SponsorPitch: 

Sp seller deck

View more presentations from sponsorpitch

SponsorshipStrategist: How do buyers use it?

 SponsorPitch helps add valuable context to the hundreds, often thousands, of opportunities that brand marketers look at each year. With SponsorPitch, marketers can not only better understand the landscape of opportunities and what they offer to their brand, but also the demonstrated track record of who they’ll be working with in a sponsorship deal. The interactive nature of our network means that sponsors can go from research and discovery to real business solutions without all the inefficiencies that are typically associated with cold calls, sifting through proposals, pitch meetings and the like. From the buyer’s perspective, here is an example of how professional members research at the speed of SponsorPitch.

SponsorshipStrategist: Do you see SponsorPitch as the primary way people buy or sell sponsorship?

Yes, we believe that research and relationships are the two most essential ingredients to being successful in sponsorship, whether you’re buying, selling, activating, servicing, measuring or anything else. I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon.

That’s why a network is infinitely more powerful than a marketplace of cookie cutter proposals. At the end of the day, the best person to represent your brand or your property - is you.  

Our job is to give you the new relationships and the real-time data to make you shine.

SponsorshipStrategist: Tell us a success story of a cash-on-the-table deal that happened because of SponsorPitch.

We’ve been hearing success stories at all levels of the industry since we launched. Here’s one of the earliest examples, but you should realize that unlike a marketplace, deals are really just one aspect of the bigger story of what’s going on at SponsorPitch.

We’re not trying to automate transactions across the industry or create a crowded marketplace of aimless proposals. Sponsorship when done best is a collaborative exercise. You need the right information and often, the right connections to play the game. Once a year at a conference or once a week in a catch all industry report isn’t good enough anymore. What SponsorPitch is doing is putting useful information and the most valuable connections in the right hands so you can have the right conversations at the right time. This may mean an agency getting a new client or a seller finding a new partner. It could mean a brand manager impressing their CMO with a more thorough analysis of their category on command or a seller being able to recite a prospect’s existing deals in a chance meeting. For the first time, we have the social tools to assemble a network that can make, and help our users commercialize, these connections in real-time.

A marketplace of generic proposals simply can’t do that. 

SponsorshipStrategist: How does SponsorPitch differ from SponsorPark and the IEG Sponsorship Marketplace?

There is a human and social element to SponsorPitch.

That’s really the most striking one. Instead of looking at a marketplace of goods, SponsorPitch maps and aims to expand the lifeblood of the industry, it’s social connections, which are built on the information, trust, relationships and experience that our members bring into, and exchange, using our network. 

Networked research is really a fundamentally different approach than the industry’s old school pay to access a sourcebook or blow your research budget once a year to network at an annual conference. Our data is updated by our users daily and our network is essentially a 24/7 conference every day of the year. So we’re coming it this from a vastly different angle and approach.

The good news is our users are the real winners from this and you can get a feel for what they are saying and how they use SponsorPitch here.  Since our network is fueled by them, we can offer a real-time resource at a lower cost and with more flexible terms. That’s a pretty powerful combination, right? One example is rather than pay a big annual upfront fee as you would with other services, we have a monthly option that you can turn off at any time so you don’t get locked into something that you may not use.  

Obviously, there are some other differences. We’re a four person self-funded start-up. IEG is owned by a $15 billion company.

Everyone on our team, which has about 50 years of sponsorship experience between us, has taken on this mission because we care about what happens to the industry. Because we know how frustrating it is to try to get information about brand needs only to have a brand manager blow you off. Because we’ve been in the position of the brand manager or agency, where you’re buried in proposals and don’t have time to respond to twenty different cold calls. Because we think the exchange of more information creates better ideas, and outcomes, for both sides of the table. And that’s why we’ve been willing to work so hard to turn, with relatively few resources, an idea into a reality.

SponsorshipStrategist: What’s the greatest value SponsorPitch offers?

When you combine the right information with the right relationships, you position yourself to have the right conversations at the right time. You’re no longer just one of 3,000 sponsorship proposals that McDonald’s receives each year. You’re an answer to a problem. That’s the value of SponsorPitch.

