kim skildum-reid's
corporate sponsorship blog

I get queries about this at least a couple of times a week, and while I’ve alluded to this subject in a number of blogs, I’ve never addressed it directly, so this blog is probably overdue.

Who to target

The first consideration is who you should target for your offer, and there are definitely roles you should avoid and roles that will be much more productive.

People you want to avoid…

Sponsorship manager – You’d think somebody called the “sponsorship manager” should be right person to receive your sponsorship proposal. That’s just what the company is hoping you’ll think, as one of the sponsorship manager’s biggest roles is that of gatekeeper – keeping you away from the real decision-makers. Yes, there are a few exceptions to this, but not enough to make this a good first entry into a company.

Online sponsorship submission forms – These are nothing but automated gatekeepers and don’t give you the scope to showcase what you really have to offer. Avoid them at all costs.

Agencies – It’s just not a good idea to volunteer to put a third party between you and the decision-maker. Stories of this working are rare, and I’ve never seen it happen myself.

CEO/MD/President – Please hear me when I tell you this: The CEO is not going to say “yes” to you. They aren’t going to say “no” to you, either. They’ll pass your proposal down the line until it gets to the sponsorship manager and then s/he’ll say “no”. Meanwhile, you’ve burned a ton of time.

People you want to seek out…

Brand manager (or a member of the brand team) – In most companies, this is who has the authority, flexibility, and budget to say “yes” to you, and is who you need to target. As a bonus, because so many sponsorship seekers are wasting their time with the CEO and the sponsorship manager, very few are targeting the brand manager.

General manager – This is often the right person to target in a smaller company, particularly a local or regional company. The good news is that you can call to confirm, as smaller companies tend to be less cagey about providing details to sponsorship seekers.

Regional marketing manager – If what you’re offering has a primarily local or regional focus, you could opt to approach the regional marketing manager. S/he may have the budget and authority locally, and can be a strong advocate in home office if your offer outstrips their budget.

Important

If you contact one of these people and are referred to the sponsorship manager, an agency, or an online form, you’re going to need to accept that you’ve probably just been told “no”. For more on that, you may want to read, “Six Signs a Sponsor is Just Not That Into You”.

Getting names and contact details

There are a lot of strategies for learning who to approach and how to contact her/him. How you go about it is a matter of the resources you have available and your own personal style. These are a few of the strategies you can use.

Use your network

Sponsorship isn’t anywhere near six degrees of separation. Chances are, you’ll only be a couple of degrees away from someone who can tell you who the actual decision-maker is and how to reach her/him.

Scan their media releases

Most corporate websites have a media centre, featuring their media releases from recent months or years. Find that page and scan for releases having to do with brand announcements. Chances are, there will be a quote from the brand manager in charge of that brand and voila, you have the name and correct title.

You should also note if there is an email address for the media contact, as the syntax will likely be the same for the brand manager (eg, firstname.lastname@company.com).

Search marketing publications

If you are selling a significant number and amount of sponsorships, you need to subscribe to your national advertising/marketing weekly – or at least their email alerts. Examples are AdAge, Adweek, AdNews, Media, and more around the world. Why? Because every time a new marketing initiative is announced for a major brand, it will be covered in one of those publications and will feature a quote from the brand manager in charge.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a good way to find out the correct name and title for the brand manager, as well as some background information that may assist you with preparing for a meeting or phone call. I’m not convinced, however, that LinkedIn messaging is a great way to introduce yourself. Ditto asking someone that you have never done business with to make a LinkedIn introduction. I get asked this all of the time, but if I don’t have personal experience working with you, sorry, but I’m not going to vouch.

Ask

If all else fails, call the switchboard and ask for the name of the [insert brand here] brand manager. Don’t then ask to be put through. You need to prepare before you make that call.

Directories

I am aware there are some directories available, but their value is really patchy. If it’s sponsorship-oriented, it’s the sponsorship manager (gatekeeper) that is usually listed. There are more general directories, listing brand managers. The biggest problem with directories, though, is that the turnover in marketing roles is high and the lists go out of date quickly. This is my least favourite option.

Now, don’t screw it up!

Once you’ve got the correct name, title, some background, and possibly an email address, you still have quite a lot to do before you’re ready to make contact. Don’t screw it up. Read the blogs, “The First Sponsor Meeting (and How Not to Make an Idiot of Yourself)” and “Don’t Send a Sponsorship Proposal until You Read This”.

Good luck!

I love LinkedIn. Most specifically, I love the Sponsorship Insights group on LinkedIn. It’s well-moderated, has little spam, a big membership, and the discussions are generally relevant and the responses mostly helpful.

