Agenda, Monday March 17
Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday
Opening Address | Keynote Address | Feature Presentations | Keynote Address, Lunch | Workshops | Evening Reception
8–9:40 AM Round Tables, Tutorials, Sponsors In Residence and Continental Breakfast
Executives learn best from one another—especially when they are as experienced and accomplished as those who attend IEG. That’s why each morning is dedicated to hands-on, small group, round-table discussions. Choose from 21 topics; each lasts 30 minutes and then repeats twice. If you prefer less interaction and more formalized learning, the Tutorials, held concurrently with the round tables, are for you. Sponsors-In-Residence meetings also occur at this time. Your chance to meet one on one with decision-makers who collectively control more than $2 billion in spending.
Key: Session recommended for: 
= sponsors 
= sponsees 
= all
TUTORIAL: Strategic Acquisition
Dan Kowitz and Bliss Hansen, IEG Advisory and Valuation Services
TUTORIAL: Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours: Six Essential Principles for “Service Sponsorship” Success
Gail Lowney Alofsin, Newport Harbor Corp.
TUTORIAL: From Strategy to Event: Case Studies on Maximizing and Measuring ROI
Christian Vollerslev, Eksekvator
TUTORIAL: Successfully Reaching and Including the Younger Market
Ted Baroody, Norfolk Festevents, Ltd.
10–10:30 AM Opening Address
Think with the Senses, Feel with the Mind
Lesa Ukman, Chairman, IEG
Most sponsorships are based on Either/Or thinking. But it’s an And/And world. We consume media and we create it. We want to experience events live and download them later. Sean “Diddy” Combs is sponsored by Ciroc and he’s leading the marketing efforts for the super-premium Diageo vodka, sharing 50-50 in the profits. The American Express Members Project is customer retention and strategic philanthropy, powered by the card’s sponsorships and endorsements. Like our increasingly mashed-up world, sponsorship is becoming a platform for marketing and fulfilling a significant role in driving business performance. It is no longer a question of marketing or community relations, advertising or events, but how to combine discrete elements to make each more powerful than it would be on its own and how to create an altogether new asset that delivers a better future.
10:30–11:15 AM Keynote Address
Refreshing Change: Insights from the World’s Most Sensory and Successful Sponsor
Scott McCune, Vice President, Integrated Marketing, The Coca-Cola Co.
Coke is the world’s most successful sponsor not because it is one of the world’s largest sponsors, but because it is the world’s most insightful. Coke is far ahead of the pack in understanding that sponsorship is relationship software. The company long ago realized that it’s not about acquiring pouring rights and signs, nor about buying defensively to block the competition; it’s about obtaining platforms to enhance experiences around the things consumers love—teams, festivals, music, attractions, causes and other passion points. The company also knows that sensory is not intuitive. It uses research to discover the emotional connections between consumers and their favorite events, experiences and organizations, and activates around those touch points. McCune, whose responsibilities include development of worldwide media, licensing and sponsorship marketing strategies, will share some of the key takeaways Coke has learned and what it sees coming around the bend.
11:30–12:30 PM Feature Presentations
You may attend one of the following:
Inside 7-Eleven’s Shopping Basket: Effective Consumer Programs through Successful Internal and External Partnering
Rita Bargerhuff, Vice President of Marketing, 7-Eleven, Inc.
Non-traditional marketing is the rallying cry at the C-store giant. The company jumped into sponsorship in a major way in 2007, signing eight-figures-worth of deals in a matter of months. Bargerhuff will examine how 7-Eleven is using its major-market pro sports and auto racing sponsorships, as well as action sports and branded entertainment deals, to connect with time-starved 18-to-44-year-old men and drive them into its stores—earning coupon redemptions up to five times higher than the chain’s typical rate. She also will discuss how 7-Eleven leverages its ties through promotions that enhance its Retailer Initiative strategy, which allows each store to determine its product mix based on local market preferences.
Partnerships at the Center of Youth Marketing
Dave Knox, Brand Manager, Wal-Mart Customer Team, The Procter & Gamble Co.
