Author: Slingshot Team

Are UK Music Festivals Created with Cookie Cutters? Outlook Festival Proves Not 4th September, 2012

The Slingshot Sponsorship team just got back from an amazing week in Croatia at Outlook Festival – Winner of the UK’s Best Overseas Festival 2011. It was an amazing event and we arrived home – albeit a bit dusty, sun burnt and tired – with so much enthusiasm for next year’s festival and sponsorship opportunities around it I wrote this blog en route.

But before I begin, I will first explain that the term ‘cookie cutter’ means the same thing as carbon copy or effectively just the ‘same’. Apparently (which I’ve just found out from my British colleagues) you do not use this term in the UK. It makes a better picture than carbon copy, so we’ll use ‘cookie cutter’ for the time being.

Now that is cleared up…

During our trip we spoke to a number of brands who came out to join us and the same conversation kept coming up – that UK music festivals so often mirror each other and rarely offer a truly unique experience – they are cookie cutters of themselves. Same stage, similar line ups, same parks, and even the same brand sponsors! Now, of course, this doesn’t include every festival, but on the whole the feedback we’ve had is that brands have started to fall out of love (which equates to a loss of ROI) from something that has been a stronghold in our sponsorship industry.

Because of this, brands who are interested and align themselves to music have started to consider new platforms in music and other music events that feature a UK audience, but position themselves in a different environment whether that is music genres or geological location. Outlook Festival combines both.

Engagement with a more unique event can be tailor-made for sponsors and the experience stands these brands out from their competitors in an often uncluttered market as they are more forward thinking and attract less bandwagon followers. This allows sponsors to showcase and create a more genuine, forward-thinking, and most of all memorable brand experience.

My music festival sponsorship tip – If you are a brand sponsor, consider looking outside of the usual. If you are a music festival in need of sponsorship, start considering how important differentiation of your festival is to ensure you are able to effectively drive brand relationships with your audience.

And just to share, here are some of our Outlook Festival Instagram moments from the team:

What Car? Announces Sponsorship Deal with Mondial Assistance 21st August, 2012

What Car? has announced that Mondial Assistance UK will continue its sponsorship of the executive car category in the 2013 What Car? Car of The Year Awards.

The What Car? Car of the Year Awards are the most coveted accolades in the automotive industry. The Awards are presented to cars that set the highest standards in their sector after being put through the toughest, most rigorous tests by the most experienced team in the business.

Andrew Golby, What Car? publishing director, said: “We are pleased to be working with Mondial Assistance. It will help deliver our target to reach as many motorists as possible with the What Car? Car of the Year Awards news.”

The benefits of the sponsorship deal includes the alignment with the most authoritative and trusted brand in motoring, brand positioning and awareness, extensive PR opportunities, networking and brand association with the awards via a multi-channel promotional campaign.

Lee Taylor, Automotive Sales Director for Mondial Assistance in the UK said: “The sponsorship of the What Car? Awards is an important platform for us to build awareness of our change of name to become Allianz Global Assistance later this year. The automotive market remains an important part of our business and we will continue in our delivery and development of support services to vehicle manufacturers and their customers. Continuing our support of What Car? and its Car of The Year Awards demonstrates our commitment to the UK motor industry and enables us to communicate with the growing What Car? audience”.

Andrew Golby continued: “Winning a What Car? Award is good for a car maker’s business. The authority of the What Car? brand sells cars, plain and simple. It adds power to advertising and marketing campaigns and is a huge draw for customers.”

The What Car? Car of the Year Awards event is attended by more than 1000 leading industry figureheads alongside the most influential motoring correspondents from the wider media.

The event is to be held at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London on January 9, 2013 with top-class entertainment yet to be announced. Previous headline acts have included Jonathan Ross, Jimmy Carr, Al Murray and Jo Brand. For more information and table bookings visit www.whatcarawards.com

Calling all UK consultants & agencies – Slingshot Sponsorship needs you! 14th August, 2012

We have had the pleasure of working with some amazing clients recently through our One-Day Sponsorship Boot Camp. Many of whom are on the verge of producing great platforms and strategies that will create sustainable sponsorship programmes.

