Sponsor an Event or Partner with a Venue?
Event Sponsorship Needs an Overhaul
Sponsor an event, or partner with a venue? What would you do if you were a brand thinking about sponsoring a proposition?
Think about it, would you invest in a one-off one night stand at a venue, or have access to not one but multiple events across a seasonal or annual term at the property? Repeat and continuous engagement opportunities and fixed presence to try out and test a variety of ongoing activation options may give venues the upper hand relative to an ‘investment’ strategy. Besides, for most brands, investment is perceived as too great to support a single event.
Conclusion: Event sponsorship needs an overhaul.
Obviously not all events are unattractive. There is a case to be made for touring events; traveling from one venue to the next, offering a greater and varied return for a sponsor via multiple opportunities and endless touch points.
Of course there are, and will always be, sponsor-able one-off events. But not everyone’s event is the Super Bowl, or the GRAMMYs, or SXSW. Even the Olympics is made up of various events in various venues in various disciplines.
Think Beyond the Ordinary
If you’re an event producer or organiser, instead of trying to find the right sponsor for your upcoming event, step back, review your overall lineup and assets, and instead present your proposition as a multi-event opportunity. Sell yourself as the producer, willing and capable, not the event per se. This way you’re not chasing after sponsors time after time. Nor do you have to compete with thousands of similar ‘event sponsorship’ proposals collecting dust at the brand level.
More importantly, your valuation is more palatable this way. The valuation of the sum of your events is greater than the value of each event added together.
Most often than not, brands may not collaborate with you because your valuation is too low, or you end up dealing with local or regional sponsors, the local auto dealership for example, rather than the global or national headquarters of the auto manufacturer.
You can’t just inflate your value to justify your leverage either. You need to have a credible valuation study that’s not based on pulling a number out of a hat.
We can’t begin to tell you how often we come across this issue when approached by potential clients who want to hire us as their sponsorship agency. And take it from us, we’ve had many years of experience, especially in recent years where the above outlined brand perspective is the reality. Brands usually don’t even tell you why they’re not interested; they just don’t respond.
But if you arm yourself with a big picture attitude and a proactive strategy encompassing a larger return on investment for you and your brand ‘partner,’ you’ll enjoy more successes than having to take ‘no’ for an answer.
Strategy not Tragedy
Brands, like investors, look for opportunities that can deliver value over time. A broader portfolio of events, assets and activation opportunities can give a corporate partner more ways to engage and can reduce the reliance on the success of a single event.
Their risk can be greater when they’re presented with only a one-off opportunity.
Bottom line on event sponsorship: not impossible, but the odds are stacked against you.
For more on long-term partnership vs one-off sponsorship, read ‘Sponsorship Game is Changing.’