I say “mostly” because there is a one-man phenomenon that is hell-bent on demonstrating the superiority of academics over people who actually work in this field. What he is actually demonstrating, however, is how arrogantly out-of-touch he is while he tries to bully people into his point of view.

The whole shebang started with an excellent question: “There is a growing need in our industry to demonstrate the impact and effectiveness of sponsorship campaigns… But, what is the most efficacious method of analysis? Comments?”

While industry professionals provided resources and advice relating to multi-faceted measurement against objectives, this academic was insisting that logo exposure was a primary contributor to marketing results, and belittling industry standards and anyone who supports them. He did cite research, but unless every research subject was somehow insulated so as not to have come in contact with any other leverage activities of any of those sponsors, there is no way to isolate causality. Honestly, though, is this even the right question? I mean, you could do a huge research project about whether people pay more or less attention to signage when it’s raining, but that would have about as much relevance to modern, sophisticated sponsorship as some of the research he’s citing.

In my world (and that of most industry professionals), we’d just prefer to measure the actual marketing results against existing benchmarks. Job done.

A quick look at his background and it all became clear… he is chairman of a logo-counting, sponsorship “measurement” company. Obviously. He waves the academic superiority flag, but is actually trying to build credibility for methodology that’s 15-20 years out of date.

The most recent stoush started when a (different) university lecturer asked a very reasonable question about whether he needed to use a textbook or whether there were enough slideshows and other content available online to do the job.

My opinion? As someone who has created a LOT of freely available content on the subject, I think it’s very possible to string together the references you need from a wide variety of credible web resources, although sifting through the options and getting them in some semblance of order may not be easy. The bigger downside is that the resulting references may not be cohesive or provide the kind of linear, Point A to Point B how-to that an absolute beginner will probably need.

I recommended The Sponsorship Seeker’s Toolkit 3^rd Edition, as it is used by many dozens of academic programs. Several other people also recommended it (thank you!). Other people suggested some books from IEG and Pippa Collett & William Fenton’s work, The Sponsorship Handbook. All of these are viable options and worth consideration, and all of them were written by working industry professionals.

Cue rant.

His advice was that books by sponsorship consultants was that they “might be fun to read” but “lack quality control”. Hmm… and here I thought that asking fellow sponsorship professionals for their recommendations and… you know… actually reading them and checking them out to ensure they align with your teaching approach, was about the best quality control you could get. He also mentioned he hasn’t read those “fun” books. Good to hear he knows what he’s talking about, then.

From there, it devolved into all the reasons why academia knows sponsorship better than working sponsorship professionals, with the sponsorship pros involved responding with a collective, “are you kidding me?!” There were also several references to his experience as brand manager for a major multinational, giving him industry insight and credibility. He fails to mention that ended in 1972.

His coup de gras? He claims, “The sponsorship area has a long way to go to be understood.” By him, it certainly does.

The most interesting and salient thing about all of this is that most university programs on sponsorship, event management, sports marketing, and related subjects, are taught by lecturers whose day jobs are… wait for it… consultants who are actually working in the field! The few “pure” academics I know in the field work closely with industry professionals, to ensure what they are teaching is relevant, timely, and actually prepares students for the reality of working in this complex and sophisticated field.

The bigger issue is, of course, that he has students who probably think they’re being prepared to work in this industry. With a bit of luck, the many, many sophisticated sponsorship professionals across Scandinavia will ensure that the real-world education those students may lack coming out of university is more than offset by the mentoring they get as they start their careers.

While all of this started out as entertaining, it’s now actually making that group a less pleasant place to interact. From here on in, rather than avoiding the group, I’ll be pressing “pause” on my idealism and ignoring the guy – which is probably what I should have done from the start. Being less of an idealist would save me a lot of headaches… but that is who I am.

I’ve written blog after blog after article after book about the collaborative nature of sponsorship; how it requires both broad buy-in and a commitment to leverage from a range of stakeholders; and that brand managers are generally the ones who approve sponsorship spend.

So, if sponsorship decisions and leverage are being spread across various decision-makers, do we still need sponsorship managers? To that, I answer an emphatic “yes”. They fill a number of critical roles to doing sponsorship truly well.

Gatekeeper

Let’s face it. Being a gatekeeper is a big part of most sponsorship managers’ jobs – somebody has to sift through the hundreds or thousands of proposals your company receives every month. The thing is, most sponsorship managers either spend too much or too little time in this role.

Sometimes the gatekeeping workload alone accounts for the lion’s share of a sponsorship manager’s time. I’m all for diligence, but if the number of proposals received is untenable, and most of them are completely inappropriate, they’re not worth putting in the effort to fully review.

