I meet a lot of sponsors, and something that strikes me with alarming frequency is the fact that so many of them are quite aware of what best practice sponsorship is about, and the benefits of doing it, but haven’t taken any steps to elevate their sponsorship approach to that level.

Why would so many sponsors bother to talk such a good game, when they have no apparent interest in playing it? What is stopping them from taking the steps necessary to benefit their brand using a more strategic approach? The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced it’s fear. Below, I’ve outlined the five biggest fears I see all the time.

You’re afraid it will be more work

You’re right. Getting sponsorship to really fly does require a lot of work. The good news is that best practice sponsorship spreads that load to the most sensible people, so your workload is likely to be different, but not bigger.

Here’s the thing, sponsorship does not work in a vacuum. To get the most out of it, it should be used as a catalyst – integrated across your other marketing and business activities. That means, you will be working with decision-makers from across your company and, newsflash, they are all better at their jobs than you are.

Got a sponsorship with a social media angle? Work with your in-house (or contracted) expert to develop the plan and then – yay! – they implement it. Got an employee angle? That’s where the employee experts, HR, come in. Sales? Your sales team is much better placed to develop the promotions and get retail buy-in than you are. The list goes on and on.

If you do sponsorship right, your job changes from “doer” to “wrangler”, as you manage the process through the different departments. And because those departments are already experts, they will be able to accomplish a lot and do it both expertly and efficiently.

You’re afraid of the higher bar

What if you make some changes and, lo and behold, they actually work? Suddenly the bar may be raised on everything you do!

While some corporate managers relish in meeting higher expectations, not everyone is in that category. Let’s face it, some would rather coast.

The thing about best practice sponsorship is that once someone – read: your boss – sees how smart, effective, and creative it is, they will become best practice true believers and you will be a star. And yes, that means higher expectations.

The good news is that once you know how to construct a best practice sponsorship leverage and measurement program, it is easy to replicate the process for the rest of your portfolio. It’s creative, it’s fun, and so very gratifying. Thinking that you shouldn’t make the first jump because the bar will eventually go up is silly and self-defeating.

You’re afraid that if you take a different approach, it will make you look like you were dumb before

I see this one a lot. A sponsorship manager or team wants to make a change, but they don’t want to admit to colleagues and bosses that they had it wrong – or at least not right – before.

Here’s the good news: You have a window of opportunity. Best practice sponsorship is not so common that you will look like you were late to the party. It is new enough that you can say you’ve been doing some research on global best practice and you want to overhaul the approach. There is absolutely no shame in that, so take ownership and lead the process. Be the spearhead. You’ll look like a visionary.

You’re afraid the sell-in will be tough

This is a valid fear. Sometimes corporate cultures just don’t readily embrace change and knowing you have to fight inertia is enough to stymie any attempts at progress.

Education is your friend. Distribute white papers (“Last Generation Sponsorship” is a great start). Involve colleagues in leverage brainstorms. The fastest thing you can do, however, is to host some in-house training with someone who really knows best practice sponsorship and how to teach it. Show your colleagues the light and they will see the possibilities for your own brands.

You’re afraid the perks will dry up

Sponsorship managers – particularly at bigger companies – are on a pretty good wicket. They get invited to a lot of events and get a lot of tickets that mere mortals dream about. It’s so good, that it is perfectly understandable that you don’t want to change anything, just in case you miss out.

It won’t happen. There is every chance that your portfolio may change to better reflect brand and target market needs, but you’re still going to get all the good invitations. As long as you still have a hand in decisions, you will not miss out.

There you go. Five fears you really don’t need to have. There are no excuses. Get out there and embrace best practice – for your brands, your career, and yourself. You won’t regret it.

It started with a few dozen pretty women in orange mini-dresses with no apparent branding attending the Netherlands’ first round match. “Dutch supporters”, they said. FIFA correctly thought otherwise, then did just about the stupidest thing they could have done.

