Author: Slingshot Team

Slingshot Sponsorship signs leading charity Mencap 13th March, 2011

Mencap appoints Slingshot Sponsorship to act as their exclusive sponsorship agency across their events.

Mencap, the leading UK based charity helping people with learning disabilities, has appointed Slingshot Sponsorship to develop and implement a new sponsorship strategy across their high-profile events. Slingshot Sponsorship has been briefed to increase awareness as well as increase the commercial value for the charity through creation of sponsorship opportunties.

Slingshot Sponsorship will be responsible for providing Mencap with consulting and implementation for upcoming events such as April Fools – a stand-up comedy at HMV Hammersmith Apollo and the extremely popular Little Noise music festival.

“We are delighted to be working with the Slingshot Sponsorship agency as our exclusive agency”, states Leo Visconti, Head of Corporate Development at Mencap “As a leading UK charity for learning disability, we have a very specific brief and the tailored solutions Slingshot Sponsorship offers works perfectly with our business. We are looking forward to working with Slingshot Sponsorship and being introduced to brands for each of our events”.

Jackie Fast, managing director, Slingshot Sponsorship commented: “For charities in the current economic client, a strategic long-term sponsorship strategy is critical. Mencap is a fantastic charity with amazing events which has huge potential to build brand relationships through tangible sponsorship rights. We are looking forward to applying our expertise in optimising brand media assets and working with such a great cause.”

About Mencap

Mencap supports the 1.5 million people with a learning disability in the UK and their families and carers. Mencap fights to change laws and improve services and access to education, employment and leisure facilities, supporting thousands of people with a learning disability to live their lives the way they want.

We are also one of the largest service providers of services, information and advice for people with a learning disability across England, Northern Ireland and Wales. See www.mencap.org.uk for more information.

About learning disability

A learning disability is caused by the way the brain develops before, during or shortly after birth. It is always lifelong and affects someone’s intellectual and social development. It used to be called mental handicap but this term is outdated and offensive. Learning disability is NOT a mental illness.

The term learning difficulty is often incorrectly used interchangeably with learning disability.

My 15 Minutes of Fame on the London Hotspots Blog 7th March, 2011

I recently was interviewed for the London Hotspots Blog with Executive Offices Group. The London Hotspots blog has the best of business advice, entertainment, travel, food and drink from across the capital so make sure to check it out.

My interview was a great experience and gave me an opportunity to talk more about the great things we are doing with Slingshot Sponsorship and our newest client campaigns.

They asked everything from the best piece of business advice I had ever received down to what we are planning for 2011 and beyond. I thought I’d give a little sneak peek on our blog with one of their questions on what our average week is like, but you can check out the entire interview here.

What is an average week like for the MD of Slingshot?
There is no average work week for me. Things change all the time and we constantly have to be flexible to meet the needs of our clients and our business. This is one of the best things about what we do. Some weeks involve attending a lot of client events – anything from black-tie balls at the Grosvenor House Hotel to high profile breakfast events in the City. Other weeks can involve white board strategy planning and briefing in creative work for new sponsorship proposals.

As we typically start working with clients at integration stage – with them having little experience in sponsorship – and then taking them to delivery, we can be at many different stages with different clients. This means that one day might be spent tweaking copy for benefits in a sponsorship proposal for one client and the next day spent on the phone setting up meetings to discuss how brands can get involved with our client’s media assets. The variety of our day to day work makes working at Slingshot Sponsorship exciting.

Need a Sponsorship Sales Consultant? Top 10 Things to Ask Yourself 21st February, 2011

The need for sponsorship sales consultants is apparent everywhere. On almost every LinkedIn Group, Twitter feed, and on numerous email requests I see people looking for someone who can sell their property rights. Considering money can be hard to come by, I understand the reasons why this is now one of the most sought after positions. However, there are things that you should consider and things you need to be aware of before you take someone on.

