Sponsorship Strategist

The Banished 13: Corporate sponsorship practices we could do without in 2013

It's a new year and an excellent time to consider your sponsorship operation anew. Here are 13 practices by both corporations and sponsorship sellers that are a good place to start. Time to let these dated, ineffective behaviors or operations go. Suggestions for corporate sponsors. Online forms. The conundrum is that you receive tons of proposals that don't begin to meet your objectives. I get it. My company receives enough off-the-mark sponsorship proposals to make the extrapolation easy. But here's the thing: you're turning away good opportunities and the potential for meaningful relationships with organizations that won't waste their time.... Read more →

The app as sponsorship asset

NBC created an app so fans and followers could tune in in real time, space-time coordinates be damned. Cool idea, right? When you find the app on Apple's App Store, you might notice the user ratings and that they skew to the poor end of the rating scale, by about 2:1. The first version has 2,783 one-star reviews, with 1,252 five-star ratings. The new version, out since August 1, has a comparable ratio: 535 one-star vs. 309 five-star reviews. I don't know about you, but my curiosity was piqued. "Messy mess of nothingness." --upstatenyguy It seems like NBC launched the... Read more →

Event marketing works. Period.

Video evidence. There's no other answer to be delivered but "yes," right? Read more →

PANO Workshop: Strong Stories. Stronger Sponsorship.

If you're attending PANO's 2012 Annual Conference, the theme for which is all about storytelling, don't miss my session, Strong Stories. Stronger Sponsorship. I'm willing to bet that this session will be the most fun. Filled with lots of examples, great insights and ideas, time for creativity. There will even be not one, but two :30 dance parties. How can you beat that!? Here's what the session is all about: Corporate sponsorship is a marketing vehicle that fosters a face-to-face experience between a business and the audiences drawn together by a cause, passion, or purpose. A bolder narrative about your... Read more →

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? Read more →

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... Read more →

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... Read more →

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: 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... Read more →

When you're afraid to make sponsorship calls

Here's the bottomline: if you don't tell anyone about your sponsorship opportunities, if you don't work together with prospective partners to co-create meaningful opportunities, you're not going to have sponsors nor the revenue from that source. You know this, of course. But that doesn't make having actual conversations with real live sponsors any less scary, right? Here are three suggestions: Don't fight the fear. Fear (with consciousness) can be a good thing. Fear surely saved many a caveman and woman from untimely death. Fortunately, sponsor prospects are not known for attacking much less defending themselves to the death. Rather for... Read more →

Think like a starving artist, and you won't starve

One day last week, I left a meeting with someone who is under a great deal of pressure because of current budget squeezes that impact her nonprofit organization's funding. The physical sensations of stress she described were indelible, and I felt a great deal of empathy as I walked through the City towards my office. I passed the Merriam Theatre in Philadelphia, and a crowd spilling out onto the sidewalk, hours before showtime, piqued my curiousity. Then I heard drumming. Stomp was in town, and at this very moment, they were conducting a masterclass for high school-aged – and very... Read more →