My very strong recommendation is that all sponsors should have a tight set of sponsorship guidelines and make them very clearly available (ie, don’t bury them 17 levels into your website). If you don’t have guidelines and need a big running start, you can download a sponsorship guidelines template.

This will improve the proposals you get, and will stop a lot of sponsorship seekers from submitting proposals that are clearly not a match. It will also trip up sponsorship seekers who aren’t interested in putting in the effort to meet your needs. There is another step, though. For all of those proposals and letters of request received – where it’s clear by the second page that they haven’t been prepared according to the guidelines or are completely wrong for the brand – sponsorship managers need to stop reading right there and send them an email something like this:

Hello [Sponsorship Seeker] –

We have received your sponsorship proposal. It is clear that this has not been prepared according to our sponsorship guidelines, and as such, we will not be reviewing your offer.

If you want your offer to be considered, you need to review and follow our guidelines.  They can be downloaded from this link: www.fakesponsor.com/guidelines.

Once you have thoroughly reviewed the guidelines, if you still believe you can meet our requirements, we encourage you to resubmit a more appropriate proposal that is customised to our needs.

Sincerely, [The Sponsor]

Then, there are the sponsorship managers who don’t spend enough time interacting with potential partners, opting instead for a war of attrition, waged with unanswered voicemails, unread emails, and unopened proposals. Sometime sponsorship managers get overwhelmed. Sometimes it’s a workload issue. Sometimes, frankly, it’s a power trip. Whatever the reason, it’s not a good idea.

If a sponsorship manager is diligent about using sponsorship guidelines, the number of proposals that are contenders for consideration will reduce significantly. Those sponsorship seekers need some attention, and probably more insight into brand and target market needs, so that the offers can be fine-tuned and opportunities explored.

Relationship manager

Another big (and time-consuming) part of the job is managing relationships with partners. This is not just about ensuring that a sponsee delivers the contracted benefits – although that’s part of it. It’s about being a partner – working together to ensure the objectives of both parties are being achieved. Got that? Both parties. The sponsorship manager should be seeking to understand the needs of the partners and add value to the relationship, just as s/he should be expecting understanding and added value from the sponsee.

Internal consultant

In addition to being a gatekeeper and managing relationships, a big part of a modern sponsorship manager’s job is being an internal consultant. In my eyes, this is easily the most important part of the job.

Realistically, all of those other stakeholders have other jobs. They are specialists in their own areas, and while they may have a good, working knowledge of sponsorship, it is usually a minor portion of what they do. Taken together, these stakeholders will do the lion’s share of the work around a sponsorship, but it all needs to be marshalled and directed and the process needs some leadership. That’s where a sponsorship manager comes in, taking on tasks such as:

• Coordinating stakeholder needs, so negotiations will net the most appropriate benefits.
• Managing the leverage planning process.
• Ensuring all negotiations and leverage are aligned with business and target market needs and reflect best practice sponsorship. (What is that? Read “Last Generation Sponsorship”.)
• Managing renewals, mid-term negotiations, and sponsorship reviews.
• Managing the sponsorship strategy development and portfolio audit process.

If your sponsorship manager has potential, but isn’t quite at this level, one option is to get him/her some training. Another option is to bring in a coach, who will both train and support the sponsorship manager through the transition to a higher functioning role. (If you want to discuss either of these, drop me a line.)

Information collator

As part of the internal consultant role, there is also the role of information collator. That is particularly important when it comes to measurement.

I’m not saying it is the sponsorship manager’s job to measure sponsorship results, because it’s not. Changes in target market behaviour should be measured by the internal experts across your company, in the ways that your company accepts, and against existing, accepted benchmarks. Changes in target market perceptions should be measured with research, using a selection of the same questions you are asking in ongoing (or at least recent) target market research.

What is the sponsorship manager’s job? Marshalling the process and collating the information into a report that can be distributed across stakeholders and up the line.

Up-skiller

Doing sponsorship really well does require some organisational understanding of how it works and the principles of best practice. The role of ensuring that key people from around the company have the skills and tools to get it right, and make the process as streamlined as possible, will usually fall to the sponsorship manager. This could be about bringing in some training or creating a handbook or distributing case studies, but however it’s done, it’s about elevating the approach.

In addition to skilling up your company’s team, many sponsorship managers spearhead training for partners, understanding that a more sophisticated partner will be easier to work with and you should get a much better result.

The upshot

The upshot is that a sponsorship manager is much more than the administrator that many companies define them as. A sponsorship manager should be the lynchpin to great sponsorship results, not the lackie trying to make something out of nothing with virtually no integration.