In this blog, I’ll explain the Top 10 Things You Should Ask Yourself before considering hiring a sponsorship sales agency or consultant. There are variations of sponsorship consultants – those that work on commission-only, those that work on tactical, those that work with sports personalities, and many more variations.

In this first blog of a series, we’ll start by looking at whether you even need one and if you do, can you support one?

Do you need a sponsorship sales consultant? If you have enough resource and staff with a good knowledge of both your property and an idea of what sponsorship can achieve, then you might not even need a sponsorship sales consultant. If you don’t have this, then…
Can you outsource sponsorship sales to another sales department? Sometimes this can be disastrous – most often when the media ad sales team tries to take this task on. However, sometimes all it needs is a bit of sponsorship sales training and the right sponsorship proposals for your media ad sales teams to hit the ground running.
Do you understand sponsorship strategy? If you are unsure about what sponsorship assets you own and how to package them, typically you will need more than just a sponsorship sales consultant, you will need a sponsorship agency to valuate rights, put together a strategy and do the research.
Do you know if your property rights can be sold? History is a great way to understand what rights you have and if there is a market for them. However, many rights owners are just starting to integrate these strategies and are unsure of whether it can be done. As such, you really should determine the evaluation of the rights first before you waste time and resource in outsourcing sales that haven’t been strategically developed in the first place. You should evaluate your sponsorship rights before even considering hiring a sponsorship sales consultant.
Is sponsorship an organisational goal? Sponsorship takes a lot of time and effort (even if sales are outsourced) within an organisation. If it is not an organisational goal, it will often get left behind and sales (whether done internally or externally) will not be successful. It takes a whole organisation to support this activity and the resource should not be underestimated. However saying that, sponsorship can help drive organisational change and innovation – we just suggest that everyone is behind the idea before you get started.
Are there politics within offering sponsorship? Sponsorship can sometimes be a tricky thing to integrate due to politics. Sponsorship sales consultants who are not involved with the strategy may not appreciate these constraints without having a more long-term approach to working with your rights.
Do you have senior staff and/or board members who will be against new sponsors coming on board? If this is the case, it will be difficult to get sponsors involved and those that do get involved with have difficulty activating their sponsorship and will not renew, making your sponsorship unsustainable.
Do you understand your objectives with integrating sponsorship? Sponsorship not only can become a new revenue stream, it can also reduce costs. This is a great avenue, especially for new property rights and needs to be considered when approaching brands. Understanding the objectives and all the benefits you can achieve through sponsorship is important before hiring consultants so you can measure performance against KPIs.
Do you have enough time? Sponsorship tends to be an afterthought when budgets haven’t been met. This creates a situation of distress sales and can often be detrimental to the rights owners. This needs to be communicated carefully and sales need to be strategically thought out.
Do you know who to go to? Putting out random messages on social networks is not the best way to find sponsorship sales consultants. You need recommendations from people who have worked with them or have done the research. As mentioned, it is quite easy to call yourself a sponsorship sales consultant because so many people are in need. However, you need to do due diligence to ensure your programme is not dependent on people who cannot do the job.

Further to Question 10, we’ve had so many properties looking for consultants so we’ve put together an industry roster of sponsorship sales consultants. If you every need advice, please email info@slingshotsponsorship.com with your brief, property rights, and location and we will try and pair you up with a consultant that is most relevant to what you are looking to achieve.

For any sponsorship sales consultants who want to be on our roster, please check out this blog in order to qualify.

Slingshot Sponsorship Wordle & our 3 Key Terms 7th February, 2011

Although not shocking, I recently created a Wordle that highlighted the most commonly used words on our blog. Unsurprisingly, three key words outside of the word sponsorship came up: Audience, Brand, and Marketing.

Audience

Without an audience sponsorship cannot exist. An audience is the most relevant part of a sponsorship as it is the key reason why brands use the sponsorship platform as a marketing tool. Although the benefits and perks of sponsorship are always great – exclusive access to unique events, such as the pit at Formula1 and tickets to private concerts – these no longer are the key reasons brands choose sponsorship.

