My love affair with Fast Company magazine seems to be running out of steam. For a magazine that purports to be on the cutting edge of business, their coverage of sponsorship seems to be stuck in a time warp. Seriously, the only two articles I’ve seen about sponsorship in the past year have been about exposure and media equivalencies.

A good example is their recent article, “Nascar: Race Against Time” – http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/145/next-media-race-against-time.html.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but are you bloody kidding me?? Using logo exposure as a measure of sponsorship performance is a practice that is 20 years out of date!

Our job as marketers is to change people’s perceptions and change their behaviours. Many major academic studies dating back to 1991** have shown over and over that logo exposure does not contribute to changing perceptions or behaviours at all. It’s window dressing on what we should hope is a substantial, strategic sponsorship that nurtures the sponsor’s relationship with their target markets.

And equating the fleeting glimpse of someone’s logo – in amongst dozens of other logos – with some kind of media figure is sheer lunacy. Advertising tells a succinct brand story, a logo on a fast car does not. As for “recognition grading” and other automated logo tracking software, such as that referred to in the article, automating an old-school approach does not mitigate the fact that it has been proven to be irrelevant to actual results.

I encourage sponsorship professionals to both comment on the Fast Company article and drop the editor a line – Robert Safian, editor@fastcompany.com – to request that their coverage of corporate sponsorship be as cutting edge as their coverage of other business activities. Propagating an out-of-date approach to sponsorship measurement is not in any of our best interests.

And Fast Company, if you’re going to purport to be at the vanguard of new business thinking, don’t provide a platform for this kind of ill-informed, outdated practice.

**Colin McDonald, 1991, “Sponsorship and the Image of the Sponsor”, European Journal of Marketing 25

UPDATE 3 Jun 10

The update is that there is no update. Despite commenting on the article, emailing the editor, writing this blog, and this blog being tweeted and linked to by many in the sponsorship industry, there’s been nothing but dead airspace. It used to be that Fast Company cared about showcasing the newest thinking in business. It looks like they’ve become more interested in a good story with big numbers than whether it has any strategic worth. Pity.

Nothing. Measuring sponsorship is not your job.

The only organisation that can measure the returns against a sponsor’s objectives is the sponsor.

When a sponsor invests in sponsorship, they are investing in opportunity, not results. It is the sponsor’s leverage program that provides the results against their objectives. In effect, the sponsor isn’t measuring what they buy from you, but their leverage program. You are simply not best placed to measure the sponsor’s returns, against the sponsor’s objectives, from the sponsor’s benchmarks!

The only two things you can realistically report are:

1. Whether you delivered all of the benefits you promised.
2. Sheer mechanisms, like exposure, website clicks, etc and whether your targets for attendance, etc were met.

Neither of these tell a sponsor anything about whether they achieved their objectives. They may get a million impressions, but does their target market trust them more? You may have got 200k people at your event, but did they change their purchase intent?

Good sponsors now realise that their job with sponsorship is no different than their job with any other marketing media, and that is to change people’s perceptions and change their behaviours. The thinking is now ROO – return-on-objectives – and even if you wanted to, there is very little information you can provide that will help them measure against their own objectives.

You may be able to provide them with access to a few, mechanism-based metrics which will help them define the “funnel” of people that they then track – for instance, if the clicks off your website hit a special landing page on their site, they can track how many of those people make enquiries or become customers. You may also be able to add a couple of questions to your marketing research. In any case, make no mistake about it, sponsorship measurement must be driven by the sponsor.

One of the main things espoused as a requirement in year-end reports is a media equivalency-type figure. While that’s easy enough to provide, there is absolutely no correlation whatsoever between exposure or sponsorship awareness and changes in perceptions and awareness. That was shown categorically in a major university study way back in 1991 and the results have been replicated over and over since then.

Sponsorship seekers should discuss measurement with the sponsor early in the relationship. This is not so you know what to measure, but to clarify what overall marketing objectives they are trying to achieve and how they will be measuring those objectives, as well as to put the measurement ball firmly in the sponsor’s court.

The questions would be:

“What perceptions and behaviours are you trying to change with this sponsorship?”

“How will you be measuring your results against those objectives? Have you developed targets off of benchmarks?”

If you need an entire process for helping a sponsor understand, and take responsibility for, their returns, I suggest The Sponsorship Seeker’s Toolkit 3rd Edition.

As for your sponsors who may be reading this, please stop expecting your partners to measure for you. It’s simply unrealistic and, frankly, unfair.

Want more hands-on information about sponsorship measurement?

I’ve got workshops for both sponsors and sponsorship seekers coming up in Melbourne, Stockholm, and Los Angeles. The links for more information are below.

