While reviewing my news feeds a week or so ago, I came across an announcement that Qantas had taken up naming rights sponsorship of the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix. It was a short announcement, but the implications are much bigger.

The first consideration is that Qantas is already the official airline partner of the Australian Grand Prix, giving them a credible and appropriate platform around this event. In 2001, they actually downgraded from naming rights to that level.

I believe they’ve got this wrong and should have stayed at the official partner level, as they were in the perfect position to do what is referred to as “ambushing up”. The thinking is similar to ambush marketing, but not the mechanics. In an ambushing-up situation, a sponsor takes their perfectly legitimate sponsorship and leverages it so effectively – creating so much target market connection and meaning – that they get the marketing results you would expect from a much bigger sponsor.

While there are plenty of good reasons to take up naming rights sponsorship, in most situations, it is unnecessary. Being thorough and creative and focusing on the connection with the target market, not the property, can create huge results – much bigger than your typical naming rights sponsor, who concentrates on visibility, not creating real returns for the brand.

Every sponsor can benefit from ambushing up, and the airline category is in the ideal position to do it. They have planes full of bored people reading their magazines and watching their videos. They have lounges, terminals, and gates. They have ongoing relationships with millions of frequent flyers to nurture. They have travel agents and corporate accounts who need fostering. They send millions of emails to their customers and frequent flyers. Their online experience is heavily used, but virtually commoditised, and could do with some interesting, relevant content.

Airlines have so many customer touchpoints – and most of them provide a comparatively lengthy and captive opportunity to enhance the customer experience. They have countless opportunities to create real, meaningful wins for all or most of their target markets, so why aren’t they doing it? Why does Qantas they think having a bigger sponsorship is a better approach than actually… you know… using the one they’ve got?

As a Qantas customer who both flew with them and bought tickets online just last week, I can tell you firsthand that what they are doing is pretty standard, old school stuff. Case in point, if you go to their website – www.qantas.com.au – you’ll notice a that you could “win a trip to the Grand Prix”. Hoo-wee, now there’s some innovation! I get to give them my details for the slim chance of being the one person who wins two economy class tickets to Melbourne to watch the racing for the weekend!! Yawn.

Oh, and any frequent flyer can pay almost $2000 to use the Qantas Skydeck at the race. Any frequent flyer – you don’t have to be loyal or important to Qantas, you don’t have to be invited to participate, and it’s not in any way exclusive. You just have to have $2000 and a frequent flyer number. Their most frequent flyers can’t even cash in any of their millions of points to get a spot.

Seriously, it’s two weeks before a huge international event they’re sponsoring – now at an even higher level – and that’s the best they can do? They should be embarrassed.

Naming rights of an event of this size is a huge financial commitment and provides a commensurately huge platform to leverage. If a sponsor is prepared to fully leverage the opportunity – investing the time, creativity, and resources required – then naming rights is a viable option. On the other hand, if a sponsor can’t be bothered getting a lower level sponsorship right, stepping up is an opportunity wasted.

There is also the issue of timing. The announcement was dated 24 February. The race weekend is 25-28 March. Even if Qantas is justified in spending up for this bigger platform – and I’m not at all convinced that they are – all they’ve done is bought a larger opportunity. Leverage is what turns that opportunity into results for a brand. What kind of leverage program will create a result from a platform of that scope? One that takes a lot longer than a month to plan and implement!

As canvassed in my recent blog, Bad Idea #77: Sponsor the Olympics Three Weeks Before the Games, strong leverage planning takes time to build buy-in and go though the creative process. It also takes time to implement. Does Qantas have time to create in-flight content? A new ad? Create and launch a loyalty promotion? Anything of meaning that is above and beyond what they could have done with the lower level sponsorship, and do it in the space of four weeks? Doubtful.