Sponsorship creates access to a brand and builds relationships faster than straight forward advertising through the built-in goodwill and association. The audience is typically already engaged with the platform and presents a prime opportunity to slowly enhance this through brand relationships or dramatically change brand perceptions through positioning.

The audience is key and should always be the core focus of how brands can cleverly positioning their marketing and experiential activity with their sponsorship rights in order to create an impactful campaign.

Brand

The brand fit is also crucial to a successful sponsorship. As noted, brands can utilise sponsorship for a number of reasons – launching a product, brand awareness, changing positioning and changing perceptions to name but a few. Depending on the rights and activation strategy, the brand health needs to be considered to ensuring that sponsorship doesn’t intrude on the rights purchased. Many consumers, especially in the charity or government sector, can sometimes view sponsorship as a commercial ‘sell out’ against the brand, which may turn into a lack of audience, which then negatively influences what the brand sponsor set out to achieve in the first place. These issues need to be considered from both parties when purchasing sponsorship rights and when bringing on board sponsors.

Marketing

Sponsorship is a form of clever marketing – or we think so at least! However, basic marketing techniques need to be applied when using sponsorship to ensure that value is delivered for both parties. One of the key things that I think the sponsorship industry continues to fail in comparison to the marketing industry is measurement.

Historically, sponsorship has been difficult to measure and therefore became an afterthought. However, with more red tape in the sponsorship industry, ROI and measurement is vital and needs to be built into sponsorship activation strategies at the outset. Measurement in sponsorship can be as simple as focus groups and surveys to as complicated as consumer purchase behaviour patterns with brands.

Whatever the strategy, it should be discussed and built into whatever sponsorship you are developing in order to comparatively show how sponsorship can truly outperform standard marketing campaigns.

Sport Sponsorship Rights for a Fraction of the Cost 31st January, 2011

London Irish Rugby Club, the legendary rugby team, will this year expand the popular St. Patrick’s Day Party to five big events. These include a total of five games with experiential activity known as The Big 5 – five games of world class rugby combined with live entertainment, creating a fan experience beyond ‘just another rugby game’.

Experiential Marketing: Creating the Experience

Slingshot Sponsorship came on board to help London Irish Rugby club take these events to the next level. We developed an experiential sponsorship offering for brands which created value for both the brands involved as well as the fans. Not only did this create an experience, it also helped London Irish create synergy of marketing activity, a new revenue stream, as well as some exciting experiences. By providing flexibility and a low entry cost, London Irish enabled brands to leverage their best assets ensuring brand fit through their experiential activity.

Case Study: Global Action Plan

One partner involved is Global Action Plan, an award winning environmental charity based in London. Global Action Plan has created the Climate Squad with their wide-reaching environmental initiative Pump It Up. Pump It Up involves young volunteers pumping car tyres and explaining to car owners how keeping your car tyres pumped at the recommended levels can save money and the environment. As the Madjeski stadium car park is a prime location for car tyres, this provided Global Action Plan a fantastic opportunity to get involved in sport sponsorship, whilst also accessing a prime audience to their initiative.

In addition, the involvement of London Irish Rugby Club provides an incentive for Global Action Plan to recruit volunteers to both The Big 5 and introduce other volunteer opportunities with Global Action Plan in the future. And best of all, London Irish fans get their tyres pumped and learn how to start saving the environment!

Through these additional events running alongside the most well attended London Irish games, The Big 5 creates an unrivalled opportunity for consumer brands to engage and associate with London Irish fans and the London Irish brand. This can help current premier rugby league sponsors enhance their sponsorship rights as well as new brands to ‘get their feet wet’ with rugby sponsorship for a fraction of the cost of shirt sponsorship rights.

Sponsorship resurges in the Marketing Mix 23rd January, 2011

Sponsorship, once a symbol of corporate excess and indulgence, is resurgent as marketers find a new place for it within the marketing mix.