Melbourne

• Sponsorship Seekers – 20-21 April, Sponsors – 22 April
• Click here for more information and to register for Power Sponsorship Workshops in Melbourne
• Click here to download the Australasian Power Sponsorship Workshops Tour Brochure (PDF)

Stockholm

• Sponsorship Seekers – 18 May (half-day), Sponsors – 18 May (half-day). I’m also doing a keynote on best practice sponsorship and experiential marketing and a breakout session on ambush marketing on 19 May.
• Click here for more information on Scandinavian Sponsorship & Experiential Days

Los Angeles

• Sponsorship Seekers – 25 May, Sponsors – 26 May
• Click here for more information and to register for Power Sponsorship Workshops in Los Angeles
• Click here to download the Los Angeles Workshops Brochure (PDF)

After hundreds of thousands of downloads, I thought it was high time to give my white papers a format that is as professional and well thought-out as I hope the content is. While I was at it, I also did some updates and revisions.

Want to have a look? The download links are below. All are in PDF form and most are around 250kb. “Last Generation Sponsorship” is around 1mb, as it has a lot of diagrams.

You are welcome to share these documents around, but please do not link directly to the PDF download (called “deep linking”) without my permission. You are more than welcome to link to this blog or our Sponsorship Articles and Tools page.

Sponsorship white papers

• “Last Generation Sponsorship” – My blockbuster white paper on best practice sponsorship, downloaded almost 400,000 times, reprinted in many, many industry publications in eight languages. Download it for yourself. Download it for your partners. Download it for your boss, board, or colleague. This article is guaranteed to get anyone thinking more strategically about sponsorship!
• “Sponsorship in a Scary Economy” – A very topical paper with practical skills for both sponsors and sponsorship seekers.
• “Survival Guide for the New Sponsorship” – Practical things you can do to shift your organisation’s approach into best-practice.
• “Don’t Go to Another Sponsorship Conference Until You Read This” – All sponsorship conferences are NOT created equal. This great guide will help you sort the good from the bad (and make organisers of the bad ones really miserable, if you want to).
• “Sponsorship and the Public Sector” – A wake-up call for all government sponsorship seekers.
• “Top Ten Tips for Sponsorship Seekers” – Short and sharp, this is a must read for sponsorship seekers, particularly if you’re new to the game.
• “What Every CMO Needs to Know About Sponsorship” – Aimed at corporate chief marketing officers, this white paper offers advice about the high-level decisions and directives that will impact on sponsorship results.

Sponsorship cheat sheets

• “Cheat Sheet: Questions to Ask Before You Hire a Sponsorship Broker” - This is a compilation of questions that will allow great brokers to shine, expose the shonks, and clarify the weaknesses and strengths of all the brokers in between.
• “Cheat Sheet: Marketing Terms a Sponsorship Seeker Must Know” – This is a list of some of the most common, but confusing, terms that sponsors use when describing their objectives and target markets. If you want to ensure you know what sponsors are talking about, be sure you know all of them!

Please, tell me what you think!

Have you read any of these white papers or cheat sheets? Got a comment? Please, add your comments below. I’d love to see them!

Please note, comments are moderated, but we get through them quite quickly. Spammers just get sneakier and sneakier!

According to some company that really should know better, Sun Life got $26 million in exposure for their new sponsorship of Dolphins Stadium during the Super Bowl.

What is this, 1992??

Media equivalencies should be banished to wherever Milli Vanilli disappeared to, because as measures of sponsorship success go, it is just as fake and insubstantial.

Where are the measures of changes in perceptions? Where are the measures of behaviour changes? Why did they find it necessary to issue a press release touting a measure that is so roundly condemned as irrelevant? What kind of advice are they getting??

I’m flabbergasted.

This entire blog is full of how to make sponsorship work and alternatives to old school thinking, so I won’t repeat myself here. My only recommendation is for readers to do themselves a favour and ignore this corporate chest-beating. It’s just an ego trip.

Read all about it in Media Week.

Everywhere you look, you see top ten lists this time of year. So, I figured, what the heck. Here are the most popular posts, based on feedback, tweets, pings, comment, etc. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them!

Like these blogs? Please, share them with your colleagues!

You can also let me know if you have any suggestions for 2010 – kimsblog@powersponsorship.com. I look forward to hearing from you!

10. What I Learned about Sponsorship from my Boxing Coach

After close to a month off, I was back in the boxing gym yesterday and wow, am I sore today. Actually, it’s not the muscles I use for punching that are sore, it’s the back muscles I use for recoiling after a punch and getting ready for the next one. I was explaining this to a friend and used a line my coach has said to me countless times:

It’s not how hard you hit. It’s how accurate you are and how fast you can hit them again.

As I said the words, I realised how pertinent that concept is for sponsorship (but without the hitting).

Best practice sponsorship is built around the idea of win-win-win. The third “win” is for the target markets. The goal with best practice sponsorship is that a large proportion of the target markets should receive small, meaningful benefits through a sponsorship, not just the chance for one person to receive a giant prize… [more]

9. Corporate Sponsorship Lies (and What They Really Mean)

This industry is full of little white lies. Sponsors and sponsorship seekers alike are guilty of telling them – some because you want to be nice, others to deflect blame. Whatever the reason, it’s not helping anyone. So, consider this your primer on the real meaning behind some of the industry’s most common little white lies.

