Interactive Sponsor

Why Are You NOT Getting Sponsors?

Me — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 18:19:44 +0000

Why Are You NOT Getting Sponsors?

Sponsorship industry has been evolving in recent years. From one of ask and spend to invest and return.

We get so many inquiries from properties and rights holders who are intent on securing sponsors for their specific event, venue, or project, but most of them do not realise or underestimate the value of their pitch. Especially when we ask the question what else are you doing, throughout the year?

So, rather than a specific sponsorship, a client should look at their entire portfolio and assets that are immediately not so obvious. Then, a corporate brand partnership strategy must be put in place, whereby brands can be shown the ongoing partnership and activation options to allow them to diversify their investment (not spend), by allowing them access to multiple opportunities to engage.

Think IOC (International Olympic Committee) when it comes to designing this model. They have a limited number of top-level presenting global brand partners, exclusive in their category and sector. The local Olympic cities (Paris, LA, etc.) then are able to attract local ‘sponsors’ to incentivise their own revenue stream, while leveraging the TOP brands.

Accordingly, a ‘Corporate Circle’ may be designed to allow this category of top-tier partnerships to take advantage of all the obvious, and not so obvious assets, whereby lower-tier sponsorships can still take place re: hospitality, etc., to accommodate local engagement.

Lastly, think Innovation. There are separate budgets reserved by brands when it comes to disruptive innovation platforms or hubs.

If you incubate startups, either internally or vendors or strategic partners you may be dealing with externally, or especially if you are scaling your business yourselves, it may be wise to incorporate a Corporate VC opportunity for your potential brand partners to be an investor, in your R&D or business expansion plans.

Business Model and Brand Partnership

Why not bring your corporate partner along for the ride, if you allow them to invest the monies for what you intended to do with the revenue from the traditional sponsorships? Web3/Metaverse, AI, Immersive Reality, and digital-hybrid solutions are getting a lot of airtime and money.

Why not incorporate them into your business model as part of your long-term vision, which your potential brand partner can assist you with upon partnering with you, at first via your short-term plan and outlook.

Corporate brands invest in products, services or solutions which may be of interest to them. Unlike traditional VCs, if the potential customer is investing in you, then you become more credible and use this as further leverage to your advantage. At the very least, you don’t have to prove who your customer will be or if there is a market for your product or service, as asked by the institutional investors who feel they are taking a bigger risk and therefore ask for more equity in return.

Sponsorship then becomes an activation spend for the brands investing in you. You may even be considered an activation spend opportunity for their existing sponsorships in place.

As you can see strategy is very important. Before you seek sponsors, perhaps better to take a step back and revise your pitch to ask for investment, rather than spend. We can help in this effort.

The post Why Are You NOT Getting Sponsors? first appeared on Interactive Sponsor.

Consulting as a Sponsorship Strategist

Me — Sun, 31 Jan 2021 18:43:24 +0000

Consulting as a Sponsorship Strategist

As a brand partnership and sponsorship agency, we find ourselves continually educating clients seeking sponsors or corporate official partners. We are therefore strategists, with concentration on sponsorship strategy.

The reality is you need help developing your pitch, not just selling it. Besides, brands shouldn’t be solicited to ‘spend’ their money but asked to ‘invest’ it.

As the adage goes, sponsorship is dead, long live sponsorship.

I had already transitioned our business model a few years back from finding sponsors and asking them to “spend” on one-off projects of our clients. Instead, finding partners and asking them to “invest” in our clients’ long-term projects and multi-asset portfolios.

By now, we have all learned to retool ourselves in today’s new normal, and this goes for clients seeking sponsors for their projects. They too have to adapt and pivot their offering and ask, and continuously innovate.

Brands are already disrupting their strategies both from within their business via intrapreneurs, and outside their business collaborating with entrepreneurs, during this transitional period as we enter the new post-Covid era.

For example, were you aware there are funds reserved specifically relating to innovation platforms, much more than the limited sponsorship budgets everyone is fighting to get a slice of?

How about Corporate VC as an alternate reality?

I am sure you already know brands set aside in some cases two to three times (or more) the amount on activation than on sponsorship.

A perfect example of partnership vs sponsorship is the recent story on how Adidas treats esports deals like media partnerships, not sponsorship deals.

Therefore, before we pitch our innovation platforms to prospective official partners, we all have to innovate ourselves as well, along with our pitch and propositions. Changing our business model from one of product or service based to one of a scalable business via a platform-based approach. This is what innovation truly is.

This is the time to innovate. Challenging times lead to great opportunities. Crisis creates breakthroughs.

This requires a shift in thinking and mindset; and becoming more valuable to those who need more value in the process.

Keep in mind knowledge alone is not power; execution of that knowledge is. We are all fed too much information but are starving for wisdom.

We are here to help.

The post Consulting as a Sponsorship Strategist first appeared on Interactive Sponsor.

Sponsor an Event or Partner with a Venue?

Me — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 03:19:34 +0000

Sponsor an Event or Partner with a Venue?

