About 7:30 this morning, I was on my balcony, sipping coffee, and reading my old-fashion newspaper. I happened to glance around, scanning the view, and noticed a guy in navy blue sweatpants tucking in a white polo shirt while standing in the middle of the parking lot of a long-abandoned but available for rent convenience store.
I watched him for a second, curious about what he was doing. And suddenly, once he was all tucked in, he started doing jumping jacks, followed by a brisk walk around the parking lot, in a big loop.
I returned to my newspaper, convinced he was simply waiting for someone, maybe to go for a run – why else would he be in this parking lot? Though fairly well kept, it is hardly scenic.
The next time I looked up, he was completing a set of push-ups, the low kind that don't look like they would be of much value, that you can do really fast (well, some people can, though I, apparently, am not one of them). But try to do them. They're hard!
Next he went through a set of toe touches, the fancy ones. Remember them? You bend at the waist and touch your toes, and as you stand upright again, you reach for the sky and repeat, but with brief pauses for your hands to touch your waist.
"He's old-school," said my partner, who'd since joined me with his coffee on the balcony.
While we reminisced about those old-school exercises, wondering whatever happened to them, why we now have gym memberships, stores that sell nothing but fancy clothes to do "calisthenics" in, and even entire vacations at fancy places called spas, Mr. Navy Blue Sweatpants had turned the abandoned parking lot into an open air gym. By 8:10 a.m., he was joined by eight followers, who all looked pretty fit doing a round of calisthenics with him.
Besides marveling at the cost-effectiveness of his business plan, it got me thinking about the basics. Isn't that an underlying consideration of the recession, a reconsideration of the basics, literally or figuratively? Couldn't we do some jumping jacks, toe-touches, and push-ups, even the sissy ones, and accomplish our goals?
Translated to sponsorship development, could you go back to the basics to figure out why you incorporate sponsorship into your marketing plans (for corporations) and among your revenue sources (for properties)? Have you lost sight of how sponsorship works? How it fulfills your or your sponsors' objectives? What you have to offer? What you need to accomplish?
Give me ten. And think about these questions.
