Addressing An Oversight In My Last Post
Posted: 10/14/2009 8:37:17 AM by
Jim Andrews | with 0 comments
Some of you have called me out regarding my post yesterday regarding the hiring of a sponsorship agency by the City of Indianapolis. The issue is that I did not inform readers that my colleagues in the IEG Sponsorship Consulting group were among the firms that responded to the city’s RFP.
That is fair criticism. I was operating under the guidelines that the IEG editorial team has lived by for years and years, i.e., our reporting and commenting is independent from and not influenced by the consulting, valuation and ROI work done by the folks in the other offices. I should not have assumed that everyone who reads this blog is aware of the strict guidelines under which we operate, and thus should have included a “full disclosure” note to provide transparency.
This provides me with an opportunity to inform you that the editorial team at IEG takes our obligation to be fair and unbiased very seriously. While it begins with a bedrock ethical commitment, it’s also just good business. How many of you would continue to subscribe to IEG Sponsorship Report, attend our annual conference or even read this blog, if we were just mouthpieces for our colleagues or shills for their clients? Not many, I would imagine.
Do we sometimes write articles about IEG Sponsorship Consulting clients? Yes, when they have done something worth sharing with the industry. Do we publish insights from our consulting colleagues when they have something meaningful to share? Yes. Those are the same standards we apply when we write about other company’s clients, or quote or profile their executives, which we do often.
Thus, my post yesterday had nothing to do with “sour grapes” because our consulting group didn’t win business from the City of Indianapolis. (As long as we’re disclosing things, I should note that IEG Sponsorship Consulting does not sell sponsorship and was not seeking to do so for the city.) It was, and is, a legitimate question about the choice properties might have to make in choosing to work with a sponsorship sales agency. It was a question the deal would have prompted me to ask regardless of who was involved. I certainly was not suggesting by any means that the city made the wrong choice, and as someone who wants to see sponsorship succeed, wherever and whenever, I hope that the city and Third Street Partners are wildly successful.
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