SponsorshipStrategist: What are your aspirations for SponsorPitch?

Just the other day, I heard a story about a professional member in West Virginia, who represents an amazing property, but has little experience in sponsorship sales connecting with a sponsorship agency a couple hours away, also in West Virginia, that has over a decade of experience in sponsorship sales and strong connections throughout the industry. They exchanged messages through SponsorPitch and then took the conversation offline. In the old days, the same chance connection might come once a year at a $1,500 conference, a long ways away from West Virginia or through an annual sourcebook. Today, it happens less than a week after both members join a website.

Which is why an agency CEO up in Vancouver says, “It’s like making connections at a conference without the cost of a flight and hotel,” and why a sponsorship manager at a Fortune 50 company tells us that a SponsorPitch profile and a professional membership add to a salesperson’s credibility and separate them from the thousands of other proposals they receive each year.

My goal is to see these stories replicated again and again across the entire industry as the word spreads about what we’re doing.

SponsorshipStrategist: How much does it cost? It’s free to join and create a profile as it’s been since we launched in 2008. Our professional membership option is $35/month or $24/month if you pay for an entire year upfront. Professional membership allows you to search and filter about 1,500 of the most actively-spending sponsors by things like location, category and past spending patterns; get real-time updates about the sponsors, properties, and people you choose to follow, such as when new decision makers, sponsorship deals or community experts are added; access company descriptions, competitive snapshots, detailed spending history, decision maker contact information and insights from other users that have partnered with it in the past; tap into what we are told is one of the best jobs resources in the industry and several other things.

A few of our members recently came to us and said they found our jobs section useful, but weren’t currently employed, so we also added a special jobs plan at a discounted rate for them. 

SponsorshipStrategist: What else should Sponsorship Strategist readers know?

There’s a lot more in motion that we’re not ready to talk about yet. That’s just what we’ve done so far. Without all the professional SponsorPitch members that have gotten behind our vision, I can assure you that none of this would have been possible. 

 Please share: what are your experiences with SponsorPitch?

Sponsorship 2.0: Resources you should know about, Part 1

This week I'm profiling two sponsorship resources you should know about, SponsorPark and SponsorPitch.

Before blogs and social media, before the internet, before Kim Skildum-Reid and Anne-Marie Grey wrote their Toolkits for sponsorship seekers and for sponsors, and before IEG launched its newsletter, sponsorship buyers and sellers were like the One Hundred Monkeys, who each learned a better way to eat their sweet potatotes from friends and family. (Find the story here by scrolling to the bottom.) Finally at about the one hundredth monkey, consciousness shifted, and this new way to eat sweet potatoes took hold among all the monkeys in the tribe and among tribes on other islands. Same with sponsorship.

While everything has changed, nothing has changed. Sponsorship at its core remains the same powerful medium. But the sophistication, the complexity, the creativity, the professionalism, and the tools we use have evolved tremendously.And that, in part, is where SponsorPark and SponsorPitch come in.

You'll meet the two entrepreneurs behind these services in Q&A interviews, starting today with SponsorPark.

Meet Emily Taylor, co-founder of SponsorPark.com, a site designed to help connect sponsors with sponsorship opportunities. Emily has a background with Coca-Cola in account management and with Limited Brands in talent development. She currently resides in Omaha, NE with her husband and son. 

SponsorshipStrategist: Why did you create SponsorPark?

We created SponsorPark because we really saw a gap in the way brands and properties were connected.  Marketing decision makers were overwhelmed with sponsorship requests; most of which had no alignment with their marketing objectives.  We wanted to offer a solution to present targeted opportunities for their review. And for Properties, we saw an increasingly competitive sponsorship climate where they needed a solution to be the “squeaky wheel” with the most appropriate potential partners. Proactive, targeted, and “easy to use” were our goals for SponsorPark.

SponsorshipStrategist: Tell us about how SponsorPark works.

SponsorPark is meant to proactively generate quality exposure for sponsorship opportunities with potential sponsors. Each party goes through a process of communicating their interests/objectives, and according to these established filters, we are able to offer appropriate matches for review.  SponsorPark points sponsors in the direction of opportunities that are most likely to be a fit with their interests – customization of a partnership can be discussed after interest is established and connections are made. At this time, we offer full freedom to the seller and buyer to dialogue about interests, and we are not involved in the sale.