As sports fans will be all too aware, many leading companies and brands are pulling out of their sponsorship deals with major sporting events, high-profile teams and sports stars as they look to shore up their marketing budgets. Prominent sponsorship deals such as Honda’s Formula 1 racing team, Vodafone’s long relationship with the English Cricket Board and the Derby, and GM’s endorsement deal with Tiger Woods are just a few of the notable examples of the lucrative partnerships that have bitten the dust as embattled companies rein in their marketing spend.

The hundreds of column inches given over to these tales of woe has created the impression that the golden age of the sponsorship deal has been dealt a severe blow by the Credit Crunch. However, while many of these multi-million pound sponsorship deals are drying up, there is surging interest among marketers to find new sponsorship vehicles. This has seen the integration of brands that are not natural competitors, but nonetheless share the same target audience. Thomas Cook has just signed up to sponsor Kiss FM’s Saturday night ‘Kissalicious’ show, their very first media spend on their Club 18-30 brand in four years. The Co-operative is the new sponsor of the next instalment of the High School Musical franchise, their second deal with a Disney-owned series.

Why include sponsorship in the marketing mix?

Sponsorship is a powerful way to engage with consumers. At a time when people are constantly marketed to through an increasing number of channels, engagement is vital for marketers to get their message across to their target audiences. Sponsorship is a medium which can facilitate this by creating tangible ‘touchpoints’ for the consumer to come into contact with and interact with a brand. Entering into a sponsor partnership can give a brand access to a space outside the reach of regular marketing channels, as well as create unique touchpoint opportunities through which to build brand awareness.

Sponsoring a sporting spectacle, team or cultural event is also a way to foster within the target audience positive feelings towards a brand. Aligning a brand with something about which the target audience feels passionate can serve to create goodwill. It is an age old fact that people tend to favour others who like the same things as they do; this dynamic is no less true when it comes to forming a relationship between brand and audience.

This engagement between brand and audience is vital to engendering ‘receptivity’ in consumers, which is especially useful for a company trying to launch a new product or break into a new market. Even if a brand has been successfully established in one field, it can still find it difficult to penetrate a new market because of a lack of audience familiarity. Through sponsorship, the target audience can be ‘primed’ to be receptive to the brand, which means that they will be more likely to pay attention to specific marketing messages.

Finding the right sponsorship deal

Sponsorship is usually classed as an ‘above the line’ activity because of its mass engagement between a brand and a broad audience. However, while the essential marketing principles of sponsorship are common to every sponsorship deal, marketers are now unlocking its ability to deliver the benefits normally associated with ‘below the line’ marketing channels. Traditionally, the grand sponsorship deal was as much about the kudos of being seen to be a patron of prestigious sports and arts spectacles, as it was an exercise in engagement. Nowadays, finding the right sponsorship vehicle, as opposed to the most illustrious, is vital for measurability and demonstrating ROI.

Integrating sponsorship into the marketing mix means that the targeting strategy behind a sponsorship programme should be no different to that for any other form of direct marketing campaign. Outside of sport and entertainment, marketers are now turning their attention to sponsoring non-traditional vehicles that lack a broad public profile, but are nonetheless the right medium for reaching their exact target market. Recent sponsorship deals we have done for the Direct Marketing Association (UK) (DMA) with sponsors Royal Mail, ITV, Equifax, VisitScotland and other major brands, show how effective these partnerships can be.

For example, Equifax, a global leader in credit and business information, recently signed a deal to become the official data sponsor of the DMA to promote its ‘Heart of Data Intelligence’ campaign to the UK marketing industry. As many of the DMA’s 900 corporate members are prime users and suppliers of data, this was the exact market Equifax wanted to target. The sponsorship deal has enabled Equifax to engage with its target market through having a strong brand presence at the DMA’s 2009 and 2010 DMA Awards, regional and networking events, data-focused seminars, conferences and symposia, and the Young Spark Award organised by DMA Scotland. Equifax has integrated this sponsorship into its marketing campaign and reach potential customers in ways that are not possible through other channels.