This leaves the question of why they bumped up the investment, when it was both unnecessary and unworkable, from a marketing point of view. Without being a mind-reader, experience tells me there are three main options:

1. They have let their corporate ego get the best of them
2. They are under the impression that potential inbound passengers (people coming to Australia) are unaware that Qantas exists and that simply seeing the name Qantas ad infinitum during the telecast will somehow magically make people understand why they should choose Qantas for their travels. (It would have to be magic, because reams of research have proven that visibility does not change the perceptions or behaviours around a brand.)
3. They are trying to position themselves in a positive light with state and local government by stepping in with major, white knight funding at the last minute.

I’m very interested in your take on this. Why do you think they’ve done it? Do you think this major sponsorship increase is justifiable and why? Please post your answers below. Comments are moderated, but only because there are some real creeps in this world. Go ahead and fire away!

It’s early in the year – the time when people wipe the slate, make resolutions, and dedicate themselves to doing better. It’s when people give themselves permission to start over.

What if we applied that thinking to corporate sponsorship? What if sponsors took some time out from dealing with the administration of sponsorship and the improvement of sponsorship, and instead, dedicated themselves to the potential of sponsorship. What if they asked themselves this one question:

If you had the same sponsorship budget, but no commitments,
what would the perfect sponsorship portfolio
for your brand(s) and target markets look like?

I do this for my corporate clients all the time. In its formal iteration, it is called a zero-based audit, and it is often one of the most powerful parts of my recommendation. Strip away the politics, sentiment, history, and headaches, and suddenly my clients can see the true potential of sponsorship. More often than not, a senior decision maker will say, “now, we know what our goal is”. Bingo.

That’s your challenge. Whether your budget is $150,000 or $5 million or $50 million, leave the reality of your portfolio behind, work with your team, and ask yourselves these questions:

• What would you sponsor, if you could sponsor anything?
• At what level? What unique benefits would you want?
• Would you create and own any events or programs?
• Would you create any umbrella programs?
• How would you leverage your investments to meet brand needs?
• How would you integrate your investments across your other marketing and business activities?
• How would you involve your staff and customers in a meaningful way? Create a “win” for the people who are most critical to your success? Make them the heroes?

The process is creative and strategic and fun, but the real moment of truth comes when you compare what you could be doing with your money with what you are doing with your money. Suddenly, settling for improving mediocre sponsorships will seem a lot less appealing, and the ambitious goal of an entire portfolio that operates at peak performance will seem a lot more attainable. Mark my words.

I will say that whether you’re doing a straight audit or a zero-based audit, selling them internally can be a political minefield. Everyone has their pet projects and agendas, and none of them want to hear that their favourite is not the bees knees. You’ve really got two options:

Plan A is to enlist a senior executive (ideally, your head of marketing) in the process, as they will be able to navigate the c-level politics better than you will. If you’ve got that support and a team with even a modicum of creativity, you’re all set.

Plan B is to enlist outside help. For larger, more decentralised companies, as well as those with intractable politics, you are probably better off involving a consultant. A good consultant will bring a lot of expertise and ideas to the table, but one of the biggest bonuses is that some companies trust and accept the objective viewpoint of an outsider more than someone internal. They can deliver unpopular news, out-of-the-box solutions, and by virtue of their role, can present a reinvention on a scale that may be hard to accept if it came from inside.

Zero-based audit – Think clean slate. Think big. You’ll thank me.

I was recently reading an article in a decidedly non-business magazine. It was about “designated problems”, and the premise was that people who may have a whole host of emotional or physical issues sometime focus on just one of them and miss the underlying causes altogether. An example would be a person who is focusing relentlessly on her insomnia and missing (or ignoring) the anxiety and depression disorders that are behind it.

As I was reading the article, I thought how this whole idea related to the sponsorship industry. Both sponsors and sponsorship seekers hang onto their “designated problems” while overlooking or conveniently ignoring the real issues. And while any given organisation may have their own version of a “designated problem”, there are two that I’m seeing over and over.

