The Super Bowl is over and the Saints won. As a Vikings fan, I’m not super happy about that, although I am happy for the people of New Orleans, who deserve some good news. At least Brett Favre will be delighted, as he has now relinquished the title of “Most Heartbreaking Interception in the Playoffs” title to Peyton Manning. He’ll be sending a gift basket tomorrow.

I know it’s a bit off topic, but I wanted to share my favourite Super Bowl ads. I’m leaving comments open, so please let me know what your favourites were.

Want to see them all and vote? Check out www.adbowl.com.

Google “Parisian Love”

I can’t tell you how much I love this ad. This is in my top three ads of all time. Seriously.

Audi “Green Police”

Okay, I’m a tree-hugging. composting greenie and I love this ad. The only thing they’re missing is a hotline so I can turn in my neighbour who burns trash in the backyard.

KGB “Sumo

Never heard of KGB before, but I like this ad!

E*Trade “Girlfriend”

I didn’t really like the other E*Trade ads, but this was good.

Snickers “You’re Not You”

Put Betty White in an ad and you’re onto a winner!

Honourable mentions

Hyundai “Old Brett Favre”

I’m a Vikings fan and will someday forgive Brett Favre for that pass.

Flo TV “My Generation”

Love it. Great cause-related hook at the end. Too bad The Who didn’t sound like that at halftime.

Doritos “Underdog”

I thought the Doritos ads were just okay, but this one made me really crack up. A juvenile moment, perhaps.

Volkswagen “Punch Dub”

Entertaining. Maybe VW could sponsor a new division of the MMA.

Dove Men

I liked this ad, but I don’t know why. Maybe just because it wasn’t bad.

The also-rans

There were a lot of other ads that fell into the category of, “this is the best you can do for the Super Bowl??”. Why a company would pay for a Super Bowl ad and not bring their A-game is beyond me.

• Bridgestone – Yawn.
• Bud Light/Budweiser – Perhaps they should have bought just one ad and actually… you know… put some effort into it.
• A-B/Budweiser “Fences” – Beautifully shot and sweet, but a bit half-baked and preachy.
• Careerbuilder.com – Another Yawn
• Census – Why is the census even advertising on the Super Bowl? Isn’t there a better use for those millions of taxpayer dollars?
• Coca-Cola – Pepsi finally lets go of the Super Bowl and this is the best they can come up with?
• Diamond Foods – Not “awesomer”. Try “stupider”.
• Dockers – Strange. I understand the “free pants” website crashed.
• Dodge – I’m pretty sure there is not a woman alive who likes this ad.
• Dr Pepper – Meh.
• E*trade – How many times can I say “yawn”?
• EA – Good music, good tagline, that’s about it.
• Focus on the Family (AKA “the Tebow ad”) – After all the hoo-ha, the ad itself didn’t say very much. Good plan to push the polarising stuff to the website, although given people already know the rest of the story from all the media coverage, they’re probably preaching to the converted.
• Gatorade – Gorgeous, glorious ad, but it’s been done before.
• Go Daddy – Scantily clad women still go with football, apparently. Like Danica Patrick, though.
• HomeAway – Again… yawn.
• Honda – The ad would be much better without that bum-ugly car in it.
• Intel – Cute, not great.
• Kia – My daughter would love this. She’s five.
• McDonald’s – Just bring back the Jordan/Bird ad!
• Michelob Ultra – Every sport-themed ad cliche rolled into one.
• Monster.com – Every fiddling beaver should use it.
• Motorola – Going through all these ads again, I am convinced that there are only three storyboards in all of adland.
• Papa Johns – Following in the footsteps of every pit crew ad ever made.
• Round Up – What a waste of an ad.
• Select 55 – “The World’s Lightest Beer” is floating in the air… groundbreaking!
• Sketchers Shape Ups – Boring, but I bet it sells a lot of shoes.
• Sprint Nextel – This was just embarrassing.
• Taco Bell – Before that ad, Charles Barkley was cool.
• Teleflora – They made their point. That’s all I want to say about that.
• TruTV – I don’t get it.
• Vizio – A one-minute ad showing how many things your TV can do. I didn’t know Apple licensed their ads.

Did anyone else notice I got meaner as I went through this list? Bad marketing makes me cranky.

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!!

It’s glorious summer, here in Australia. So, what did my family and I do? We left… and went to South America, where it’s also summer!

In a long-planned trip, we spent almost the entire month of December in Buenos Aires, where we rented an apartment. What a fabulous city that is! We saw a lot of it and loved it all.

