I love sponsorship, I really do. I’ve been doing this for give-or-take about 25 years and can’t imagine being in any other industry. I’m not sure why, but this weekend, I’ve been thinking about how I got into this crazy business. If you’re not interested in a goofy, personal, back story, feel free to click away now!

When I was in high school, my mum started an advertiser for horse people. There were two issues – in the Upper Midwest (I grew up in Minnesota) and California. I worked for The Stable Sheet through high school and uni. Part of my job was keying in all 120,000 names and addresses of the subscribers, which was boring, but turned me into a blistering fast typist. The other part of my job started when I turned 16 and got my drivers license, at which time my 14 year-old sister and I hit the road and represented The Stable Sheet at major horse shows and horse expos we sponsored across several states. We also got up to a lot of no good, but I won’t go into details. My mum reads this blog.

I started uni when I was just 16 and studied what I was good at – maths and physics – but hated it and I got up to even more no good. I already knew I loved marketing (not knowing specifically what that meant), sports, and writing. I dropped out short of graduating and tried to figure out what I was going to do that mixed marketing, sports, and writing. Hmm… let me think…

One stop-gap job later – insurance, what was I thinking??? – and I was interviewing with a start-up sponsorship group while sitting on the ground helping them get a mailing out the door. I beat hundreds to that job, and spent the next few years working nonstop (for a pittance!) to make our clients’ sponsorship activations happen.

I went to more huge sporting events and stadiums than I can count, but mostly only saw them from behind the scenes and ended up with a crazy resume of experiences. I’ve been chased around by baseball players. I had to take over for the person who fainted inside the Pillsbury Doughboy costume. I nearly fell into the Twins outfield trying to hang a banner from the AV rack in the way-off-the-ground commentator box. I crashed a sponsor’s blimp into a high power line and nearly blacked out the Houston Astrodome during a nationally televised Oilers game. It was crazy. It was fun. I had hardly any sleep or money, but I didn’t care. What emerged early on was that, as much fun as the “doing” is, what I really loved was the strategy – analysing the sponsor’s needs and figuring out creative ways to meet those needs. I’ve been doing that ever since.

Fast forward to 1992, and I was ready to make my move overseas. Not sure why, but I always knew I was going to spend my life overseas. I landed in Australia and have been here ever since. It was the best decision I ever made – personally or professionally. I love it here and have built a business with clients on six continents. If I would have stayed in America, I’m sure I would have been successful, but would I have worked around the world?? Not so sure.

I’m an idealist and a perfectionist to the point of being annoying. Given that, you’d think the whole “doyenne of best practice sponsorship” thing would have been the goal all along, but no. I fell into that track quite by accident!

First, there was the world’s worst conference. It was so bad, I spoke up at the end and the 30 people remaining had a revolt, scaring the young woman organising the thing to bits. We formed the Australasian Sponsorship Marketing Association on the spot, deciding there and then that best practice sponsorship was too important to entrust to a bunch of canned conference companies.

I was appointed, then elected, president for four years until I retired. During that time, I was also the editor of the newsletter and one of the people organising the annual conference Given how the association started, it would have been hypocritical to allow anything less than best-practice into what we did. Seeking out that information and those people was amazing, and the start of my love affair with best practice sponsorship. It was also the start of my mission to raise the bar for the industry, and I haven’t wavered from that mission ever since. Yeah, I know… it’s my own personally windmill for tilting!

The second big watershed was when a partner and I started doing workshops. Our biggest competition planted someone in our second ever workshop, grabbed our materials, and promptly accused us of plagiarism. It was a pile of hooey. I wrote our materials and had never read his stuff nor been to his workshop. We gathered the background material, defended ourselves admirably, and then realised, “hey, we do this differently than anyone else”. Within two months, we had a publishing deal and The Sponsorship Seeker’s Toolkit was born, followed by The Sponsor’s Toolkit and The Ambush Marketing Toolkit. The Corporate Sponsorship Toolkit is my newest book, and is getting ready to go to editing right now.

Best practice sponsorship is my thing. I love it. I love the analysis and the strategy and the case studies. Kudos to all of you sponsorship folks covering sponsorship news. I love reading your stuff, but that’s just not where my heart is. It’s the possibilities that turn me on – for me, my clients, and the whole industry.

The upshot is that I have the best job in the world. I get to work with big sponsors, sorting out their major portfolios, and when I’m done, I move on to someone else. I get to write books and blogs and white papers. I get to do workshops and keynotes around the world and special programs for charities. I get to call some of the most talented, creative people I know “my peers”. Seriously, I am happy, happy, happy.

How about you? How did you get into sponsorship? Why do you love it? Any crazy stories to share? I’d love to hear all about it!!