SponsorshipStrategist: How much does it cost?

Basic level is free. 

Premium month to month: $14.98 for first month, $29.95 every month thereafter. Premium annual is typically $299.95, currently half off for $149.98. 

Professional (typically used by agencies as they are given up to 10 upgrades with this account) month to month is $39.98 for first month, $79.98 every month thereafter.  Professional annual is typically $799.98, currently half off for $399.98.

SponsorshipStrategist: What are the patterns you’re seeing now? Who is signed up already? What is the ratio of sponsorship buyers and sellers? Nonprofit and for-profit? And what kinds of properties do they represent?

We’ve seen over 40,000 full proposal reviews (significantly more impressions) in the last 12 months, We’ve marketed our services to approximately 3,000 sponsors – the majority of communications (that we see) are directed toward upgraded proposals. There are about 11,000 properties registered with us and currently about 5,000 active proposals. SponsorPark caters to a wide range of property types. We have had properties as large as Madame Tussauds, American Heart Association, Reader’s Digest, and Chelsea Piers, NASCAR related proposals, The Erlick Group’s prestigious entertainment based properties, etc.  And properties as small as a local festival/fair (ex: Taste of Atlanta), shows and expos, theatre productions, etc. Both for-profit and nonprofit alike use SponsorPark.

SponsorshipStrategist: How do sellers use it?

For the properties/sellers, they can create an account with their own private back end to manage all listings/communications. Then create a proposal listing (which can be edited at any time to stay current) highlighting some of the most relevant pieces of their offering as an overview. (This is not to take the place of a custom proposal which will likely be requested upon interest from a potential sponsor.) This information (including target audience, description of assets, media/broadcast exposure, photos, price ranges, demographics, etc.) will be used to apply towards a filter, allowing their information to show up for the review of targeted sponsors. 

SponsorshipStrategist: How do buyers use it?

Sponsors/buyers can create a filtered search criteria at their discretion on the site themselves, and only the most appropriate listings will appear on a results page. This filtered search criteria can also be saved and results automatically sent directly to the sponsor for a more efficient solution.

Upon established “advanced interest” by the sponsor, we alert the seller, and both parties are able to connect and dialogue about next steps.

SponsorPark is a free solution for sponsors to proactively research possible partnership investments with the benefit of anonymity and targeting abilities.

SponsorshipStrategist: Do you see SponsorPark as the primary way people buy or sell sponsorship?

No.  It’s a complement to what a seller/buyer should already have in place.  It is one way to be proactive, generate more exposure and get a leg up in a competitive selling environment.  Nothing will ever replace a well-timed phone call and intentional networking, but without SponsorPark your reach is limited to one body, one voice, and a work day. With SponsorPark you are limited to the reach of the internet coupled with a targeted outreach. Buyers are never going to see the day when proposals aren’t on their desk awaiting their review – and some are very good; but doesn’t proactive, researched, targeted efforts sound much more effective and efficient? There’s much more to be done after reviews are made/connections are established. The buyers and sellers that use SponsorPark have the freedom to manage next steps without our involvement upon established interests. 

SponsorshipStrategist: Tell us a success story of a cash-on-the-table deal that happened because of SponsorPark.

One story from early on in our efforts was of a musician going on tour throughout the US who was discovered on SponsorPark by an agency who was (and is) using our resource to target potential partners for their clients.  The target audience, the tour’s demographic reach and the projected price was in alignment with filtered parameters.  Advanced interest was established after just 4 months of being listed on SponsorPark. The buyer entered into a dialogue with the artist and after a few weeks of negotiations an agreement was formed.  The specific dollar amount was not disclosed to us (as we were not part of the dialogue/sale), but it was enough to cover the tour as the primary sponsor. Marketing support was offered as well as in-kind support.  This partnership has turned into a long-term deal (currently active to the best of our knowledge).  

SponsorshipStrategist: How does SponsorPark differ from Sponsorpitch and the IEG Sponsorship Marketplace?