The “designated problem” for sponsors

Without any question, the most prevalent “designated problem” for sponsors is measurement. They search for formulas, they hire logo counters, they do reports all about the mechanism of various sponsorships and then complain that the problem with sponsorship is that it’s impossible to accurately measure the results.

Here’s the thing: Measurement is not the problem. Leverage is the problem. If sponsors took a best practice approach with their leverage programs, measurement would be easy.

• If leverage plans were designed specifically to move the pin on perceptions of the brand, rather than passively increasing the “feel good” factor, results would improve dramatically and they’d be measurable using research against the benchmarks of existing customer research.
• If leverage plans were designed specifically to add value to the brand’s relationship with the target markets, results would improve dramatically, and the engagement with the brand could be measured with both research (see above) and many other methods (see below)
• If departments, business units, and regional offices were involved in the selection of key sponsorships, had input into the benefits they need you to negotiate for them, and were part of the creative leverage planning process, your results will improve dramatically. Sponsorship would suddenly become a catalyst that makes all of your other media work harder, not an investment that needs to be supported. Your incremental leverage funding will drop. And all of those other stakeholders will be able to measure the results of their involvement in achieving their overall objectives, against their existing benchmarks, and using the methods your company already trusts.

Focusing on measurement is a cop out. Measurement is eminently doable and can render a more complete picture of the real impact for your brand and target markets than almost any other media, but the mindset and how you use it – your leverage program – need to be working first.

The “designated problem” for sponsorship seekers

To quote the 1992 Clinton campaign, “it’s the economy, stupid”. Ask most sponsorship seekers and they’ll tell you, the economy is the reason they’re not raising as much cash these days.

I’m not arguing that the economic situation doesn’t exist or that it hasn’t affected our industry, but blaming financial shortfalls solely on economic factors is dodging the real issue: Your skills are letting you down.

Yes, of course there are exceptions – the giant sponsor who went bankrupt and crippled the little event, etc – but by and large, sponsorship seekers can really only blame themselves for the effect the economy is having on their bottom lines.

The hard truth is that sponsors are still spending money. They are still investing in new sponsorships, they’re just being very smart about it. Across the industry, we’re seeing a greater degree of sophistication in the selection of sponsorship, and higher expectations of the sponsorship seekers, than I’ve ever seen in my 24-year career.

As for renewals, the lion’s share of sponsors aren’t dumping all of their sponsorships, so it’s less of a panicked exodus and more of a rationalisation – a cleaning out of dead wood. If you’ve had exits that weren’t driven by catastrophic situations with your sponsors, I hate to have to break it to you, but you were put in the “dead wood” column.

There are sponsorship seekers – big and small – who are sailing through the GFC. Why? Because they have the skills and approach that make them appealing to these very picky sponsors.

• If every single proposal you prepared were customised for that sponsor, and provided ideas for how they could use (leverage) that sponsorship to achieve their objectives and create meaningful bonds with their target markets, your proposals would be at the top of the pile.
• If your proposal included ideas for how various departments and business units could benefit from (leverage) the sponsorship, it will make it easier for the sponsor to sell the proposal internally.
• If you approached the brand manager with your fabulous, customised proposal, you would have a clearer run to the ultimate decision-maker.
• If you add value to your sponsor relationships, putting yourself in the position of “problem solver”, rather than “contract enforcer” or “arse kisser”, you will showcase your value as a partner, not just a communication channel.
• If you help your sponsors create amazing leverage plans and show flexibility with benefits when a great idea demands it, your sponsors will find you a refreshing joy to work with.
• If you invest in educating your sponsors, creating networking events, and showcasing the work of your most effective sponsors, you are adding value not only to their results with your sponsorship, but giving them skills and ideas that they can use across their whole portfolio.

The best sponsorship seekers in the world are not necessarily the biggest or sexiest, they are the ones who balance strategic skills and creativity to help their sponsors achieve their goals, thus differentiating themselves from the hoard of sponsorship seekers who can’t be bothered. Let them fill the “dead wood” column, because you don’t have to be there, no matter what the economy does.