Strategies and tactics aimed at pitching hygiene products to tween and teen girls have not typically been at the vanguard of cutting-edge marketing. P&G has changed that under Knox’s direction: He pushed for the company’s BeingGirl.com Web site for 10-to-17-year-olds to explore entertainment and cause marketing partnerships, such as forging a partnership with Sony BMG Music to promote both established and upcoming artists through presence on the site and tour sponsorships. Knox will address how brands can use digital media to tap into social networks and educate and entertain young audiences for whom an Internet connection is a lifeline, plus examine the key role sponsorship, cause marketing and strategic alliances can and should play.
Sponsorship Done Right: WaMu Live!
Jane Zalutsky, First Vice President of Experiential & Hispanic Marketing, Washington Mutual, Inc.
At the heart of the WaMu Live! rewards program lie Washington Mutual’s partnerships with entertainment properties and the special access those events and venues have agreed to provide to the bank’s customers. By activating its sponsorships to provide everyday clients with VIP treatment, WaMu enhances the consumer experience at popular entertainment destinations and delivers meaningful benefits that competitors can’t match. Just two months after the program’s July launch in California, New York and Seattle, WaMu decided to roll out WaMu Live! nationally for 2008. Zalutsky will discuss the program’s genesis and development, and share why WaMu is banking on entertainment—not sports—to reward current customers, generate new ones and bring its brand to life.
Talk Is Cheap: Putting the Consumer at the Center of Experiential
Jeff Povlo, Brand Experience Specialist, Nokia Corp.
While laboratories are usually linked to science, Nokia Trends Lab is for artistic experiments. The self-described “physical and virtual hub of mobility experiences” is a forum where aspiring DJs, designers, animators, sound engineers, photographers and other creatives can refine and showcase their multimedia talents and work with established artists. Povlo, who also combined edge and pop to create signature brand platforms that appeal to young adults while heading sponsorship for Heineken, is now sponsoring under the Labs moniker: Ireland’s Electric Picnic and Berlin Fashion Week both featured Nokia Trends Lab Stages. Hear how empowering customers’ creativity jump-starts brands.
12:45–2:45 PM Keynote Address and Lunch
Message in a Bottle
Seth Goldman, TeaEO, Honest Tea, Inc.
Refreshment is not all that’s brewing at Honest Tea. The company, co-founded by Goldman in 1998, is bottling a mission. Such efforts as innovative business partnerships with economically disadvantaged communities—Honest Tea’s First Nation Organic Peppermint, for example, is a joint venture with the Crow Indians—year-round ties to nonprofits such as City Year, plus sustainable practices like fair trade are as much a part of the brand DNA as its organic, less sweet products. The sense and sensory combination has created cadres of brand loyalists, who enjoy the ready-to-drink beverage and believe in it, and who have kept Honest Tea on the Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing private U.S. companies for each of the last five years. Goldman has said that the most important word in his company’s name is “honest,” not “tea.” Hear how, without slotting fees or advertising, he is gaining shelf space at retail, garnering pull for new products like Honest Kids and outpacing the growth of deep-pocketed competitors.
3–5:15 PM Workshops
You may attend two of the following; each lasts one hour and then repeats.
Key: Session recommended for: = sponsors = sponsees = all
Adapting Partnerships for Change
Tom Hughes, AT&T Inc.
Hughes, the company’s director of sponsorships and events, has refocused and expanded the company’s partnership strategy as mergers have changed AT&T’s footprint and priorities. AT&T is seeking a broader array of content, from local as well as national properties, to further connect with consumers while concurrently seeking to monetize that content, by re-selling rights to advertisers. Hear how this experienced sponsor is seeking to maximize value today while buying with an eye firmly on tomorrow.
The Imperfect Fit: Opposites Attract
Bob van Oosterhout, Triple Double B.V.