Event Sponsorship Needs an Overhaul

Sponsor an event, or partner with a venue? What would you do if you were a brand thinking about sponsoring a proposition?

Think about it, would you invest in a one-off one night stand at a venue, or have access to not one but multiple events across a seasonal or annual term at the property? Repeat and continuous engagement opportunities and fixed presence to try out and test a variety of ongoing activation options may give venues the upper hand relative to an ‘investment’ strategy. Besides, for most brands, investment is perceived as too great to support a single event.

Conclusion: Event sponsorship needs an overhaul.

Obviously not all events are unattractive. There is a case to be made for touring events; traveling from one venue to the next, offering a greater and varied return for a sponsor via multiple opportunities and endless touch points.

Of course there are, and will always be, sponsor-able one-off events. But not everyone’s event is the Super Bowl, or the GRAMMYs, or SXSW. Even the Olympics is made up of various events in various venues in various disciplines.

Think Beyond the Ordinary

If you’re an event producer or organiser, instead of trying to find the right sponsor for your upcoming event, step back, review your overall lineup and assets, and instead present your proposition as a multi-event opportunity. Sell yourself as the producer, willing and capable, not the event per se. This way you’re not chasing after sponsors time after time. Nor do you have to compete with thousands of similar ‘event sponsorship’ proposals collecting dust at the brand level.

More importantly, your valuation is more palatable this way. The valuation of the sum of your events is greater than the value of each event added together.

Most often than not, brands may not collaborate with you because your valuation is too low, or you end up dealing with local or regional sponsors, the local auto dealership for example, rather than the global or national headquarters of the auto manufacturer.

You can’t just inflate your value to justify your leverage either. You need to have a credible valuation study that’s not based on pulling a number out of a hat.

We can’t begin to tell you how often we come across this issue when approached by potential clients who want to hire us as their sponsorship agency. And take it from us, we’ve had many years of experience, especially in recent years where the above outlined brand perspective is the reality. Brands usually don’t even tell you why they’re not interested; they just don’t respond.

But if you arm yourself with a big picture attitude and a proactive strategy encompassing a larger return on investment for you and your brand ‘partner,’ you’ll enjoy more successes than having to take ‘no’ for an answer.

Strategy not Tragedy

Brands are like VCs; they don’t like put all their investments into one startup, one project, one event. They love to diversify their investment and hope that the 1 in 10 will produce the 20 to 1 (or more) return to justify their risks that some of your assets may pose. Their risk get bigger when they’re just presented with a one-off event.

Bottom line on event sponsorship: not impossible, but the odds are stacked against you.

For more on long-term partnership vs one-off sponsorship, read ‘sponsorship is dead; long live sponsorship.’

The post Sponsor an Event or Partner with a Venue? first appeared on Interactive Sponsor.

Startups and Brand Partnerships

Me — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 02:59:32 +0000

Startups and Brand Partnerships

Brands can be very valuable to startups with scalability; and I am not just referring to sponsorship of pitch contests, hackathons, or traditional elements of startup summits and conferences, etc., but long-term official partnerships.

Matching the business model of startups and their projects with brand objectives/needs within their search for alternate channels when it comes to innovation is critical in these collaborations. As a result a new business model has emerged encompassing all of the participants who each have a stake in this effort becoming successful.

It is now a fact some brands have even gone as far as designing this model to work deeply with startup teams, starting with giving out seed money, then connecting them with a strategic advisor and key business units inside their organization as a means of mentoring. The hope is to nurture these startups to Series A funding and beyond.

Strategic Engagement and Activation

This could be yet another opportunity for us as agencies as we explore further options of strategic engagement and activation, generating authentic brand perception and branding association.

The current weaknesses of traditional innovation approaches have led us to explore these different avenues and seek new inspiration. (see “Innovation Platform” for more)

Innovative Processes

In today’s digital world, many of these solutions rely on innovative processes, and much of this innovation comes from startups. The big brands are beginning to realize the corporate culture of their businesses in general does not encourage innovation. Employees are generally focused on doing their day-to-day job rather than trying to change the world. This makes it hard for corporate cultures to attract the most creative minds or biggest risk-takers.

Intrapreneurs from within the very corporations they work for may help resolve this, especially if they collaborate with the entrepreneurs the brands are partnering with.

This necessitates the new goal of innovation, an innovation platform to leverage the ecosystem of startups, official brand and corporate partners, VCs (and “Corporate VCs“), vendors, and academic institutions. Focus on collaboration, not exploitation.

As one part of the equation and as a brand partnership, sponsorship and activation agency, we can help brands navigate the emerging technology/startup landscape. But it’s also empowering the startups, incubators and accelerators realize the value of long-term brand partnerships critical for this marriage to work effectively.

An agency must have the proper resources in place, including direct relationships with brands, and their business development and corporate partnership decision makers, to “pitch” the potential opportunities and business plans presented as living documents by the ever-evolving startup industry.

In order to resonate with and excite the brand and marketers, along with the ad and media agencies, startups must also highlight and include their big picture and long-term aspirations, and not just what’s on their agenda currently.

These official partnerships and brand and co-branding alliances, if done properly, can be a win-win-win for all the parties involved. We are ready to go to work if you are.