SponsorPark’s primary focus is on offering quality exposure and targeted opportunity research; we’re not a social platform like Sponsorpitch. SponsorPark promotes interaction as the result of alignment / synergy of interests. SponsorPark also offers a list of sponsorship related resources/service providers – similar to the IEG Marketplace (although it is free to post and anyone can review it) whereas Sponsorpitch offers profiles of sponsorship professionals. 

In comparison to the IEG’s Sponsorship Marketplace, the main differences are: pricing and the amount of information you’re able to post.  SponsorPark has one membership upgrade decision (either Premium or Professional), both marginally priced to allow all sizes of opportunities a more affordable option.  This allows the seller access to the full proposal listing and can communicate a tremendous amount of information as an overview. IEG’s marketplace offers an “a la carte” menu of items you can choose to include in your listing, each separately priced. 

SponsorshipStrategist: What’s the greatest value SponsorPark offers?

Targeted exposure for opportunities / quality research from sponsors.  We use the automated functionality of the site, the insights/suggestions from our team, social media, our blog and other resources to promote quality partnerships. We also pride ourselves in best practice education from our blog, networking on our social media groups and our resources page, and promoting industry awareness on our news section.

SponsorshipStrategist: What are your aspirations for SponsorPark?

We want SponsorPark to be the “go-to” online resource for buyers and sellers when they’re targeting potential new partners or sponsorship service providers. We want to continue growing our scope of services to the sponsorship community in order to make the sponsorship community more efficient, educated, and proactive.

SponsorshipStrategist: What else should Sponsorship Strategist readers know?

We offer a personal consultation to any new member who wants to learn more about our services from our team – we love learning about your efforts and helping you determine if SponsorPark is a good fit.  If interested, please don’t hesitate to reach out at: info@sponsorpark.com.  We’re also expanding our “resources” page – if you’d like to be listed as a sponsorship service provider, you can reach us at the same contact with your request to be considered.  Our presence is also growing on LinkedIn and Twitter, and we invite you to join us in these communities to further network and stay informed as to our growth and progress! 

To learn more you can reach Emily at: Emily.Taylor@SponsorPark.com.  And stayed tuned. On Thursday, you'll meet Kris Mathis, founder of SponsorPitch.

Till then, what has been your experience with SponsorPark?

 

[Full disclosure: Both sites occasionally republish my posts from SponsorshipStrategist.com; however, I have no financial interests in either site.]

 

 

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.

 

Resources for small businesses that sponsor and those who sell to them

If you're a small business owner looking for a way to build brand awareness, drive traffic to your store or web site, increase sales, entertain clients, or fulfill a host of other business objectives, consider corporate sponsorship.

The ultimate social medium, corporate sponsorship is distinct from other marketing vehicles because it provides you with an experiential component to allow potential and existing customers to interact with your brand, product or service, face-to-face and heart-to-heart.

Two resources to help you learn more are:

• a recent article on the Fox Small Business Center, entitled What Every Small Business Needs to Know About Being a Sponsor, for which I was quoted a source; and
• an article I wrote, entitled Too Small For Sponsorship? Think Again: How Your Business Benefits, Just Like the Big Guys. Learn more about the sponsorship medium and what it takes to get started sponsoring.

If you sell sponsorship for a nonprofit, event, festival, or other entity, consider small and medium-sized businesses as potential partners for your events and sponsorable programs, a suggestion I wrote about in my book How to Jump-start Your Sponsorship Strategy in Tough Times. Be sure that you provide value to this market and can make a difference in a business owners' bottom line. Also be prepared to educate smaller business owners who may not have considered the medium on how sponsorship works. In fact you might send them to these resources.

If I can answer questions for you as sponsorship buyer or seller, feel free to contact me or submit a question through the comment section.

Top 10 Skills and Characteristics of Successful Sponsorship Sellers

Next week I'll be speaking before a group of senior leaders and board members of nonprofit organizations about corporate sponsorship. Because some of the executives who belong to this organization are in a career transition, including from the for profit to the nonprofit sector, I promised to share with them important skills and characteristics of individuals who are successful in corporate sponsorship development.

