IEG’s Sponsorship Blog

Creating Sponsorship Programs Where There Previously Where None

Posted: 11/24/2009 10:28:40 AM by Carrie Urban Kapraun | with 0 comments

Last week I had a conversation with a colleague, Daren Watkins. I wanted to share some of our conversation because I think some of his challenges and hopefully his successes may be relevant to a lot of properties.

Watkins is the special events coordinator for the Real. Texas. Festival. in Mesquite, TX. His sponsorship career started four years ago with the first Real. Texas. Festival. Watkins has been with the Festival from the beginning and is responsible for the establishment and success of the Festival. Watkins secured 17 sponsors the first year of the Festival, including a presenting sponsor. His sponsorship program has since grown to more than 20 sponsors.

The Festival is a two-day event in April that features live entertainment, a car show and a rodeo. The Festival now attracts close to 25,000 attendees.

Read More

Filed under: entertainment, events, local, nonprofit, research, activation

Evian Roller Skating Baby Video-A Marketing Gimmick

Posted: 11/18/2009 4:22:05 PM by Carrie Urban Kapraun | with 0 comments

Marketing gimmicks are alive and well and appear to be working for some brands. In Lesa’s recent blog covering the ANA Annual Conference, Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO of Google, spoke about Evian’s commercial/video featuring babies on roller skates.

He stated that on YouTube.com, the videos had received 30 million views. The campaign does make great use of the web and online content includes interviews with the babies, clips from casting for the video and Facebook pages for the babies. The campaign has certainly caught on and reportedly has delivered business results for Evian. The video is insanely cute and very viral, but at its core, it is a gimmick.

Read More

Filed under: entertainment, events, activation

From the AFP Conference–Customer Lifetime Value, Customer Retention and Value Segments

Posted: 11/13/2009 5:26:12 PM by Carrie Urban Kapraun | with 0 comments

I attended the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ Midwest Conference on Philanthropy yesterday and although the content of the conference was not sponsorship focused, there were some insights that were very relevant to sponsorship.

The opening session was led by Adrian Sargeant, the Robert F. Hartsook Professor of Fundraising at Indiana University. Even though the content of the session was focused on driving donor loyalty, there were several topics covered that are pertinent, and three that I would like to highlight. The concepts of retention and defection, lifetime value, and value segments all have a place in sponsorship. Because of the limited information available on some of these topics within fundraising, during his research Sargeant turned to insights developed on the consumer side.

Read More

Filed under: nonprofit, research, selling, sponsorship ROI, activation

Carrie’s Top Ten (Mostly Sponsorship Related) List

Posted: 11/12/2009 10:09:22 AM by Carrie Urban Kapraun | with 0 comments

There were some pretty big sponsorship news stories during the past week or two and since everyone else seems to have a top ten list, I wanted to do one too. Plus, doing a top ten list pretty much guarantees at least some people will be interested. Personally, I always turn to the top ten lists in magazines first and click on any news stories that say “Top Ten”. Maybe this will be the beginning of a series…hmm…enjoy!

Read More

Filed under: entertainment, events, music, nonprofit, research, selling, activation

Sponsorship Getting to Know You Questions

Posted: 11/4/2009 11:15:12 AM by Carrie Urban Kapraun | with 6 comments

Since I do most of the talking (writing) in this blog, I thought it might be nice to give everyone else a chance to do some writing.

Every so often, either via email or on Facebook, I receive one of those getting to know you questionnaires. Where it asks questions like “What is your favorite color?”, “Who was your first boyfriend/girlfriend?” or “What annoys you the most?” I don’t know why, but I always end up filling it out and forwarding it on. So in that spirit, I thought I would create a few sponsorship getting to know you questions. There are no correct answers; I am just looking for your opinions, thoughts and perspectives. It is mostly just for fun, kind of an experiment. It is obviously not a hard hitting sponsorship blog. Anyway, I hope someone will respond, otherwise this will be a pretty boring blog post. Feel free to add your own question if it relates to sponsorship.

Read More