By Ken Ungar

“Sponsorship doesn’t work”

When I heard a marketing manager (for a BIG brand) throw that comment out there last year, I was nearly speechless. Could it be true that a multi-billion-dollar industry is built on a false premise? 

After composing myself, I knew the answer.  

Sponsorship doesn’t work . . . if there’s no strategy to guide it.  

While I knew the answer, I wasn’t sure if others shared the marketing manager’s opinion in the broader marketing community. I was sure that sharing the importance of sponsorship strategy would benefit brands, properties or anyone interested in sponsorship. In fact, it inspired me, in 2019, to write a book focused on sponsorship strategy. 

I knew a book on strategy would provide value to the reader. For any business pursuit, “a strategy is necessary because the future is unpredictable.” For sponsorship, strategy drives success because it promotes clarity, guides planning, and ensures effective execution.   

Clarity.  

Strategy helps marketers clearly articulate the reason for engaging in the sponsorship and enables them to judge whether that reason supports business goals. This is the “why” of sponsorship. “Enhancing brand image” or “promoting sales to a target audience” could be two such reasons moving the business forward. Sponsoring an auto race because the CEO likes auto racing may be a clear reason, but it’s unlikely to positively impact the business if that’s the only reason.  

Planning. 

Once the “why” is identified, a plan can be built around it. It’s the roadmap that takes the sponsor from Point A to Point B. A sponsorship designed to enhance brand image will need a PR plan, an event activation plan, and a measurement plan to evaluate it. It drives conversations about the personnel and resources needed as well as the timing / sequencing necessary.  

Execution.  

With strategy, we have a guidepost for plan execution as well as the means to determine if the plan is off course. Without strategy, we have no idea what our sponsorship efforts and resources are really meant to achieve for the business.  

The strategic elements of clarity, planning and execution help marketers make sponsorship work. However, I know that sponsorship can do more than merely work. Great sponsorship strategies can be transformative for organizations. Best-in-class strategies repair damaged brands produce dramatic return-on-investment and harness the “superpower” of image transfer to create breakout moments for sponsors. Knowing this from experience, the comment that “sponsorships don’t work” inspired me to write a book that I hoped would benefit the sponsorship industry, a business that has given so much to me over the past two decades.  

A week ago, Amazon delivered the first copy of Sponsorship Strategy: Practical Approaches to Powerful Sponsorships  to my home. As the COVID-19 pandemic creates utterly unpredictable times for the sponsorship industry, my colleagues and clients will need great strategies at the ready. My hope is that Sponsorship Strategy can be a valuable resource to help them build those strategies. 

 

ARE YOU READY TO SELL POWERFUL SPONSORSHIPS?

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This brief assessment will give you a sense of your readiness to attract and fulfill powerful sponsorships.

At the end of the assessment, we’ll provide you with a sponsorship readiness score, a detailed description of what that score means and some tips about how to improve your overall score and score per section.

Check out our previous Blog Posts to learn more on topics surrounding “why sponsorship strategy”. Contact Us for specific content questions.