Here's my list of top 10 skills and characteristics:

1. Comfort selling the intangible. Many people can sell, but not everyone is comfortable selling what doesn't exist. I remember having a conversation with a friend, Ted, who sold steel lockers and related equipment when I was selling sponsorship. He said, "I can't understand how you can sell something that you can't touch. I need quotas and numbers and tangibles." We laughed when I confessed that I felt the same way about what he had to sell. Later in my career, after I launched my consulting practice I began teaching a day-long course on sponsorship at Temple University. In my first class was a gentleman hoping to change careers from insurance sales to he-didn't-know- what. He was earning a certificate in executive event leadership hoping upon hope that he'd find his way and generate some spark of an idea. Frankly he seemed a little lost. At the first break of the day, he ran up to me, shaking with excitement. "Gail, this is it. Sponsorship sales is what I'd be good at." Made sense to me. If you can successfully sell something as intangible as insurance, you have the foundation for selling other types of intangible offerings.
2. Strong ideation sense. A career counselor once described ideation as a sixth sense in which a person is comfortable putting two or more disparate ideas together knowing the results will have impact. That's sponsorship at its heart. Those without this skill may look at you like you have 2 heads. You don't.
3. Innovative. Sponsorship requires you to actively create constantly. You're always looking to the future to see what your sponsors' marketing and sales plans are in the next year and how that aligns with your organization's or event's plans. You have to solve problems on the go, but not just solve problems, create something fantastic out of problems.
4. Strong writing, speaking, and conversational skills. You must be able help prospects and clients see what you're seeing. Without strong verbal skills, you're at a loss. Those people I mentioned who think you have 2 heads for coming up with some crazy idea? They'll never see what you see without the verbal bridges you have to build. You know who else needs your help? Mr. or Ms. ROI. The guy or gal who only thinks in numbers, outcomes, results, quantitative data (which is just about everybody these days), for whom, as one corporate sponsorship buyer said of her boss' boss, "if you can't measure, it doesn't happen."
5. Confidence. It takes some chutzpah to sell anything. You have to believe in yourself and in what you're selling. Your confidence contributes to a trusting relationship. It allows you to guide and educate the seller so they can see what you see and benefit from the value you have to offer. No one wants to buy anything from a wet noodle.
6. Multi-tasking. In an age when many of us are trying to slow down the pace of life, fed up with the torrent of information coming at us, suffering the toll of constant stimulation, multi-tasking might seem like an odd characteristic for me to champion. However, it's important. You must juggle the various schedules, needs, and realities of both your sponsors and your organization or event. You must be the scout ahead of your sponsors, leading the way for them, seeing opportunities, managing the project on time, on budget, with ease and grace.
7. Marketing. Having experience in marketing, understanding how the tools of both traditional and social media marketing vehicles function for desired results, knowing the core impetus behind marketing leaders will help you empathize with your sponsors and prospects. You can stick your feet in their shoes and develop ideas and programs that will achieve marketing results that you understand.
8. Carpe diem! Remember this bit of Latin? "Sieze the day." For sponsorship sellers we might change the ages-old phrase to: "Carpe oportunitas!" Sieze opportunities. You have to be quick on your feet. You have to understand the medium of sponsorship so well that when you see or hear an opportunity to enhance your sponsors' program, to engage your prospect, to make their eyes light up, you act. 
9. Interest in the business world. You have to be curious about the marketplace. Follow trends. Seek trigger events. Know when a change in a company's situation might be an opportune time to partner with them to further their – and your organization's – goals. If you don't read the business press regularly, you are severely handicapped in your discussions.
10. Passionate. The best sellers are enthusiastic people in general. I'm not talking Pollyanna happy. You're human; sure, sometimes you have a bad day. I am talking about genuine passion in the organization, cause, event, festival, team, performance, or whatever it is that you represent. Passion can be like a wave that carries a surfer. Your connection and enthusiasm about who or what you represent carries you through otherwise uncomfortable, challenging, and awkward moments. Your passion has the strength to convert these conversations into the kind of conversation you might have with a 4 or 5-year-old, for whom everything is a delight.

My list is by no means comprehensive, but if you have these 10, you're in the right career. 

What do you think? What skills or characteristics have you found to be most valuable?