What FIFA should have done…

• Get their own megalomania under control.
• Roll their eyes at the lame attempt to “ambush” the World Cup with a low-impact, first-generation visibility grab.
• Realise that 36 pretty girls sitting together in orange dresses is not going to harm the sponsor, particularly if they had done a good job of leveraging their massive investment. (It was Budweiser, but how many of you knew that?)
• Inform the broadcaster not to dwell on them.

If they really wanted to be hard, they could also have informed the women that if they returned in that or a similar get-up, they would not be allowed entry to future games.

What FIFA actually did…

• Eject the women, hold and question them for four hours.
• Arrest the ringleaders in contravention of anti-ambush legislation.
• Make Bavaria Beer and their models a global phenomenon.

Good on you, FIFA! You’ve turned an inconsequential, cosmetic ambush into the biggest sponsorship story of the World Cup.

Actually, FIFA’s reaction was so predictable (as are all the various World Cup organisers and the IOC) that Bavaria was probably banking on FIFA to do all the heavy lifting for them! All the while, Nike is running rampant with viral video that actually is creating marketing value for them and reducing the effectiveness of Adidas’ sponsorship.

Wake up, organisers! It’s time to stop dwelling on the inconsequential and start tackling the big issues in ambush marketing. When the ICC (Cricket’s global ruling body) started going through fans’ coolers and dumping out their Coca-Colas, it made Cricket World Cup sponsor, Pepsi, look like a spoil sport. When organisers of major events make fans turn their T-shirts inside out, it makes both the organisers and the sponsors look petty and mean.

Why do organisers do this? Because at least it looks like they’re doing something. What they’re not doing, however, is stopping the kind of ambush that hurts their sponsors. To do that would require them to admit that they can’t control it, tell their sponsors that great leverage is their best defence, and to work and be flexible with those sponsors to find leverage ideas that will work across the entire event experience.

Do I think this will ever happen? No, because being pedantic, sabre-rattlers is easier.

In my recent run of workshops, keynotes, and in-house training, I have started using a new word around sponsorship – “privilege”. At one point, I was trying to convey the critical importance of putting your target markets first when developing a leverage plan, when I blurted out something like this:

Sponsorship provides you with the privilege to connect with people in a meaningful way through something they already care about. Your choice, as a sponsor, is whether you are going to respect or abuse that privilege.

Now, I’m not usually someone that struggles for words, but when the word “privilege” came out, I couldn’t help but be surprised that I hadn’t thought of it before. Sponsorship is a privilege. (Smack self on forehead.) Obviously.

Framing sponsorship as a privilege – and leverage as a choice between respect and abuse – brings an additional degree of clarity about what does and does not constitute best practice sponsorship. With that in mind, here are my top five ways that sponsors abuse the privilege.

1. Blah, blah, blah…

Okay, don’t get me wrong here, but sometimes sponsors just need to shut the heck up.

In any given sponsorship, the target market is the most important party, their main concern is whatever it is that you’re sponsoring, and your brand is the third wheel. That’s your starting place: Interloper.

If you want to shift your brand into the position of being a welcome part of that experience, being a pest is not the way to do it. Instead, sacrifice some of the volume and add meaningful value to the experience. Sacrifice repetition ad infinitum and focus on sharing the fan experience. Sacrifice visibility and create collaborative fan experiences. Show the fans that you are in this with them, don’t yell at them and expect them to listen.

2. Hey, over here! Look at me! LOOK AT ME!

I believe interruption signage should be banned.

There is all this debate in America about whether athletes should wear logos on their playing jerseys or not and how that diminishes the game. Honestly, I think that outrage is misplaced. Whether there are logos on a jersey or not is unlikely to diminish the fan experience. The strategic worth of those logos is up for debate, but they don’t make it harder to follow the progress of a play anymore than having a big team logo or design does.

What does diminish the fan experience is interruption signage – moving, flashing, or electronically-inserted signage, particularly signage in the line of site of the field or court, that is specifically created to divert the audience’s attention from the experience they’re trying to have and onto a sponsor’s logo or message.

