Latest Thinking from IEG

The Elephant in the Room

The current state of the economy, what can I say that hasn’t already been said? Unemployment is up, retail spending is down, consumer confidence is down, quarterly earning reports are down, stocks are up and then down, it is a lot to take in. Honestly, I am tired of hearing about it, reading about it, talking about it and living it (so of course I have to write about it). This recession has impacted everyone on so many levels and from all angles. It is ever present both personally and professionally. It has changed us in many ways and it isn’t going away as quickly as we would like it to.

It is somewhat old news now, but I was thinking about the press earlier this year around banks that received TARP money and the attacks on their sponsorship spending. The remarks made by Sen. John Kerry and Congressman Barney Frank were misdirected and uninformed. I felt like their comments were a personal attack and I couldn’t understand why they would want to further hurt yet another industry. The marketing industry, including sponsorship, had already been feeling the effects of the weak economy.

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Filed under: entertainment, nonprofit, spending, cause marketing

Central Intelligence: Cultural Considerations for Sponsorship Buyers

In my last post, I shared my observations on how culture impacts—and should impact—the way sponsorship sellers create their strategies. In this post, I’m taking a look at the buyers, for whom culture is a much different thing.

Buyers
To once again oversimplify, a company’s sponsorship selection (to buy or not to buy) and sponsorship evaluation (to renew or not to renew) strategy is a process that screens each opportunity against a set of criteria. Those criteria are built to measure a given opportunity’s likelihood to help the company meet its objectives. This includes opportunities where the company instigates the conversation and/or the property cold calls.

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Filed under: contracts, evaluation, guidelines, how to get sponsorship, negotiating, packaging, research, selling, spending, sponsorship measurement, sponsorship ROI, activation

Sponsorship Sales Tips: Preparing For Pent-up Demand

While sponsorship deal-making usually grinds to a halt during the dog days of summer—a situation that’s been exacerbated this year as a result of the economy—some veteran sellers are starting to see signs of looser budgets and more deals in 4Q ’09 and beyond.

While that’s good news for the sponsorship industry, properties need to be more strategic than ever to capture those dollars.

I recently spoke with Cary Chevat, president of sponsorship sales agency Sponsorship Resources, who shared some tips for securing deals during the 4Q decision-making time period.

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Filed under: entertainment, how to get sponsorship, negotiating, selling, spending, agency

Coffee War Percolates New Sponsorship Spending

Today’s coffee lover faces more choices than ever on where to buy their favorite brew, and that has prompted new sponsorship spending on behalf of coffee retailers.

That activity has been driven in large part by McDonald’s Corp., which took on Starbucks Corp., Dunkin’ Brands, Inc. and other coffee retailers earlier this year with the launch of the McCafe coffee line.

Competition also has been fueled by convenience stores, many of which are adding premium coffee blends to their product offering. Coffee can be a profitable item: New Jersey-based Quick Chek reported a 10 percent increase in coffee sales in its fiscal first quarter.

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Filed under: how to get sponsorship, marathon, spending, cause marketing

Tennis Spending Holds Its Own, But Just Barely

According to the latest projections from IEG Sponsorship Report, worldwide sponsorship spending on amateur and professional tennis tournaments and sanctioning bodies will total $581 million in ’09, a 1.3 percent increase from ’08.

Pressured by the global economic downturn and fallout from cutbacks in the financial services and automotive categories, the increase is down significantly from the eight percent rise in ’08 and 10 percent increase in ’07.

Case in point: The ATP Los Angeles Open is going without a title sponsor this summer following the loss of mortgage crisis poster child Countrywide Financial Corp., which was purchased by Bank of America Corp. last year.

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Filed under: spending, sports, IEG

IEG Projection: MLB Looking at Overall Decline in Sponsorship for ’09

Pro baseball is the first sport to go through its full sponsorship selling season (October through March, roughly) since the bottom fell out of the economy late last summer. With a few exceptions, including the New York Mets and Yankees, both of which open their new parks this week, most teams are saying that sponsorship revenue is off going into the season.

IEG is releasing its projection today that sponsorship spending on MLB deals—including the league, teams and stadiums—will drop 4.8 percent this year from $540 million in ’08 to $514 million.

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Filed under: pro sports, spending, sports, IEG