Sponsorship + PR DeathMatch

Stand-up and take credit sponsorship professionals! Many a perfectly manicured press release has been mangled by your doings. Sure you've explained it away: "more deals, more revenue, more acknowledgements..." but when media relations and corporate sales really go to battle, who comes out alive? From Sarah Talalay of the Sun Sentinel: Here’s my favorite part of the press release [on th...

Selling Local Sponsorships for Nonprofits: Reaching Out

A cause is often the cornerstone of many sports and entertainment sponsorship platforms. Today's "key learning" comes from Joe Waters, who is the Director of Cause Marketing for Boston Medical Center, an avid blogger at Selfishgiving.com and a rabid Boston Red Sox fan. In addition to being a one-time winner of the SponsorPitch Friday Caption Contest, he has agreed to lend us his insights on ca...

All that Jazz... Sponsors Sing a New Note

Yesterday, TD Bank announced that it would take over presenting sponsorship (from GM) of the 2010 Montreal Jazz Festival, the largest jazz festival in the world with nearly 2.5 million visitors. Not to be outdone, Jazz' chief promoter on the same day announced an ambitious plan to revive jazz festivals in Newport and New York... this time on his own, just like he did for the first time in...

Cyber Monday Discount Offer

Sponsor-less in Seattle

Sometimes, as a group of like-minded sponsorship professionals, it's good to take our head out of sponsorville and see how the general public feels about the practice. Sure, media pundits weigh in about the virtues, and more often lately, the pitfalls of sponsorship, but how does Joe Public feel when his favorite event gets cancelled. When Chase spokesperson Donahoe-Wilmot said there's "no ch...

The New Killer B's of Sponsorship

What could be cooler on a summer Friday afternoon than a crash course in managerial finance. In college, you probably dreaded the thought of this as your last class of the week. Nevertheless, the economy means sponsorship professionals are getting an all too up close and personal look at the killer B's of a sponsorship deal: bankruptcy, bailouts and buyouts. Sure there are a lot of other thi...

Deal Flow 7-10-2009

Cisco today took over sponsorship of the 2012 London Olympics, from bankrupt technology company, Nortel. Cisco will fulfill all of Nortel's previous obligations in the new deal, said to be worth approximately $32 million in cash and services, but will provide approximately $20 million less in cash making Cisco a "tier two" provider. Nortel's original "tier one" deal was worth arround $65 mill...

Lesnar KO's UFC Sponsor, Apologizes

20 months is a long time -- when you just insulted one of your sport's biggest sponsors on your sport's biggest night. That's what is left of Bud Lights' three year sponsorship agreement with UFC. We've been talking a lot about ambush and the UFC's new protocol for league/fighter sponsor conflicts. Last night's UFC 100 presented us with a little bit of both, courtesy of UFC's new antagonis...

Priced to Play: the Case for Sponsored Gaming

According to a new study by market research firm Comscore, 87.1 million people were gaming online in the US as of May 2009, a 22 percent year over year increase. Over the same period, internet usage as a whole grew by only 2 percent. How can the online gaming sector be growing at a 20+ % clip when it is widely accepted that the fragmentation of entertainment interests continues to accelerate? ...

Lead Gen: From Sticky Notes to Sales Prospects

Have you ever sat down and thought about how you generate new sales leads? Here are a few of my personal experiences, as a sports team executive, that can be tailored to any rep in the sales business... Invest in your local city newspaper. Browse through articles and advertisements. Great way to pull up new businesses and learn of the top contacts for that company! Every paper will also hav...