If you’ve ever been at a basketball game or been watching a rugby game and you’re trying to follow a crucial play on the other side, but the signage in the background is also moving, you know what I mean.

Put yourself in the audience’s shoes… would you really rather watch a game where the background was lit up and moving? Does that make your experience better or worse? Then ask yourself, is diminishing my target markets’ experience good for my brand? Will it make them love my brand more? You know the answer is “no”.

3. Be part of our “brand story”

Sponsors have learned a lot from experiential marketing, but this little phrase is one I wish we hadn’t. Here’s the thing, unless you are Apple or Harley Davidson, nobody wants to be part of your “brand story”. Your target markets have their own stories. Your goal is to make your brand the natural choice for that target market – to be part of their story.

Creating experiential events, installations, road shows, etc, as part of your leverage program, can be a good thing, but more often than not, they are build on a premise of “come meet our brand”, not “here’s something for you”.

If you’re going down this track, make it primarily about the fans, not your brand. You want to engage with the fans in a meaningful way, not have them wandering around your “experience” just to kill time until something interesting happens.

4. You could win this fabulous prize

SMS your details and go into a draw to win…

Collect three proofs of purchase and go into a draw to win…

Register on our website and go into a draw to win…

We’ve all seen this type of leverage. Heck, we’ve probably all run them at one time or another. I have.

The problem is, they don’t tend to work very well. Breaking down the mechanics, you are basically asking someone to do some work on your behalf, provide contact details to you, and possibly buy your product, in order to go into a draw to win one big prize that they really don’t think they have a chance of winning. It’s true that some prizes are more compelling than others, and it is possible to get big participant numbers, but my experience is that is not the norm. Whether you intend it to be or not, this approach is inherently selfish, and your increasingly cynical consumers can see that.

Best practice sponsors subscribe to the idea that sponsorship should be win-win-win. That is, the sponsor wins, the property wins, and the target market wins, with small meaningful wins for all or most of a target market, not the chance to win one thing for one person. Those “wins” can be functional, emotional, or a combination of both. Do this, and your target markets will see that you do understand the experience and are taking steps to amplify the good stuff or fix the bad stuff. That is the ultimate in respecting the event experience.

5. It’s complicated

Leverage programs should definitely be multi-faceted. What they should not be is complicated.

Following on from point 4, your interaction with target markets should be as simple as possible. Don’t make people go through more steps or jump through more hoops than absolutely necessary to get their third “win”. Don’t make them part with personal information unless absolutely necessary. Your goal is to change people’s perceptions and change their behaviours. Email addresses are not generally requisite for that.

Keep it clean. Keep it streamlined. Make it easy.

Without doubt, some of these things abuse the privilege more than others, simply because they are more invasive, but the undercurrent is the same for all of them. That undercurrent is brand selfishness. Brand needs are not most important, when it comes to sponsorship, target market needs are. I’m not saying brand needs are unimportant, but if you don’t understand, respect, and meet the needs of your target markets, they won’t help you meet your brand needs. It’s as simple as that.

Great sponsorship is, by its very nature, a collaborative process. It only works if a critical mass of your stakeholders are integrating sponsorship across their activities. My experience is that if you create a multi-departmental stakeholder team and get them spooled up on the principles of best practice sponsorship, you will get the buy-in to the approach that you need.

The weak link for buy-in tends to be at the senior executive level. There is something about that potent combination of not knowing how sponsorship really works, benefitting greatly from the status quo (great tickets, meeting top sportspeople, funding pet charities, etc), and a healthy corporate ego, that makes it attractive to resist any major changes in how sponsorship is done. And if your CEO nixes the plan, you don’t have a lot of room to move.

I have three suggestions for handling this senior executive roadblock.