There have been continued reports about recipients of TARP funding (financial institutions), and other high scrutiny industries (airlines, car manufacturers, pharmaceuticals), taking a “stealth” approach to sponsorship. That is, they’re doing high-end hospitality at events they sponsor, but there is no branding and no consumer leverage.

This may be in response to Senator Kerry’s indignant, yet highly flawed call for a moratorium on TARP recipients spending any of that money on sponsorship. It may be an attempt to fly under the radar of public perception. Or it may be some of each. In any case, stealth sponsorship is a really bad idea.

Stealth sponsors will be outed

As evidenced by the amount of coverage in business and industry media, these hospitality activities are not exactly well-kept secrets. And when they are found out, what their activities are really saying to the public is: “We are still doing the fat cat hospitality that Senator Kerry et al were so outraged about, but now we’re doing it in secret.”

I actually don’t have a problem with high-end hospitality, so long as it is working for a brand (see below). What bugs the heck out of me is that when entire industries are under increased scrutiny, so many companies have decided that the right approach is to be covert. How, exactly, is this supposed to restore public faith in them? Make their potential customers believe in them and want to do business with them?

No leverage means no results

We’re all hearing about companies with multi-million dollar sponsorships stripping them of branding and consumer leverage. Some are calling this “appropriate, given the economy” or “symbolism” or “right-sizing” their sponsorships.

The problem is, they haven’t shrunk their contracts, just the results they’re getting, because when you invest in a sponsorship, you are investing in opportunity, not results. It is leverage that provides those results. If you’ve invested a big chunk of money, and decide leave most of it unleveraged, you are leaving that opportunity on the table. You’re not saving face, you are wasting money, and I’m pretty sure that keeping up appearances while mismanaging finances was one of the big factors that got us into this economic mess.

If it works, stop apologising for it!

The biggest flaw in the arguments by politicians and some media is that they position sponsorship as a glamorous lifestyle for a coddled corporate few, masquerading as a marketing investment. I would be remiss in saying that there weren’t instances where this was true, but it is the exception, rather than the rule. This, on the other hand, is the rule:

Part of your job is to build a stable and profitable company.
If a sponsorship is changing perceptions and behaviours around your brand, and you are measuring those changes, then it is a valuable part of your marketing mix and you should stop bloody apologising for it.

The measurement issue is key, and another one that has been latched onto in media, particularly in a big argument recently on CNBC. One of the contentions was that sponsorship couldn’t be measured, and that only proven, measurable marketing methods should be used by companies receiving government funding. That’s an idea they must have pulled out of the La Brea Tar Pits along with some dinosaur’s ankle bone.

Sponsorship is actually one of the most measurable of all marketing media. Why? Because the beauty of sponsorship is its ability to act as a catalyst, making already existing activities more effective. It spreads across departments and regions, and all of those areas already know how to measure their results against benchmarks and using methods that are already accepted within the company. Don’t know how? You need to learn.

Loud and proud

What’s wrong with saying, “We sponsor this event and we are doing everything we can with it to get closer to our customers, make the event better for the fans, and achieve a marketing return”? People already know sponsorship is a commercial investment, why not be upfront?

I’m not saying that you should be arrogant or disrespectful – best-practice sponsors know better than that – but you shouldn’t be afraid to be transparent about it. If you refuse a breath test, the police will immediately suspect you of drink driving, just like putting a cloak over your sponsorship investments only casts more doubt on their effectiveness.

Recommended resources:

Free video tutorial, “Sponsorship Measurement Basics in About 10 Minutes”

Blog, Pet Peeve #228: Disrespectful Sponsorship

Blog, Dear Senator Kerry, Corporate Sponsorship is NOT a Waste of Money… or is it?

When the global economy stopped sputtering and tumbled into a full-blown recession, the sponsorship industry took its biggest hit in my 24-year career.