There is broad consensus about the importance of fit between sponsor and sponsee, but the success of the 18-month-old partnership between DELA—a funeral insurance and burial arrangements company with more than 3 million clients in Holland and Belgium—and Dutch women’s volleyball, proves exactly the opposite: the power of incongruent matches. Triple Double co-founder van Oosterhout, who recommended and activates DELA’s volleyball strategy, takes you inside the anti-intuitive approach, including independent research on the program’s success—and the hurdles.
Where Sponsorship Meets Creativity
Antonie van Schendel, TBWA\Brand Experience Company
Managing partner of the Netherlands-based agency, van Schendel is the rare practitioner who applies the creative principles of advertising to sponsorship. The result: award-winning, out-of-the-box executions. Collaboration vs. Contact (the active consumer role); Approach vs. Medium (activation is a way of thinking, not filling in media); Case studies: ING/museums; ING/running; Adidas/soccer.
Good to Great
Erika Ewen, California Restaurant Assn.
The former California State Fair marketing maven has revamped the CRA’s approach to sponsorship with a slew of new initiatives, including: centralizing control of assets within a single department; creating new inventory; and designing year-round opportunities for sponsors. The effort has attracted new sponsors like American Express, and bigger deals from prior sponsors like Dell. Hear how Ewen, marketing and events manager, not only brought fresh ideas to the table, but got them implemented.
Leveraging Online Resources to Increase Sales and Renewals
Ethan Casson, Minnesota Timberwolves
The NBA Timberwolves created a standalone Web site that gives sponsors the ability to view activations and executions, as well as track the inventory they have used and what remains available. Casson, the team’s SVP of corporate sales and service, says its digital investment not only enables sponsors to manage their deals more efficiently, it has streamlined the team’s production of fulfillment reports and helped sell new prospects who can drill deeper than a bullet-point menu of benefits.
Pricing: Calculating the Worth of Your Sponsorships
Vinu Joseph and Carrie Urban, IEG Advisory and Valuation Services
IEG, which created the world’s only sponsor-endorsed protocol to determine the fair market value of any sponsorship, has valued more than 1,500 opportunities over the last 15 years. Using examples from audience volunteers, Joseph and Urban—who have worked with scores of IEG clients from the Davis Cup, Cheyenne Frontier Days and NCAA to the Field Museum, Academy Awards and American Heart Assn.—will walk you through the core drivers of value, how to price them and how to increase their worth.
Turning a Long Shot Into a Winner
Daniel J. Quinn, National Football League—Canada
Quinn has one of the world’s toughest jobs. First, he’s selling American football in Canada, a country that bleeds hockey. Next, he’s got to contend with the homegrown Canadian Football League. Strike three: He has almost no assets to sell—No teams. No players. No games. No stadiums. But sell he does. NFL Canada has 22 partners and generates eight-figures-worth of sponsorship annually. This intensely instructive session on building a profitable sponsorship business is back by popular demand.
Bull’s-eye: How to Bring Sensory Elements of Off-line Sponsorships Online
Chris Johnson, Terralever
Red Bull excels at creating relevant events for consumers to touch its brand. Terralever, an interactive marketing and technology services agency, creates the Web sites, online advertising and games that translate the off-line experiences of signature events such as Red Bull Flugtag, Moto GP and Art of Can, to the electronic realm. Johnson, founder of the agency, shares the winning strategies behind these executions and how to apply them to your partnerships.
Determining the Image You Are Buying or Selling
Ann Green, Millward Brown
Sponsorships typically transfer some elements of brand equity, almost always from property to sponsor. But few properties know the image attributes they are bringing to the table, and few sponsors know which will resonate most deeply with customers. Millward Brown, one of the world’s leading research insight groups, provides an overview of how to identify, enhance and leverage brand equity and learnings that, whether sponsor or rightsholder, you can apply to your own partnerships.
8 PM Evening Reception
While the rest of Chicago is awash in green beer, we’ll take the festivities up a notch with a soirée at the beautiful Four Seasons Hotel on the Magnificent Mile. No boiled potatoes and cabbage here, but pretty much everything else, including great conversations, libations and other temptations.
Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday
Schedule subject to change. Detailed agenda and Conference materials will be sent to each delegate upon registration.