Got Sponsors?
Experts Say Creativity is the Key to Reeling ‘em In
by Pat McCarrell | Published in March 2006 Focus on Event Marketing
Planners have long counted on sponsorships to grease the wheels of their events, and new evidence suggests that corporate sponsors are spending more.
So why isn’t it getting easier to get big-dollar corporations to sponsor the many assets an event can offer?
To be sure, high-attendance events such as sports spectacles are getting it done. Title sponsorships of the past season’s college bowl games alone reached $44 million, according to sponsorship-research firm IEG Inc. But what about the 5,000-member association meeting or the trade show with 3,000 attendees?
The answer may lie in the shifting expectations of corporate sponsors and recognizing a fit between an event and a previously unrecognized potential sponsor.
Corporations today are spending more on sponsorships than in the past, but they want to know what benefits they’ll gain from a given sponsorship.
Experts say setting goals early will help the event owner demonstrate both tangible and intangible benefits. Planning early also helps event owners reach their own goals by determining a price that accounts for all of the benefits a sponsor receives.
Once set, goals have to be measured. Again, planning early is the key to providing a yardstick that all parties have agreed will measure the result once the attendees are on their planes and the equipment is packed away.
So what are corporate sponsors looking for, anyway?
Sponsorship goals today often go beyond name-recognition to the customer-acquisition goals once reserved for more targeted advertising.
“Sponsorship today is dramatically different than five years ago or 10 years ago,” says Bruce Florine, vice president for U.S. sponsorships at brand manager Momentum Worldwide. “As investment in traditional media shrinks and non-traditional media investment grows, there’s more pressure on asset owners to show that a sponsorship is effective. Measurement wasn’t as important five years ago because less money was being invested in sponsorships.”
That emphasis on measurement has caused many potential sponsors to look for more concrete outcomes than brand awareness. After all, measuring name recognition resulting from a sponsorship is challenging.
Moreover, a big sponsor, the one every event would love to land, likely already has name recognition.
“Coke and Kleenex don’t need name recognition anymore,” says Betsy Wiersma of Wiersma Experience Marketing in Denver. “They need bridges between the customer and their products.”
What that sponsor wants now is help defeating a competitor or introducing a new product line – the traditional goals of direct advertising. So for many companies, having their names on signs, lanyards or the event coffee break hold less value than in the past.
Generally, many experts say, the sponsors’ worlds have shifted, and in many cases, those who seek sponsors for their events have failed to keep pace.
Jane Lorimer of Lorimer Consulting Group says a company’s name on a conference bag is still an effective sponsorship tool, but lacks the measurability that sponsors today seek.
“You can still count on big banners and coffee breaks getting sponsors,” she says. “But I’m seeing more companies, especially in high tech, bundling sponsorships.”
At one recent medical association show, Lorimer says the only sponsor that attendees remembered consistently was that of the restrooms. “And that’s because it was for an incontinence product,” she explains.
Rather than signing up a sponsor for the conference bag, Lorimer suggests bundling it in a creative package of sponsorship opportunities. Those packages are only limited by the creativity of the event staff. Unfortunately, she says, many in the events industry aren’t using their imaginations to come up with new and exciting sponsorship ideas.
“It’s the people who are buying sponsorships who are coming up with the fresh ideas,” Lorimer says.
New ideas are central to Wiersma’s advice to her trade show and event clients hoping to land sponsors.
About the author: Pat McCarrell
Pat McCarrell was formerly the publisher and editor of Event Solutions magazine.
Contact: editor@event-solutions.com