• Some sponsors stopped all new investments.
• Some sponsors dropped every sponsorship they could.
• Some sponsors dropped every sponsorship they should have dropped years ago.
• Some sponsors decided to go “stealth”, underplaying their investments so as not to look ostentatious.
• Some sponsors halted, or at least minimised, leverage spending.
• Some sponsors re-evaluated everything and started fresh.
• Some sponsors stayed the course.

Although I’m a bigger fan of some of these strategies than others, whatever your company decided to do, I’m sure it was driven by some combination of necessity and politics.

The good news is that there is definitely a bright light and some breathing space opening up on the industry again. In some parts of the world, the economy is making a recovery and sponsorship is going right along with it. In others, the recovery of our industry seems to be  running counter to predictions by chief economists – perhaps spurred on by an acceptance of a new reality and a realisation of the value of sponsorship to a brand in good times and bad.

Whatever the impetus in your part of the world or your company, industry-wide, there is a palpable shift out of “holy crap”-mode and back into sponsor-mode.

If your company is in that category – as so many are – how you manage this transition will make the difference between going back to business-as-usual, or transitioning to the next stage – to best-in-class sponsorship.

When I thought about this transition through the recovery of our industry (and, we hope, the world economy), I thought about the 12 Steps of Recovery, made famous by Alcoholics Anonymous and mirrored by so many other recovery programs. They are sensible, ordered steps – meaningful, practical, not so huge as to be daunting, and focused both on the internal drivers and external impacts. It is the perfect approach for change within a complex system.

So with a reverent nod to all that those recovery organisations have accomplished, I have created a 12 Step Guide to the Recovery for Corporate Sponsors.

1. Thank the slowdown

We all have habits – good ones and bad. Sponsors, particularly, have a lot of bad habits. There are sponsors who haven’t changed their approach in a decade or more, sponsors who renew the same sponsorships year after year, and sponsors who tick the same boxes for every leverage program. Some habits are great – exercising, flossing, inbox cleanouts – but in sponsorship, not so much.

So, here we have the biggest crisis our industry has ever faced. It’s stopped a lot of us doing what we have been doing, in the ways we have been doing it for so long. It’s given us the chance to reassess, the chance for some perspective, the space to make a choice on how we start moving forward again. That’s a good thing.

2. Don’t rush it

You may have dropped some sponsorships early on in the GFC and now you’ve been handed some of your budget back. You’re probably thinking, “woo-hoo, I can spend again!”

Not so fast, buddy. Sponsorship is not a smart impulse buy, and if you rush into it, you will likely end up with a portfolio that has the same issues and deficiencies that you had before the slowdown.

Instead, let’s try to be smarter. Remember that perspective that the slowdown has provided? Use it. Do not spend one penny – do not renew one sponsorship – until you are sure that your general approach and strategy are in line with your target market and brand needs, which brings me to…

3. Get back to basics

Remember why you do sponsorship to begin with. That list should be exactly the same list as for your overall marketing plan and really only needs three things on it:

• Changing people’s perceptions of our brand – What they believe about it, what they know about it, what they think it says about them if they use our brand, whether they believe it is relevant to them or meets their needs.
• Changing people’s behaviours around our brand – Getting them to try our brand, investigate our brand, put our brand in their repertoire, getting them to be more loyal, use the brand at different times or in different ways, extend their relationship with our brand, or advocate it to others.
• Deepen our relationship with our target markets – Demonstrate our understanding of them, our respect for them, that we listen to them, and how much we value our relationship with them.

So when you strip it back to basics, you need to be absolutely clear for every sponsorship, which of your target markets each sponsorship is most relevant to, what perceptions you are trying to change, what behaviours you are trying to change, and how you will use that sponsorship to add real value to your relationship with them. In every case, the answers will be some subset of your overall marketing objectives and target markets.

