Experiential: 3 Ways to Maximise Your Assets 20th January, 2012

With the London 2012 Olympics fast approaching we are due an influx of experiential campaigns in 2012. With headline sponsors of P&G, Coke and McDonald’s taking the majority of the London 2012 marketing opportunities – both in sponsorship as well as ramped up advertising campaigns, other brands will be engaging in shorter term experiential marketing to capitalise on this once in a lifetime opportunity.

Experiential marketing at its basics is a live brand marketing campaign allowing consumers to experience the product through their senses.  It occurs in real time and is a two way communication between the brand and consumer – creating a lasting connection with the brand, which is then amplified through other marketing channels. Experiential activation offers a great way to showcase a brand’s products, or simply demonstrate what the company can offer with immediate feedback.  Some examples of experiential campaigns we’ve run include Tracker’s Photo Booth for the What Car Awards 2012 and the EA Sports’ Game Hub at the London Irish Rugby Club’s St. Patricks Day Party.

Maximising Assets for Experiential Sponsorship Campaigns

1) Brand Positioning

With immediate feedback, experiential activities first need to ensure their audience is the right audience to be receiving feedback from.  Ensure that you are very clear who the target audience is first and then decide how best to reach them and more importantly where to reach them.

Being relevant to the right consumers will provide both the correct feedback, but also will enable you to drive the communications further through additional marketing campaigns.

2) Engagement is Essential

You have to be engaging in activity consumers can relate to and want to engage with. The message and positioning should be clear and concise ensuring cut through.  Providing people an experience that is on brand for the experiential activation, on brand for the company and also on brand for the sponsorship platform will create a cohesive message with all parties building resonance with the audience.

3) Make it Last

Even if your experiential activity is a one-off campaign, ensure you are making the most of it and that you have resources to support this.  If the objective is to create a viral campaign through the experiential activity, do not forget to include a social strategy that will drive this communication forward through user networks and your own company network through user generated content, videos, competitions, etc.

Do Social Media Benefits Really Benefit Sponsors? 15th September, 2011

Social media has not only changed the way an audience can interact with a sponsorship property, but also with how they can interact with the sponsors of that property and vice versa.  Without fully understanding social media for the organisation in question, it would be impossible to try and deliver value to a sponsor associated.

Here are some top tips and questions to ask yourself before you consider integrating sponsorship benefits within your sponsorship proposal.

Do You Have an Online Audience?

Many sponsorship proposals include social media activation with their audience for prospective sponsors; however, this is typically even before they’ve even set up the account.  Many rights owners do not realise that it can take a significant amount of resource to develop and manage social networks so make time to do your research before you promise brands something you aren’t able to deliver at the point of signing the contract.

The benefit of social media is that it is instantaneous, but if you haven’t developed your social network before you offer the rights over to a sponsor, you aren’t offering much of anything.

Is Your Social Network Engaged?

Once you’ve built your social network, you need to ensure that the users are engaged with your content.  If you don’t have an engaged audience then there is no benefit to a sponsor of your property because their message will be falling on deaf ears.

5 Tips to Creating Engaging Content:

  1. Be relevant
  2. Provide insight
  3. Offer competitions or money-can’t buy benefits for engaging with you
  4. Provide exclusive content they can’t find anywhere else
  5. If possible, try to be genuinely funny

Does Your Social Network Want to Hear From Your Sponsors?

Your network is important and needs to be treated with care.  Do not sign them up and then bombard them with messages that they do not want to hear.  This rings true for any and all communication, but especially with social media as it far easier to individuals to block messages online than it is through the post.

Make sure to listen to your audience and provide them content that they find valuable.  As long as your sponsor’s messages fall in line with these guidelines you can ensure that you are truly delivering the benefits you are offering.

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What Can I Sell? Top 5 Tips to Uncover Sponsorship Assets 10th August, 2011

We have been doing a lot of Slingshot Sponsorship Boot Camps recently to gear up for the start of September.  As such, I thought I’d start a blog series following what we discuss and some tips to think about when constructing your own sponsorship proposals.

Assets are typically a problem area for rights holders.  Being submersed in their own product, sometimes it’s difficult to uncover something that you see on a daily basis, so these top tips and questions should help you uncover opportunities you haven’t thought of yet!

1.  What communication tools do I have?

Although I am not a fan of badging (plastering logos on any and everything you have), communication to your audience is what the sponsor is after so you need to look at all opportunities to integrate sponsors within those communications, although bearing in mind that engaging communications are better than logos.  Communication can include everything from:

  • Email newsletters (to read more on how, check out my blog post on the DMA Email Blog: Email Sponsorship: How to do it and why?)
  • Printed communications
  • Promotional advertisements
  • Online display
  • Events

2.  Who are your super stars?

Do you have anyone within your company or anyone your company works with that could potentially be an asset to a brand?  If so, and they are willing, you could work with these leaders to provide benefits to your sponsor by speaking at their events or promoting their brand.  Some ideas of unusual super stars could be:

  • Talent or brand ambassadors
  • Politicians
  • Highly successful CEOs who could act as mentors/speakers
  • Musicians/artists

3.  Social media

If you are using social media and have a regular engagement with your audience, this is a great platform for brands to run competitions or promotions.  Typically the audience is younger and more technology friendly so keep the audience in mind when including social media assets within your sponsorship offering.  Social media is a great way for you to add value to a sponsor without much cost, but don’t underestimate the importance of having a ‘working’ social network.  Just tweeting or posting competitions is not enough – you must have a social media strategy which is engaging, both for your property and also for your sponsors.  More about how to integrate sponsorship with social media, read my guest blog post on Content and Motion’s Blog Social Media & Sponsorship: Can Facebook & YouTube Ever Become Co-brandable Assets for Brands?

4.  Partnerships: are there other partnerships that you can leverage for your sponsors?

Media partnerships can be great opportunities to provide content for promotion.  When this works well and everyone is working together these partnerships can be extremely successful.  Integrating these opportunities for your sponsors can add significant value and should be considered, especially if your property does not yet have a large audience.

5.  Extras

Any additional events that you could include, not only add value to the sponsor, but also to your property.  Extras can include providing a Sponsors Lunch or Sponsor’s VIP Reception.  These types of events allow sponsors to network with each other and often uncover other partnership opportunities that can be built around your property through brainstorming synergies.  Especially if these extra events are timed so they coincide with a lull in your marketing schedule, they provide an added opportunity for you to continue building your relationship with your sponsor throughout the year.