It is important to have the right person in the job (or as the head of a sponsorship team). That person must have exceptional sponsorship skills, with enough experience, authority, and charisma to lead a team of cross-departmental stakeholders, without being their boss. That person must either have an balanced analytical/creative mind, or be able to develop and lead a team with that balance. That person must have a strong, working understanding of every other marketing media, as sponsorship needs to be integrated across all of it.

And if the right person is in the job, there is every chance that person will end up Chief Marketing Officer someday.

There was a recent social media stir about an over-the-top rejection letter sent to 900 candidates for a job in the IT industry. Thousands of people complained about the tone and wordiness, and there was a great deal of how-dare-they attitude on display. To an extent, I agree. The tone was condescending and it was way too long and self-important. But the people complaining seemed to be missing the point inherent in the writer’s frustration: If there are 900 applicants for only a handful of jobs, being careless or wacky or not following instructions is not going to get you one of them.

What does this have to do with sponsorship? A lot.

Some sponsors receive hundreds of sponsorship proposals for every one that they actually consider. Most of them aren’t good matches for their needs, but a lot of them could have some scope, if they were presented in a way that showcased the real opportunity for the sponsor.

So, on behalf of frustrated sponsors everywhere, the rejection letter they wish they could send:

Dear [Sponsorship Seeker] –

While we wish we could thank you for the submission of your sponsorship proposal, that would be a lie, as the proposal you sent has wasted both your time and ours.

Despite the fact that we have posted comprehensive sponsorship guidelines on our website, you have either not reviewed them, or you have reviewed them and decided it wasn’t worth your while to develop a customised offer that meets those criteria. Either way, that lack of effort speaks volumes about your organisation’s sophistication and responsiveness.

Please understand that we receive hundreds of sponsorship proposals every month. We simply don’t have time to sift through all the pages of meaningless, self-involved hoo-ha about your property to find any scrap of relevance to our brand and our markets. If you want our money, the proposal needs to be about meeting our objectives with our target markets.

The opportunity you’ve presented may have had real value for our brand – it may have been a candidate for consideration – but the lack of care and professionalism in your presentation means that we will never know.

We have a lot of choice. It’s a buyer’s market. If you want your offer to be considered, you need to put in the research and effort up front, or you simple won’t be successful.

Sincerely, The Sponsor

Too blunt? Maybe. A little sharp? Probably. But is it what some sponsorship seekers really need to hear? Absolutely. And it beats the other response that sponsors really want to send:

Dear Sponsorship Seeker –

Are you bloody kidding me?!

Sincerely, The Sponsor

 And for those of you sponsors who don’t have sponsorship guidelines, you really need a set. The number of proposals you receive will drop and the quality of the ones you do get will rise. For a big running start, you can download my Sponsorship Guidelines Template.

Back in 2010, soccer fans were gripped with anticipation over the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Also in that year, Valentine’s Day happened to fall on a match day. Puma seized on that to create a viral campaign that captured both the passion and the imagination of soccer fans.

The Puma Hardchorus was born, and fans could dedicate a love song, sung by what appear to be surprisingly talented soccer fans, and send it to their loved ones or share it with them on social media – demonstrating their love while still going to the game.

The most famous was this English one, with soccer fans singing the super-romantic “Truly, Madly, Deeply”, but they also created one in Italy using the song “Ti Amo” (“I love you”), and one in Korea around their national Children’s Day. (They all rock, but I’d back the English supporters in a fight.)

You could argue that this wasn’t really an ambush, but the way the soccer angle is used and the graphic depiction of Africa with the Puma logo is clearly aligning the brand with the anticipation of soccer fans, while staying well clear of doing anything illegal. FIFA sponsor, Adidas, probably would have seen that differently.

The reason I’m writing about this is because, in the lead-up to the London Olympics, while LOCOG is rattling their swords and taking IP enforcement to the point of curtailing free speech among genuinely enthusiastic fans, any non-sponsor could mount an ambush strategy simply by thinking laterally, reflecting the passion of the fans better than the corresponding sponsor, and not diluting a great idea, which is exactly what Puma did with this campaign. And there wouldn’t be a damned thing LOCOG could do about it.

By the same token, if the rightful Olympic sponsors could take their focus off the Games themselves for a few minutes and have a good look at the larger experience – if they could recognise and value the fans, rather running the same “enter to win tickets” competition run by all the other sponsors – they could do interesting, effective activities like this. And if they did, their leverage program would be much more effective, while making ambush by a competitor nigh on impossible.

If you’d like to speak with me about ambush marketing – doing it or stopping it happening to you – by all means, drop me a line:

kim@powersponsorship.com
AU: +61 2 9559 6444
US: +1 612 326 5265