Blowing Money on Sponsorships?

Last week’s column topic was about how Wal-Mart and other large retailers are commanding vendor brand marketing budgets in the same proportions those brands sell of their total sales through retailers. Since this action reduces the amount of dollars a brand has influence over spending, it logically follows that brand marketers will have fewer dollars to earmark toward sponsorship marketing ini...

Sponsorship ROI & Measurement 101

In this environment, it's tough to sell a sponsorship if you can't come up with a clear cut roadmap for measurement. With that in mind we thought it would be a good idea to share what we consider to be a very good primer on sponsorship measurement and ROI, as put together by consumer research firm, SponsorMap™. It's about 50 pages, but worth the read. Click on "full" at the bottom left of the ...

BMW Exits Formula One

BMW's effort to win a Formula One championship came to a sudden end on Wednesday after the German automaker said they will be ending their Formula One sponsorship at the end of this year. The move comes after a Tuesday board meeting that apparently sealed the fate of the proposed new commercial agreement that would have committed BMW to Formula One through at least 2012. Despite having a dis...

Deal Flow 7-28-2009

Soccer United Marketing (SUM) today announced a multi-year sponsorship with AT&T that make AT&T the official communications partner of the U.S. men’s and women’s national teams and MLS. Roush Fenway confirmed that Crown Royal will be the lead sponsor for Matt Kenseth's #17 car at Roush-Fenway Racing, taking over for Dewalt's 12 year relationships with the NASCAR team. Johnsonville Sa...

Travel Michigan Gets Technical

Time was when travel sponsorships involved a simple booth and a sweepstakes. Last weekend, Michigan married GPS technology with one of the world's most prestigious fresh water sailing events in an effort to drive visitors to michigan.org. Travel Michigan spent $110,000 to title the Bayview Mackinac Race in its 85th year and then installed GPS devices on more than 200 participating boats. Fan...

Sponsors Silent on Vick Reinstatement

Giving Sponsorship Back to the Fans

Social media has reshaped the game. blah blah blah. You've heard it a million times from the promotions and social media teams within your organization, BUT what does it mean for sponsorship professionals - that is the real question we should be concerned with here, right? Well, the answer may just lie in a couple very recent consumer and sponsorship trends. When you combine them in the rig...

What are you reading when you read the news?

One simple jolt to your corporate sponsorship selling efforts is to read the news more creatively than you used to. Look for opportunities. That's just one suggestion I offered participants of my workshop a couple weeks ago at the Texas Festival & Event Association conference (and to readers of my new guidebook). Here are a couple examples of what I mean. I recently came across this news i...

Hello World!

Welcome to SponsorPitch. We'll use this blog to tell you about changes around the site and talk about some of the hot topics in sponsorship. So here goes... We sent out our first newsletter last week. You can check it out online here: https://app.e2ma.net/app/view:CampaignPublic/id:23989.1450762610/rid:7dcb8cf580f4e6b4a9561e9313fb69ed If you're not already signed-up for our regular email...

Economy, Innovation & Ideas

Molly Beal of the Wall Street Journal wrote a good article today entitled "Winning at all Costs": http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122890850076094477.html?mod=googlenews_wsj In this article she discusses the ripple effect that dwindling sponsorship dollars may have on teams, leagues and venues. It's hard to escape the overall doom and gloom forecasts, no matter what your place is within the ...