The city itself is vibrant and multi-faceted, and the people are amazingly friendly. The architecture is grand on a scale you don’t seen in Australia (or America). It really lives up to the tag, “The Paris of South America”. We lived as much like locals and we could, going to the markets, largest swimming pool complex in South America (Parque Norte), and eating enormous amounts of amazing steak. We learned a lot of the language, which was very helpful. We went to the Carlos Pellegrini Stakes – the most important horse race in Argentina – and in a hilarious development, our five year old daughter now knows how to put on a place bet in Spanish!

We took a five-day side trip to Rio De Janeiro, which was one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen (second only to Sydney!). Copacabana Beach was so beautiful, we had to tear ourselves away for some sightseeing. We did get to see Cristo Redentor and the Maracana Soccer Stadium, where we put our feet into the footprints of Pele and Ronaldo. And the caipirinhas? Don’t get me started!

We’ve decided we’re going to do more of these longer holidays. Our daughter and I are lobbying for Iceland for the next one, but my husband isn’t so sure!

If you have a suggestion for our next crazy family adventure, or if you want some recommendations for Buenos Aires or Rio, just drop me a line!

“Our event is so small, but we really need sponsorship. How do we get big sponsors interested?”

“We sponsor a great little organisation, but their reach is so small, how do we make this work for our brand?”

Good questions. Important questions. And questions I hear a lot. Fortunately, the answer isn’t really that complicated. Here’s the thing – and it’s equally important for both sponsors and sponsorship seekers:

It’s not the size of the property that matters,
it’s the relevance to the sponsor’s target markets.

Let’s just say for a moment that you’re a new sponsorship or brand manager, and when you review the portfolio, you see that your company is sponsoring a depression charity in one state or city (take your pick). Your first impression might be, “We’re a national brand. What am I supposed to do with this?” But you’d be overlooking a potentially great opportunity.

Why? Because although the number of people that the charity serves may be relatively limited, and the donor list the same, the proportion of your brand’s national target market that is affected by depression would be substantial. The question then shifts from “what do we do with this sponsorship?” to “how do we use this sponsorship to help our target markets?”. Given the amount of expertise your partner has, chances are, you could do quite a lot.

You could provide credible advice and coping skills in your employee communications, information about how to recognise depression on your website or monthly statements or product packaging, or situational advice. It won’t matter that the information is coming from a local or state organisation, so long as it is strong and credible.

You can take the same approach when sponsoring a marathon or conference or whatever. Think about what the event/property knows or has that would be useful to your larger target market. How to choose or train for your first marathon? Industry trends from a heavy-hitting conference keynote?

The upshot for sponsors is that you should stop worrying about the size of what you’re sponsoring. If it is both credible and relevant to your market, use well-selected IP (intellectual property) to make the event “bigger”.

For smaller sponsorship seekers wondering how to tap major sponsors, you need to stop talking about your target market. If it’s small, it is only going to be of limited interest to a major sponsor. Instead, talk about how whatever it is that you do is interesting and relevant to the sponsor’s target market. Make IP – your expertise, advice, behind-the-scenes information, or whatever – your biggest selling point. Give the sponsor creative ideas for how they can use your IP and watch your value soar.

Cold is relative. Sydney is not that cold in the winter, but it is cold enough that spring feels great when it gets here. It has been glorious!

So, in honour of spring, I’m going totally off topic with the springiest recipe I know. It is so good, I made it twice last weekend. Plus, it’s super-easy and a great one for getting the kids to help.

Rhubarb Crumble

Makes one small-ish crumble – a 9″ square or round pan. (I usually double it.)

For the rhubarb:

1 bundle of rhubarb – 8-12 long stalks – washed and chopped into chunks (be sure to discard the leaves)

¼ cup sugar

Sprinkle the sugar over the rhubarb and stir. Set aside while you make the crumble. The sugar will kind of melt and make a bit of yummy syrup.

For the crumble:

Mix together…

2/3 cup brown sugar

2/3 cup flour

1/3 cup melted butter

Assembly:

Spread the rhubarb across your pan. It should cover the bottom, but doesn’t need to be neat.

Crumble the crumble over the top. It should be reasonably even, but should not totally cover the rhubarb. I usually go for about 2/3 coverage.

Baking:

Bake at 180c (375 F) for about 25 minutes.

Great warm or cold, with ice cream, whipped cream, custard, or thickened cream (my personal favourite).

Yummo!!