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!

Almost a decade ago, when our event was brand new, we really struggled for sponsorship. One sponsor really stepped in with some much-needed cash. The problem is that we are now doing well and have grown a lot – in size, revenues, and sophistication – but this original sponsor hasn’t grown with us. They are now one of our smaller sponsors, never leverage, and keep exercising their right of first refusal, which includes category exclusivity. We could get a lot more money and find a much better sponsor in this category if they were gone. We have had two of enquiries from their competitors in the past couple of years. How do we get rid of this sponsor?

Quick primer on “first right of refusal”: This is a right that is often provided as a benefit of sponsorship and means that the sponsor has the first right to say “yes” or “no” to a similar contract at the end of the current agreement.

Many sponsees seem to believe that offering first right of refusal to a sponsor obligates you to offer them a similar contract at the end of the current one. Not so! All it does is prevent you from offering a similar contract to another sponsor without giving them a chance to say “yes” first. So, if your sponsor isn’t getting it, it’s time to raise the bar and see if they jump.

Create a brand new, more comprehensive, five-star proposal. Make it all about their target markets and objectives. Include lots of fantastic ideas for leverage. Make the package realistic, but commensurate with the type of sponsorship you should have in that category. Present it to them as a rethink and a great opportunity. Tell them that you want to continue to work with them, but it is inappropriate to continue with the relationship, as it currently stands. Do not back down if they want to renew the old contract instead. Make it clear that is not an option.

This is important: Be sure to go through this process in good faith. You never know, they may rise to the occasion and let’s hope they do.

Equally important: In case they don’t rise to the occasion, be sure to go through this process with a lot of lead time. There is no guarantee one of your prospects will say “yes” straightaway, so you may need time to sell to another sponsor in the category. Plus, they will need time to plan and implement a leverage plan.

I’ve worked with a number of corporate clients recently, as they’ve been negotiating major partnerships with teams and sportspeople. They have all embarked on these sponsorships backed by strong strategy and have been prepared to leverage the investments across their marketing and business channels.

Sounds good, right? On closer examination of the proposal, however, every one of them required an additional investment in the six-figures (sometimes well into the six figures) to sponsor the sports organisation’s community foundation. The properties called it “leverage”, but all they offered were a few logos on things, and not one was even remotely interested in customising the offer, so it delivered on the sponsor’s community objectives.

I have no problem with teams putting funds into their community programs. Clearly, this is good for the team and the community and the right thing to do. My problem is when teams and sportspeople provide a sponsorship proposal, get a sponsor on the hook, then try to bolt on this extra chunk of revenue, attempting to disguise it as a leverage opportunity. It’s not. It’s just a revenue grab – an attempt to get sponsors to fund a program that makes only the sports organisation look like a hero.

And let’s not forget that any company big enough to be taking on a major sporting sponsorship is likely to have their own community program – meeting the needs of their customers and communities in a way that is right for their brand. In that case, what’s better, spending $350,000 for a bit of visibility on a team’s community program, or spending $350,000 to extend and amplify your own community program? I know what I’d do.

So, what’s the answer? I believe sporting organisations should just name a figure – whatever figure they think is fair for the whole compliment of strategic, customised benefits they are providing. That way, a sponsor can make a strategic marketing decision about the best use of their marketing funds, not be mentally dividing it into “the strategic part” and “the non-strategic part”. It would be a straight cost-benefit analysis.

If sporting organisations want to derive some community revenue from their sponsors,  they really need to raise their games (pun intended). They could…

• Shunt some of the money into the foundation. If they’ve done a good job of offering creative, strategic benefits, the value of the sponsorships will rise and there should be plenty of profit to accommodate some of the revenue going into that program.
• Incorporate some community benefits into the overall sponsorship offer, ensuring that those benefits have strategic value to the sponsor. This means no more hitting up sponsors to fund a program that has virtually nothing to do with them.
• Encourage sponsors to develop leverage programs that have a fundraising spin, with the money raised going to the foundation.
• Work closely with the sponsor’s community sponsorship team to develop mutually beneficial programs. This would include integrating the team’s community work with some of the sponsor’s, and vice-versa.