Provide a stakeholder team recommendation

Your first and most attractive option is to work with your stakeholder team on the development of the overall sponsorship strategy and any leverage plans that are big enough to catch a senior executive’s attention. This means the plan will be highly credible and clearly delivering across a number of areas of the company.

The success of this option will be largely due to your corporate culture. If your senior executives have a culture of respecting, valuing, and empowering middle management, they should be quite open to a new approach if it is signed off by key people they trust.

The ideal scenario is that your CMO will table the recommendation to other c-level peers, providing you and your ideas with high-level endorsement. The CMO should also be able to advise you on whether this is the best approach with the executives you’ve got, or whether to move onto a different option.

Propose a pilot program

If you’ve got a major sponsorship – beloved by one or more senior executives – and you want to change how it’s leveraged, you may see some resistance. In that case, you can provide a recommended course of action from the stakeholder team and include a pilot program as your Plan B.

A pilot program is a smaller version of something you want to roll out across a year, season, country, etc. For instance, you may want to do a comprehensive social media campaign around a league sponsorship or do virtual bounce-back coupons for fans, via their mobile phones.

If this is all sounding a bit wacky to your seniors, you could pilot some of your easier, lower cost, minimal infrastructure ideas – like the ones above – at one midweek game in a smaller city. There is no reason you need to put all the flashy bells and whistles on it if the point is to try it out. Add them when you get the green light to roll it out.

If you do propose a pilot program, the most important parts of the equation for your senior executives are the objectives and measurement plan, which must be strategic and detailed. That way, you can all be agreed as to what will be considered a success.

Sneak in some best practice

I am a firm believer that it is better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission.

If your stakeholder team is strong, and their day-to-day operations are not being micromanaged from above, there is no reason you need to even tell your senior executives about the new approach. Instead, embark on a plan that includes the best performing, most internally popular leverage ideas from previous years, and add a number of best practice, last generation** leverage ideas to the mix. The senior executives won’t have lost any of the activities that they think have value, but you have the opportunity to significantly improve the returns.

On the numerous occasions when I have taken this approach with clients, all the sponsorship buzz ends up being around the last generation leverage activities, the senior executive team is delighted, and you will have a lot more freedom to do great things – and get rid of old-school thinking – in the future.

If you go all out and do something really cool with your leverage activities, be sure to submit your case study to an influential marketing or advertising publication, like Brandweek, AdAge, AdNews, etc. The kudos your company and, by association, the senior executives, will get from this kind of endorsement of your strong strategic work will definitely free you up to do more of it in the future. I’ve done this with a few clients, and even the most stubborn Managing Director starts to see the light when a few of their peers phone up congratulating them on “their” innovation!

**Not sure what Last Generation Sponsorship is? Download my white paper, “Last Generation Sponsorship”. You’ll be in good company – it’s been downloaded about 400,000 times!

I was working through all of the fact checking on case studies for the new book, The Corporate Sponsorship Toolkit, and came across this video about how Vodafone New Zealand leverages their multi-faceted and extremely fan-centric sponsorship of the New Zealand Warriors.

The thing I love most about this is that they have the focus exactly where it needs to be. The relationship they are trying to promote and nurture isn’t their relationship with the Warriors, but their relationship with the fans.

As we’d say in Australia (and New Zealand), good on you, Vodafone!

UPDATE 3 Jun 10

After posting this, I heard from Richard Howarth, the former head of sponsorship at Vodafone NZ. I was delighted to hear that he formed some of the mindset that went into this leverage program after doing training with me. I had no idea I had anything to do with it! I’m so proud!! This is what Richard had to say:

“Kim, three years ago I attended one of your sponsorship workshops in Auckland. I loved the methodology and the strong customer focus you advocated, and I have always tried to use that as the basis for any campaigns we launched here. Consequently, when anyone joined my sponsorship team, I used to buy them a copy of your Toolkit book and give them the day off to go read it. Thanks for the inspiration, Richard Howarth”

Thank you, Richard. This is a benchmark that all sponsors should aspire to!