High Schools: the New Frontier for Sponsorship?

Remember those branded plastic footballs they used to fire into the stands at the local high school when you were growing up? That was one of my first brushes with corporate sponsorship back in the day. Apparently a lot has changed in Texas since the late '90's. Dan Dunkin of the Philadelphia Intelligencer reports that some Texas high schools are securing $1 million+ naming rights deals...

Sponsorship Marketing's Top 10

We need to get some dialogue going on what we think is important in our business, as a community of professionals. We’ve got properties, agencies of properties, corporate brand sponsors, agencies of sponsors. We’ve got consultants that serve both sides, reporters, service providers, industry associations, and academics. We’ve got major professional sports properties and very local small ones...

JetBlue Wraps Itself in Real Salt Lake

Southwest started the practice of wrapping planes to promote their partnership with Sea World of Texas back in the 1980's. Now, JetBlue's coming out with their "first-ever sports branded aircraft" as a way of activating their recently announced partnership with MLS team' Real Salt Lake. JetBlue CEO Dave Barger on the deal: "Real Salt Lake's impact on the game and the diverse, brand-loyal an...

SponsorPitch, The Official Sponsor of Sponsorship (TM)

Here's a question: can you be an official sponsor of an "unofficial" property? Somewhere along the way, advertising and brand creatives started coming up with "official" sponsorships as their trademarked ad slogan. In fact, the trend has gotten so popular that there's even a big time lawsuit between Oprah and Mutual of Omaha over the use of the federally trademarked advertising slogan "o...

New Golf/Fishing Sponsorships Keep Industry Afloat

It's been a long week... your turn to help us do some of the work. Luckily, lots of Bethpage golf today, but yesterday was a complete washout. Both the LPGA (with 19 tournaments expiring this year) and the PGA (with 22 title sponsorships slated to expire in 2010) are trying to weather the economic "storm." Here's a photo from yesterday at Bethpage: Take a break from the golf and give us...

Giants/Jets Get Back to the Basics: Time and Healthcare

With the meltdown of heavyweight sports spenders from the financial, auto and airline sectors; it would seems that both the Giants and Jets have been busy winning the "small" (more reasonable) battles, but biding their time for the big prize - naming rights to the new stadium. MetLife, Verizon and Anheuser-Busch have already agreed to sponsor three of the new stadium's "cornerstones" - with ...

In the Game of Sales, It's OK to Fail First!

Key Learnings is a regular weekly posting that covers insights and stories from thought-leaders within the sponsorship industry. Today's key learning comes from Jim Loria who has over 30 years of sports management experience and for the past 10 years as served as President of the USHL's Sioux Falls Stampede. Before approaching the major sponsors or corporations in the business world, you have...

HSBC Leverages with Live Grass Tennis in NYC

We get to see some pretty cool activations here in midtown Manhattan. Where else can you see a NASCAR pit stop one day and grass court tennis the next? In conjunction with Day 1 of Wimbledon, HSBC is launching a week of complimentary tennis activities in Rockefeller Center so we stopped by to check out some live tennis with Jennifer Capriati, Jim Courier and Luke Jensen. HSBC is in the sec...

5 Books for Sponsorship Sellers

Amazon.com Widgets Ice to the Eskimos In just three years as president of the hopeless New Jersey Nets, Spoelstra upped the sponsorship level from $400,000 to $7 million and increased ticket sales by 300 percent. What everyone else had seen as a lost cause, Spoelstra saw as an outstanding opportunity to reawaken a tired product to achieve unprecedented profitability. As sponsorship seller...

Sponsorship Communications 101

Today SBJ/SBD reports that golf agents are seeing "cautious optimism" that corporate skepticism towards golf sponsorships has waned. The New York Times didn't sound too optimistic last week when they reported a tepid appetite for the U.S. Open's $230k tents. Turns out they might both be right. Darren Rovell sat down with crisis management consultant Gene Grabowski, who offers a slightly d...