For sponsors faced with this kind of proposal from an organisation you really want to sponsor, you can do two things:

1. Make your community agenda clear to the property, and try to work with them to develop a community angle to the sponsorship that works for both parties and your target markets.
2. If that doesn’t work, you need to consider the community part of the investment just a cost of doing business with that organisation. Stop trying to justify the cost against a feeble set of benefits that don’t provide value. Instead, just add that figure to the overall sponsorship cost and make your decision about the sponsorship based on the total required investment. It’s really all you can do.

Here’s the scenario: Your sponsorship has had a good run. You are on renewal and ready to give it a virtual rubber stamp on the basis of the fab returns you’re getting for your brand. Then you get the proposal – the same package you’ve had for the past three years, on an event or program with a steady audience, and the fee increase is 70%. It’s a real, “what the…” moment.

This really isn’t that common, but it does happen, and I’ve had several corporate clients dealing with this situation in recent months. Those sponsors are asking me what the sponsee is thinking, and it could be any number of things.

Your leverage program is so good, they’ve convinced themselves they’re indispensable

This is one of the downsides to being an exceptionally good sponsor. If your leverage program is really great and you’re getting fantastic results, some of your partners may be under the illusion that they are indispensable – that it is their event or program that is making the sponsorship great.

In fact, their event or program provided the opportunity, but your leverage is what really delivered the results, and if you can do it with that sponsorship, you can do it with another. I know it’s a pain in the bum to change over sponsorships, but no partner is indispensable.

You’ve got three choices:

1. Tell them they’re dreaming and counter-offer at a reasonable fee – something that is commensurate with the value they bring to the table.
2. Tell them that if you are going to entertain any substantial increase, they need to provide a benefits package to match. Make your expectations clear: Benefits must be strategic and creative.
3. Walk away and sponsor someone else.

Always keep in mind, there are a lot of fish in this sea.

They’re testing the waters

The sponsee may have higher sponsorship targets or they may have financial difficulties or they may have simply caught wind of another event landing a whopper of a deal, and have decided to pump up prices to see what happens. It’s a totally different situation than that outlined above, but the advice is the same: Counter-offer, tell them they’re not getting any increase without some bloody fantastic new benefits, or walk away.

They are playing on fear

Sometimes a sponsee knows their worth to you – in dollars – and wants a bigger piece of it. This is particularly the case for sponsors who are selling their product at the event or venue or to the sponsee organisation, and governments hosting events for economic development. This can also happen when they know a sponsor is investing primarily to block the competition.

In these cases, the sponsee thinks you are too afraid to risk losing the investment, so you’ll pay whatever they want. To an extent, that’s true, but even if it is, you can’t let yourself look like a chump.

If you’re in this position, you need to do two things well before you get to renewal:

• Make yourself as valuable to them as they are to you. Ensure your leverage program substantially adds to the sponsee’s marketing plan or helps them achieve some of their overall objectives. Then, they are much less likely to screw you to the wall and you have a good position to counter, as any new partner is unlikely to bring as much additional, uncontracted value to the table.
• Know your bottom line. There will be a number above which it is untenable. This may be a number relating to profit or simply a budgetary constraint you can’t get past. Be very upfront about this to your partner.

If all else fails, keep in mind that the time and effort it would take to sell to someone else is substantial, and there is no guarantee they’ll be successful, so you represent the easier option.

They were underpriced to start with

If you initially got the sponsorship at some crazy, fire-sale discount, you need to expect that the renewal will be substantially higher.

Do be sure that the benefits offered are still right for your brand, commensurate with the price tag, and fair market value. If so, don’t gripe about a price correction that was always going to happen.