Related blog: The myth of “sponsorship objectives” and why sponsorship is like sculpture

Related white paper: Last Generation Sponsorship

4. Focus on what is most important

There are so many options – so many facets – in corporate sponsorship, that it is easy to lose track of what is most important, in favour of what’s biggest and loudest.

If you’ve gone back to basics (see above), getting that focal point right becomes a lot easier, and it boils down to a realignment of priorities. Your priorities for sponsorship should be in this order:

1. Meeting target market needs
2. Getting internal buy-in
3. Meeting brand needs

This is not for a second saying that brand needs are unimportant, but if you don’t put your customers first – respecting, valuing, and adding value to your relationship with them – they will not help you achieve your brand goals. As for internal buy-in, if you don’t have that, you will not be able to fully leverage your investment (see below).

Related blogs: Brand managers take heed: Brand story vs customer story, What I learned about sponsorship from my boxing coach, For maximum impact, forget the event, concentrate on the event experience

5. Find meaningful measures of success

Following on in the same vein, you need to measure what is important – again, changes in perceptions and behaviours. Measuring mechanisms will give you a picture of your reach, but will tell you nothing about what you actually accomplished. I suggest you have a look at the free video tutorial I’ve done called “Sponsorship Measurement Basics in About 10 Minutes” on the Power Sponsorship YouTube Channel.

Related video tutorial: Sponsorship Measurement Basics in About 10 Minutes

6. Remember, you are not alone (nor should you be)

The best sponsors don’t “support” sponsorship with a lot of incremental spend. Instead, they use it as a catalyst to make money they are already spending more effective. This approach can be a huge money-saver, while increasing effectiveness, but it can’t happen if you don’t have the buy-in from your colleagues. HR won’t implement a team-building program around a charitable investment unless they understand it and are involved in the planning. Your social media team won’t incorporate a team sponsorship in their strategy unless they are part of the planning process. The list goes on and on.

If you run a sponsorship program, your job does not revolve around implementing leverage plans and measuring results. Your job revolves around organising and supporting the integration of sponsorships across many other business units and helping them to measure their results against their accepted benchmarks. You’re an internal consultant, not the Lone Ranger.

7. Don’t overfund leverage

Following on from point 6, if you use sponsorship as a catalyst, your incremental leverage costs should drop to around 10-20% of the sponsorship fee. Depending on the level of incremental spend you are making now – often cited as between 100-200% of the amount spent on fees – this could be a huge savings.

There is always the exception that makes the rule. If you’re sponsoring some huge, quadrennial event, yes, you should be war-chesting some incremental cash. In that case, you may well have invested in a platform with scope and value that outstrips your current marketing activities. Make the most of it. Spend strategically, but fund it so that you leave no leverage opportunity unrealised.

8. Make it a policy to ambush up (when possible)

If you are committed to thorough, creative, meaningful leverage, you don’t need the biggest, most visible sponsorship in the world to accomplish your goals. Invest in the lowest level sponsorship you can that will provide you with the benefits you need to do something amazing, then leverage it to the hilt, making yourself look like a much bigger sponsor than you really are – a technique called “ambushing up”.

The biggest trick to this is to negotiate for exactly the benefits you need and leave the other, extraneous benefits out – especially if those extraneous benefits are in limited supply. For instance, if what you need is access to a bunch of IP for a social media campaign, negotiate for that, not 100 tickets to every game. It’s easy for them to provide IP, but tickets cost them the cash they could make by selling to someone else. Massively visible sponsorships are very expensive, but you don’t need your logo in a stadium 100 times to add value to your relationship with your target markets, so go for minimal exposure, but the exact benefits you need to make your target markets feel understood and appreciated.

Related blog: Ambush marketing: In praise of ambushing up

9. Respect the people you care about

If you care about your target markets (and you should), if you want them to love your brand, if you want them to advocate your brand to others, DO NOT disrespect their event experience.