As this partnership shows, sponsorship is a versatile marketing channel that is well suited to B2B brands, not just B2C brands. While sport and the arts may be the first sponsorship vehicles that come to mind, there are many more opportunities available for the marketer to consider. Sponsorship can actually work better for B2B brands than B2C as there is more flexibility to the relationship and the audience is highly targeted. If you have not yet thought about integrating sponsorship into your marketing mix, or felt it wasn’t useful to your type of business, take a look at your current market and what your competitors are doing – it may surprise you.

Email Newsletter Sponsorship: How to do it and Why 17th January, 2011

Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels available, ensuring a wide reaching audience and proven results. E-Newsletters are particularly useful for organisations as a tool for communicating with customers, building engagement, driving traffic, and directing customers to key content. And, with a groundswell of readers behind it, an email newsletter can be used as a platform for sponsorship – providing a great revenue opportunity as well as a great marketing opportunity for potential brand partners to create new engagement opportunities with your audiences.

Sponsorship of e-Newsletters can be a powerful way to tap into a new customer segments and aligning your brand to relevant and complimentary topics or propositions. It helps increase exposure in a receptive environment (your customers’ inbox) and can subtly promote your brand whilst gaining goodwill through association.

For the converted, there are a variety of e-Newsletter sponsorship investment levels to consider, which vary according to type of audience (mass market B2C vs niche market B2B), frequency (daily vs monthly), and style of content (promotions vs editorial). From a cost perspective, most range between £1,000 and £3,500 a campaign (which may translate to a one off, mass market hit, or a monthly ‘takeover’ of display ads).

A great example of an e-Newsletter sponsorship opportunity is eConsultancy, who offer a prime position on their daily alerts for £2,250, which is sent out to a 10,000 to 12,000 opted-in subscriber list.

However, not all e-Newsletters are appropriate for the task. There are a few points that we always take into consideration when talking to clients about before considering this style of sponsorship. Here’s a quick overview:

1. Audience: an e-Newsletter can only be sponsored if it attracts an audience that is either sufficiently large or very niche. To state the obvious, B2C e-Newsletters require a large audience to be of interest, whilst B2B e-Newsletters can deliver value with smaller audiences with greater purchasing power. If you have an e-Newsletter that might be attractive to sponsors, but you don’t yet have a sponsorship sales strategy, you will need to demonstrate value in your audience through proof of size, quality and engagement of your audience. Most email marketing applications will provide you with basic analytics tools to generate this information.

2. Measurement: ROI is key to sponsorship and vital for brand sponsors when choosing who to spend their marketing budget with. Analytics tools will also provide publishers and sponsors with all of the necessary metrics to understand views, click throughs and open rates; and it is this data that will ensure that pricing and value for money are maintained at the right level.

3. Resource: sponsorship is not just about attaching someone else’s brand to yours. For this style of sponsorship to be successful there needs to be a dedicated team behind it that understands data, brand synergies, and the ability to unearth unseen co-branding opportunities. This is no small task, but this kind of attention to campaign management can turn e-Newsletter sponsorship opportunities into gold.

Haymarket Consumer Media appoints Slingshot Sponsorship as exclusive sponsorship agency for What Car? Car of the Year Awards 10th January, 2011

Slingsho t Sponsorship, the thriving new sponsorship agency run by Jackie Fast, has recently been appointed as the exclusive sponsorship agency for the popular consumer publication What Car? along with the What Car? Car of the Year Awards published by Haymarket Consumer Media.

The What Car? Car of the Year Awards are the most prestigious awards programme that every manufacturer wants to win. Through a rigorous judging process, winning manufacturers of the What Car? Car of the Year Award can prove the highest standards in their class. With over 900 of the automotive industry leaders in attendance, the upcoming event held on January 13^th will be the highlight in the automotive industry’s social calendar.