THE LIE “We aren’t renewing because we didn’t get a good return”

THE TRUTH: “We leveraged and/or selected the sponsorship so poorly that we didn’t get a good return”

THE FIX: Stop passing the buck and take responsibility for it going wrong. That’s the only way you’re going to be able to learn from it and do it better next time.

It’s not a sponsorship seeker’s job to get you a return. It’s their job to provide you with the raw materials – the benefits and target markets – so that you can leverage it to get a good return. If you selected poorly, that’s not their fault. If you agreed to a package with benefits that aren’t appropriate to your needs, that’s not their fault. And if you didn’t leverage well, that is also not their fault… [more]

8. It’s Not the Size of the Sponsorship, It’s What You Do with It

“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… [more]

7. For Maximum Impact, Forget the Event, Concentrate on the Event Experience

Sponsors, have you ever lamented that some of the events you sponsor only last a day, a weekend, or a week? Wondered how you were ever going to leverage enough or establish enough relevance to justify the investment in that short timeframe? Have you ever felt hamstrung by the limitations of the event or your sponsorship level?

Sponsorship seekers, do you wonder how you’re going to sell enough sponsorship to an event or program that only attracts a few hundred or a few thousand attendees? How to juggle all of your sponsors’ various agendas within the scope of your event without overcommercialising it?

Here’s the trick: Stop talking about the event and concentrate on the event experience. (Geez, did I give it away in the title?)

The event – and I’m using that term generically to refer to whatever you are sponsoring or selling sponsorship of – is usually finite. It happens in a particular place during a particular timeframe with x number of people there and, depending on what it is, possibly a larger audience participating via the media. It’s limited, often crowded and cluttered, and to stand out, many sponsors resort to being loud and annoying, rather than meaningful and relevant… [more]

6. Sponsorship Sales Rule #1: Sell What Sells, Not What You Need Money For

Every day, my inbox fills with messages from people who want advice about selling sponsorship. There is nothing wrong with that – I’m happy to hear from you! The issue is that many, if not most, of those sponsorship sales efforts are destined to fail. They are trying to sell the impossible.

When it comes right down to it, not everything you need money for is sponsorable. Some of the things that you have to do, because you are the kind of organisation you are – listen closely all you non-profits out there – do not have enough commercial appeal to attract sponsors.

I am not for one second saying that you shouldn’t do those events or programs, just that seeking sponsorship for them is unlikely to be successful, so you need to shift to Plan B – a much easier and more realistic way to raise the money you need… [more]

5. 12 Steps: A Sponsorship Seeker’s Guide to the Recovery

I did “12 Steps: A sponsor’s guide to the recovery” and it seemed to have struck a chord, so here is the other side.

As noted in the previous blog, our industry is looking up. There is some breathing room. In some places, the economy is on the upswing. In others, sponsors shifting out of their holding patterns, adjusting to the current economic conditions, and realising that sponsorship is still a very valuable marketing tool.

For sponsorship seekers, this is great news. But before you go all giddy with excitement, you need to know that sponsors are going to be smarter, more sophisticated, and more demanding than they have ever been. The bar is set high, and if you want to be part of this recovery, you need to have an approach and skills that are at that level.

So with a reverent nod to the practical steps pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous and other recovery organisations, I have created a 12 Step Guide to the Recovery for Sponsorship Seekers… [more]

4. 12 Steps: A Sponsor’s Guide to the Recovery

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… [more]

3. My Favourite Resources for Sponsorship Professionals

My blog is usually full of advice, a few opinions on hot industry topics. What I’d like to do this time is provide a list of some of the resources and tools I rely on to get good information on corporate sponsorship.

ABI/Inform Full-Text Online

This is an essential (and free) resource for people in this industry. I could not be effective in my job without it. You can enter – Google-style – keywords and it will search the full text of articles on thousands of business publications around the world and bring you back the whole articles. You can mark the ones that are interesting to you and e-mail them to yourself. The kind of things you will find… [more]

2. The “Designated Problems” of the Sponsorship Industry

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… [more]

1. Six Signs a Sponsor is Just Not That into You

Okay, so I’m sitting on the couch watching the fun chick-flick, “He’s Just Not That Into You” while my husband is out with his buddies. I’m loving it. Too rare.

As usual, I can’t stop thinking about sponsorship. So, I think to myself, there are a few signs that sponsorship seekers consistently miss that could tell them that a sponsor just isn’t that into them. So, brace yourself for the cold, hard truth about how to read the signs so you can let it go, and move on to something more fruitful.

They tell you to “just send in a proposal”

This is a sponsor saying “leave me alone”, without being rude.

In actual fact, it’s unintentionally cruel, because it gets the sponsorship seeker’s hopes up, when they have little or no realistic chance at a deal. Why do I say that? Because if the sponsor was interested, they would want to keep talking to you – ensuring that you know everything you need to know in order to create a great proposal for them… [more]