That’s it – three long blogs about the games sponsorship seekers play, and how to play them. I hope they’ve been helpful!

This ugly little game takes place when a sponsor pays a fair fee for a sponsorship, but then encounters one after another additional costs – some small, some larger – bringing the sum total of the investment to a level that is no longer commensurate with the benefits provided. I’ve outlined some of the classics below.

Charging the sponsor a “leverage fee” on top of the sponsorship fee

First off, it is the sponsor’s job to leverage the sponsorship, and pay for it. Second, and most important, what this “fee” provides for has nothing to do with leverage. It is virtually always used to pay for some of the harder costs of what has already been promised in the proposal, such as paying for production of sponsor signage and putting sponsor logos onto event signage. Sponsors, don’t fall for this. Tell the partner flat out that you will not be paying a leverage fee. Further, tell the sponsee that if they want to revisit the sponsorship fee so that all benefit delivery costs are covered, they are free to do that, and you will re-evaluate your position once you’ve reviewed the new offer.

Charging additional license fees if you want to do more with the IP

So, a sponsor negotiates lots of access to event/team/whatever intellectual property. This is a great idea, as it offers a huge number of marketing opportunities and flexibility, provided you don’t breach any of the rules set forth. Sometimes, however, the sponsee will decide that you’re being too creative and thorough and go back for another bite of the cherry, claiming that you are going beyond “standard usage”.

Sponsors, unless there was a specific restriction on the amount you can use the IP provided, tell the sponsee to get over themselves and that they should be happy to have a proactive partner who is so willing to showcase their event (and the value it can have to sponsors).

If you did sign a contract with some limitation on the amount you can use IP, you’ve really created a rod for your own back. Yes, there will be rules on what you can do, so that your creative doesn’t diminish the sponsee’s brand, but aside from that, you should be able to use it as fully as you want.

Charging sponsors if they elect to extend or expand the program

As an example, you sponsor a series of professional development workshops run by an association and taking place in eight cities. It is going so well for the association that they decide to add two more cities to the program – then they turn around and ask for more money from you. I know there will be arguments about it, but I think this is wrong.

If you sponsor a series, you sponsor the series – not individual workshops in eight cities. If demand warrants that the series is extended by your partner, they should not be expecting that you pay for their decision to make it bigger. Frankly, your leverage program – how you get a result from the marketing opportunity – is unlikely to be much different with the addition of 60-odd additional participants.

Charging a sponsor to participate in event research

This one kills me.

Let’s say an event decides to do some market research, which is a very good idea. They then decide that this would be a good way to squeeze another grand or two out of their sponsors by offering them the opportunity to include a question or two on the survey.

The basic premise of best practice sponsorship is that sponsors are not trying to connect with an event or program, but to their target markets, using the event as a conduit. And the more a sponsor knows about that target market, and their experience with that event or program, the more able they will be to create great leverage programs. Getting access to audience research should be a threshold right for sponsors, and larger sponsors should have questions included on that research.

If you are a sponsor, you may or may not be prepared to go along with these, but at least you should be aware that you’re being gamed by an organisation that has shown itself to put greed ahead of partnership. I just hate that, and when it happens to my clients, I always advise them to call the sponsee on it – to tell them they are taking advantage of the relationship, and that’s not what a healthy partnership is all about.

I also believe that sponsors should keep this kind of treatment firmly in mind at renewal time. If it was painful enough, don’t even consider renewing, and be sure you tell the CEO of the organisation why. If you still see scope for working together, tell them firmly that their new proposal must include all costs.

Sponsorship seekers, please take this as a warning about how not to treat your sponsors. They don’t have all the money in the world, they are not an endless font of money, they’re not suckers, they do talk to other sponsors, and they do know when you’re taking advantage. Is that really the reputation you want?

Next up, The Games Sponsorship Seekers Play – Game #3: The Outrageous Renewal