The Dreaded Sponsorship Naysayer - How One Person Can Totally Derail a Sponsorship Program
Posted: 6/11/2010 11:18:26 AM by
Carrie Urban Kapraun | with 0 comments
In every organization there always seems to be at least one decision maker that either doesn’t like or doesn’t understand sponsorship. Sometimes it is the head honcho, sometimes it is the bean counter, sometimes it is the rain maker, and sometimes it is someone in marketing, legal or human resources. An individual may be afraid that sponsorship would affect his/her specific job or department. Another person may not understand sponsorship’s potential, or he/she may have a personal vendetta against anything sponsorship related (it happens).
I know of a property where one of the decision makers didn’t agree with some sponsorship packaging recommendations. This person thought that sponsor recognition on some of the suggested assets would be too commercial for this specific property.
It is true that the property’s audience is not an audience that is open to overtly commercial messaging. Unfortunately, the suggested benefits slated for removal were some of the assets that sponsors find valuable like expanded recognition on the property’s website, on-site recognition, and expanded recognition in email newsletters. Additionally, the decision maker was not interested in having a discussion about how sponsorship messaging could be incorporated in a way that was appropriate and even welcomed by the audience. The decision maker was not open to having a conversation about it at all.
Unfortunately, not only did the removal or reduction of these benefits lower the value of the package, it made the overall package less saleable. There needed to be a two-way conversation where both parties were really listening and considering the ideas that were presented, and apparently that just didn’t happen. It makes you wonder how a property expects a potential sponsor to get excited about a sponsorship offering when the property’s only concern is making the sponsorship work for one particular person.
I also recently spoke with a past IEG client that was unable to implement our sponsorship recommendations because one of the leaders of the organization did not believe in sponsorship.
Fortunately for the organization, the naysayer is no longer part of the organization and finally, several years later the property is able to revisit and finally pursue the sponsorship strategy that had been recommended. It is unfortunate that the whole organization had to lose revenue and organization expanding partnerships for several years because of the bias of a single person.
The above examples are both on the property side, but there are sponsorship naysayers on the sponsor side as well. It may be that a company never considers sponsorship as part of the marketing mix, or the company sponsored a property once and didn’t see the expected return (likely because of lack of measurement).
For sure, there are real reasons why sponsorship won’t work for a certain property or a sponsor, but from where I see it, a lot of times, the rejection comes from lack of knowledge and the unwillingness to change.
Read more blog posts
Filed under: sponsorship measurement, IEG