Latest Thinking from IEG

11 Basics Of Successful Sponsorship Sales
Back in the early ’80s, when sponsorship was new to pretty much everyone, IEG traveled the world teaching sponsorship acquisition and sponsorship sales. The industry has incorporated those learnings and sponsorship “mavens” from near and far have incorporated those ideas into their books, blogs and practices.

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Filed under: media sponsorship, packaging, prospecting, selling, sponsorship valuation, how to get sponsorship

Black Mark for BlackBerry: What RIM Did Wrong In Venezuela Sponsorship Snafu
I never suspected the trove of classified government communications trickling out through WikiLeaks would contain a sponsorship story, but a recently released February 2010 cable from the U.S. embassy in Caracas, Venezuela tells a tale with valuable lessons for sponsors.

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Filed under: backlash, Canada, contracts, international, media sponsorship, negotiating, telecommunications, arts

A Print Media Sponsorship That Actually Qualifies As A Sponsorship

When I receive word of a “sponsorship” or “marketing partnership” that has at its core a relationship between a corporation and a magazine publisher, I tend to disregard it as nothing more than a media buy that’s been given a gussied up name to try to generate some additional buzz.

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Filed under: assets, automotive, media sponsorship, retail, what is sponsorship, activation

Stephen Colbert Sponsors for America

Stephen Colbert, anchor of Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, is sponsoring the U.S. Speedskating team.

Colbert stepped in to sponsor the U.S. team after current sponsor Dutch bank DSB declared bankruptcy. The sponsorship is in the name of the show’s fans, dubbed the “Colbert Nation.”

Colbert signed a sponsorship deal with Bob Crowley, Executive Director of U.S. Speedskating on camera during an interview with Olympic speedskating great Dan Jansen on November 2.

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Filed under: media sponsorship, non-traditional categories, olympics, selling, entertainment

The Importance of a Good Media Partner – the Mix and Children’s Memorial Hospital

One of the first things that I learned when I joined IEG, was the importance of media (and retail) partners to a property. Media and retail partners can be beneficial for a few reasons. First, they can extend the awareness and reach of the property through recognition in media or in-store. Second, their relationships with various companies can provide access to new sponsors. Also, both media and retail partners have assets that can be very attractive to sponsors such as built-in advertising for the sponsor or possibly some sort of POP display or recognition in retail publications. What property doesn’t want to increase the tangible benefits that they have to offer? Lastly, some sponsors (especially new sponsors) are more familiar with media-related benefits, so having some media benefits as part of a package can help ease a company into sponsorship.

If a property can obtain a good media partner, this should help them to obtain other sponsors. Note the word “good”, there are some not so good partners or at least partners that are not a good fit with a particular property. I’ll just quickly mention that there are a couple ways to structure a media sponsorship, one is based on in-kind and the other is a fee deal. Additionally, a property can have several media partners, usually one for each medium.

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Filed under: in-kind, media sponsorship, nonprofit, research, cause marketing

Elusive Intangibles: They Are All Around Us

In my last post, I detailed the ten intangibles that are evaluated when valuing a sponsorship opportunity. The whole concept of intangibles was very new to me when I began my career in sponsorship at IEG. During my previous life as a media planner/buyer, intangibles were something that at best I thought about on a surface level, and at worst I basically ignored or discounted.

I remember a time early in my media career when the media agency I worked for was asked to evaluate and place a value on a naming rights sponsorship for a major insurance company. At the time, naming rights were not as commonplace as they are now. We evaluated and quantified things such as impressions from passing vehicles, the value of expected press mentions and impressions from event attendees. Never once did we venture into placing a value on the sponsor’s activation opportunities or the sponsor’s protection from ambush. Honestly, none of us would have even known what those were anyway. We used the advertising metrics that we were familiar with to value the opportunity.  

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Filed under: valuation, media sponsorship

Tuesday Session Recap from the 2009 IEG Sponsorship Conference

Something that many Americans like to do first thing in the morning is get a jolt of the latest headlines. Therefore, it was a sense of irony the first session of Tuesday’s IEG Sponsorship Conference dealt with media sponsorships.

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Filed under: cause marketing, digital media, evaluation, how to get sponsorship, IEG conference, media sponsorship, new media, nonprofit, olympics, sponsorship measurement, sponsorship ROI, sports, Canada

Insights from Emerging Categories Roundtable

This morning I led a roundtable on emerging and transforming sponsor categories, and a number of people that weren’t able to attend the session asked if I could post the categories on the blog.

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Filed under: IEG conference, media sponsorship, selling, how to get sponsorship