The What Car? Car of the Year Awards has chosen to work with Slingshot Sponsorship as their exclusive sponsorship agency in order to implement a strategic and sustainable sponsorship programme across this event and publication. The key objective will be to develop a sponsorship programme that is both attractive to brands that are looking to reach the automotive industry as well as initiate sponsorship relationships to build brand awareness of What Car?

Andrew Golby, Publishing Director of What Car? comments, “We’re very pleased to be working with Slingshot Sponsorship. The What Car? Awards are recognised as the automotive equivalent of the Oscars, and our ambition is to take the event to even greater heights. Through strategic sponsorship, we hope to offer an effective marketing opportunity, and share the power of the What Car? brand that winning car makers already enjoy.”

Jackie Fast, Managing Director, Slingshot Sponsorship commented: “For rights owners looking to develop sponsorship programmes that have longevity and growth, strategy and brand engagement are vital. We are looking forward to applying our expertise with rights owners to help What Car? integrate their many assets into a coherent sponsorship opportunity that help fulfil engagement with brands.”

Slingshot Sponsorship will work with the What Car? to create and develop sponsorship opportunities leading up to their event in January 2012.

If you are interested in finding out more information on being involved with the What Car? Car of the Year Awards as a sponsor, please contact Jackie Fast, e: jackie@slingshotsponsorship.com, t: 0207 420 8217

5 Sponsorship Predictions for 2011 5th January, 2011

We anticipate that 2011 is going to be a great year with a lot of changes in sponsorship. Not only for Slingshot Sponsorship, having recently signed some exciting clients including Haymarket and London Irish, but also for the sponsorship industry as a whole. With the Olympics around the corner, an interesting shift in marketing that has occurred as cause of the recession last year, as well as public funding cuts, we think sponsorship will take on a whole new meaning in 2011. We anticipate it will be a shift for current sponsors, rights holders, and brands alike looking to break into sponsorship. We can’t wait!

But before the year starts, we thought we’d put some of our 2011 predications together and then see how they play out!

More Engaging Sponsorship Campaigns: following the trend seen in 2010, we anticipate that the industry will become more creative in regards to creating brand engagement campaigns through sponsorship. Especially with the 2012 Olympics around the corner, everyone will be vying for the title of activation champion and devising some thought provoking campaigns to catch the attention of brands.
Decrease in Brand Ambassadors: after the backlash of negative publicity surrounding Tiger Woods and Wayne Rooney, we expect that we’ll see a decrease in the sponsorship of individuals and signing of brand ambassadors. Especially considering that the economic climate is still difficult, marketing directors are finding more red tape in regards to negotiations with the leading sports and music stars.
Increase in Sponsored Events and Tournaments: as a result of the decrease in brand ambassadors, brands will be looking to for new sponsorship opportunities to align themselves through main sponsorship of the events and/or tournaments. This will provide brands the opportunity to align themselves to the sport while minimising the risk of negative individual publicity.
Increase in Digital Sponsorship: digital sponsorship activation is starting to really take shape and drive sponsorship opportunities. In 2010, we saw an increase in iGaming companies sponsoring sports – especially premier league football. The introduction of these sponsorship deals has helped develop the rights owner’s digital strategy with the sponsor, enabling them to create synergy of digital resource. Our favourite digital sponsorship campaign in 2010 was the Manchester United vs Manchester City online campaign with slogans that fans could submit online for the promotional campaign produced by Betfair. This showed a great leap in digital sponsorship activation led by a digital sector based sponsor.
Cluttered Market for Public Funding: due to public funding cuts in the United Kingdom, we anticipate that there will be an influx of adequately written sponsorship proposals for fantastic CRM programmes sent directly to brands. As such, this will make it harder for sponsorship proposals to really stand out from the crowd. This creates a great opportunity for sponsorship agencies to help educate the market and aid in creating credible and sustainable sponsorship programmes in 2011.

Whatever 2011 holds, we’ll be sure to keep you posted on our Slingshot Sponsorship Blog. To ensure you don’t miss anything, please sign up on the right hand side of this post.

Slingshot Sponsorship wishes you all the best for 2011!

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