The post Startups and Brand Partnerships first appeared on Interactive Sponsor.

Sponsorship Game is Changing

Me — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 02:27:10 +0000

Sponsorship Game is Changing

Sponsorship is dead; long live sponsorship!

The Big Shift

We have noticed two major shifts in the way global brands are taking the approach toward sponsorship. The first is the trend of longer term strategic relationships versus one-offs. The second is the multiple corporate partners with official category exclusivities versus a headline sponsor usually followed by second-tier sponsorships.

This confirms the shift from being a buyer of sponsorships to an investor in partnerships is alive and well. Senior marketers increasingly see sponsorships as a core part of brand strategy, and are investing in sponsorships that span a longer activation period. (see “Why the sponsorship game is a long one“)

Occasional one-off high-value events such as the World Cup, Olympics, or the GRAMMY Awards, etc. will still be actively pursued by brands. But even then we are using as examples events that are repeated, keeping open the activation window in the off-season or between events. Audience engagement is no longer a series of one-off experiences—it’s an ongoing dialogue.

Corporate Circle

The same is true when it comes to top-tier brands as part of a “Corporate Circle” in lieu of one single headline partner. Major museums and other properties have accomplished this properly for several years. Name rights partnerships are still in demand, but generally speaking rights holders gain a lot more value when they use this multi-brand partnership strategy.

This becomes more evident when properties and rights holders take advantage of brand recognition and association to gain leverage to attract additional official corporate partners. Brands love it when they don’t have to share the full load. This enables them to invest in more opportunities, just as a VC spreading its investments.

Take the Premier League for example, which is embracing a new marketing strategy that includes several official partners instead of one title sponsor. It is abandoning its traditional setup and focusing instead on developing a slate of top tier partners. Most professional leagues including FIFA’s World Cup, the National Football League and the Olympics are following the same strategy.

Category Exclusivity

That is why we see a lot more of “official partner” sponsorships via category exclusivities. Couple that with the fact that brands are “investing” in long-term relationships for repeat exposure and engagement rather than one-off events, we have ourselves a winning strategy. The media and ad agencies love it because the activation campaigns enjoy a longer shelf life, and can be reapplied with modifications over the course of the term, with more opportunities for greater ROI.

In fact, according to IEG/WPP, more sponsors are willing to increase spending on activation than on rights fees. This is good news for properties who can then help brands with better metrics over a longer period of sampling as a result.

The New Trend

One last observation to strengthen our findings: In the past, headline and title sponsors locked out a ton of sponsorship inventory rights holders and properties could sell. Now with more possibilities and options, this new trend of multiple brand partnerships is more attractive, lucrative, and results in a win-win.

A true partner is not just a sponsor. At the same time corporate partnership requires more expertise. Clients using this smarter approach also realize a greater return. And just as brands are realigning their sponsorship strategy, rights holders and properties must also adhere to this new game plan and adapt accordingly.

Reputable sponsorship and brand partnership agencies can help in this effort.

The post Sponsorship Game is Changing first appeared on Interactive Sponsor.

Sponsorship Spending vs Investment

Me — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 20:27:28 +0000

Sponsorship Spending vs Investment

Brands nowadays are looking to “spend” less, expect increased ROI, and most importantly receive meaningful and measurable engagement with their niche audience.

Accordingly, for years, we have been preaching to sponsees the need to create effective campaigns to attract sponsors to ‘invest’ in their offering.

Invest, Don’t Buy

IEG, the global authority on sponsorship, published a white paper entitled “invest, don’t buy” to highlight the growing trend of brands’ and sponsors’ shift from being a buyer of sponsorships to an investor in partnerships.

“A buyer acquires something for limited use or to serve a single purpose—an arms-length transaction. Although such purchases may have their place, their capacity is curbed. An investor seeks to maximize its return, exploring and developing multiple ways in which it can earn dividends, and working in concert with the investment property.”

"Engagement is forging a sharing belief with clients and prospects through immersive experiences with sponsored partners."

John Kennedy

VP Corporate Marketing, IBM

Engagement

We also agree, “of all forms of marketing, partnerships are at the top in delivering engagement – the interactions that strengthen emotional investment in a brand.”

Emotional Branding

Today emotional branding, the new paradigm for connecting brands to people, or the emotionally intelligent audience and consumer, is receiving its due attention more than ever. It ultimately leads to brand engagement with customers staying loyal for the long haul.

Investing in Partnerships

We realize investing in partnerships requires more resources and commitments than selling sponsorship benefits. We have been taking this smarter approach, and the results, including the ROI, are astonishing. Contact us to realize a similar return for your sponsorship and branding needs.

The post Sponsorship Spending vs Investment first appeared on Interactive Sponsor.

Interactive Sponsor Intro

Me — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:01:30 +0000

[pdf-embedder url=”https://www.interactivesponsor.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Interactive-Sponsor-Introduction.pdf” title=”Interactive Sponsor Introduction” width=“max”]

The post Interactive Sponsor Intro first appeared on Interactive Sponsor.