They went to the game to watch the game, not your flipping electronic signage right next to the field. They watch the game on TV to see the game, not to have their view obscured by the [insert sponsor logo here] meaningless statistics brigade. Don’t change the game they love, don’t get in the way, don’t try to distract them when they’re trying to pay attention to the thing they really came for, don’t turn their event into a travesty. If you do, they’ll remember you, but they won’t like you.

Best practice sponsorship is win-win-win, with the third “win” being the target market. If you put your corporate ego or tramp all over their event experience with your “brand experience”, you are making the very people you care about lose.

Related blog: Pet Peeve #228: Disrespectful sponsorship

10. Educate your partners

Before you go spending all of that newfound or newly freed-up cash on sponsorship fees, you should consider making a small investment in improving the sophistication level of your partners.

Sponsorship is a good example of the “weakest link” proposition. The target market is always the strongest link. They know what they want and they hold most of the power in the win-win-win equation. When it comes to sponsors and sponsorship seekers, well… either one can be the weakest. Let’s assume that you are the sponsor and your approach is strong and based on best-practice principles, but you’ve got some partners who are still stuck in the levels/packages mentality, or they base your relationship on their need, or they still think logos-on-stuff equates to sponsor value. Whatever the case, spending a little bit of time and money elevating their approach will make your results increase dramatically, and your headaches reduce by an equal measure.

Cards on the table, I am hired by sponsors to do this kind of training a lot, and while I am not encouraging you to hire me, I can tell you firsthand that feedback from my clients about the increase in the quality of their relationships – the creativity, flexibility, responsiveness, and results – has been fantastic across the board. Whether your hire someone or handle it yourself, it will be worth it.

11. Get the right professional help

Sponsorship is full of experts who want to help you for a fee. But you need to be absolutely sure you are hiring the best person or company for the job.

For instance, I do pointy-end, strategic work, like strategy development, portfolio audits, in-house training, etc. I am not the person you want to design and run your high-end hospitality experience. I get the vapours just thinking about it!

Seriously, if you need help with your strategy work, hire the very best sponsorship strategist you can find – this is not a job for your ad agency, promotions agency, or event planner, no matter how good they may be. If you want an event run to a standard that blows your guests away, hire an event company with a track record of amazing events. Don’t hire a strategist, who won’t have a clue how to organise something like that and would outsource it (and charge you an arm and a leg) anyway. Don’t hire a promotions agency or PR company. And don’t hire a conference organiser, who may be outstanding at herding 400 people between breakout sessions and cocktail parties, but wouldn’t have a clue how to make a white marquee look like an opulent Bedouin tent or get Heidi Klum or Andy Roddick to rock up at your event.

It is, as we say in Australia, horses for courses.

Related blog: How and when to hire a sponsorship consultant (and when to go it alone)

12. Don’t apologise

Unlike the 12 Steps in most recovery programs, I don’t want you to apologise.

I know there is a crisis on, and I know a lot of people (and politicians) seem to categorise sponsorship as some kind of corporate luxury spend. This is particularly true with the automotive and banking industries, who have been recipients of government bailout money and are now, in some cases, partly owned by government.

Here’s the thing, if it’s working for you – providing your company with measurable marketing returns – taking an apologetic stance is unnecessary and unwise. Choose your sponsorships well, leverage them thoroughly, measure the results, and throughout the process, be as transparent as you can possibly be about the rationale for this type of investment and the results it provides.

If, on the other hand, you’ve been doing sponsorship in a very unstrategic way and plan to continue this form, then you should definitely apologise.

Related blog: Dear Senator Kerry, corporate sponsorship is NOT a waste of money… or is it?

So, there it is… 12 Steps: A sponsor’s guide to the recovery. I hope this has been helpful and provided some insight about how you can use this period of transition to create a positive change in your sponsorship program, in practical, doable pieces.

If you’ve been one of the lucky few sponsors who have not had to big, abrupt changes to your sponsorship program, these steps may not apply. Then again, taking the time to reassess and fine tune is never a bad idea.

Good luck to you all!