However, what many of them currently lack is the resource and sales skills to effectively sell their sponsorship packages to the UK market.

Slingshot have collated a sponsorship consultant and agency roster, which outlines all the good and great agencies and consultants who are able to work with projects on a commission-only or small-fee + commission package. However, with the recent influx of freelancers and agencies into sponsorship following the London Olympics our roster is in desperate need of an update.

We have a number of music festival and charity clients who are currently on the lookout so if you think you might have something to offer, we’d really love to hear from you so we can add you to our roster if you aren’t there already!

For more information and to be considered for our consultants roster, please contact Mark Mylam: mark@slingshotsponsorship.com | +44 (0) 207 226 5052.

How the Czech House Got It Right – Olympic Hospitality Houses 27th July, 2012

We are incredibly fortunate to have an office located in the Business Design Centre in London – and as of noon today, to be a part of the Czech Olympic Hospitality House.

Featuring the athletes, projections, DJs, and an artist installation along upper street featuring a full size London bus performing push ups – the Czech House is already making waves amongst Olympic goers and Islington dwellers.

The Czech Republic is one of a number of countries who have opened their doors to the British public allowing free entry into their activities during the Olympics. Other countries who are also hosting free hospitality houses include Germany, Jamaica, Switzerland, Brazil, France, and Africa. And although some of the other countries are featuring full scale restaurants, the Czech Republic have truly taken into consideration their location, audience, and strengths both as a country as well as a sports competitor.

Location & Audience

The Business Design Centre is a truly unique building and home to over hundreds of offices that span all industries. As one such office calling the BDC home, I know the entire Slingshot Team cannot wait to get involved. The hospitality house provides thousands of employees working in and around the BDC the opportunity to discover the Czech culture over a period of weeks whilst supporting their favourite sporting competitions – rather than the one stop evening that many of the other houses with featured restaurants/nightclubs are providing.

As an alternative, the Czech House is accessible to everyone at any time. Not only is it free for anyone to enter, the activities throughout the day and evening are so varied there is an interest for everyone. Whether that includes watching sport on the big screen, indie bands in the evening – or if you are like our colleague Emma, you could even participate in the 3 on 3 basketball competition during the day.

The Strength of the 3 on 3

The Czech Republic are very strong in basketball and this is reflected as soon as you walk into the Czech House with a full size 3 on 3 basketball court to play on. This of course is a great element of interaction for people visiting the house, but also supports their own activities and hopefully will get more people cheering and watching when they hopefully play the finals.

The Czech House official opens today at noon – make sure to follow me on Twitter @JackieFast as I’ll be tweeting and sending over pictures!

Corporate Events – 5 Tips to Driving a New Experience 19th June, 2012

Whether for team building or client hospitality, corporate events can be a great day out or a truly horrible one – think back to the recent Vodafone anti-team building campaign.

Having organised corporate events for both clients as well as staff teams, here are my top 5 tips to ensure your next corporate event is remembered:

Competition – competition can be a great way to really engage people in the activity chosen. Furthermore, it provides the Finance Director the chance to shine by beating the Sales Manager in an environment that everyone is equal on (Just don’t kill each other!)
Make sure it’s an even playing field – as above, choosing an activity that everyone can take part in is essential. There’s no point in taking a large office team on a round of golf, as the range of abilities will inevitably be so varied.
Interaction – time to speak to other people. If you are constantly ‘doing’ then it can take away from what the day is supposed to achieve.
Something different – far too often corporate events tend to take the shape of drinks. Whilst this is always a great thing, sometimes it can be monotonous – especially if you are organising client hospitality. In order to truly achieve ROI in putting on a corporate event, you need to be memorable.
Convenience – location is always important to consider as you want to ensure that everyone can make it to the event without jeopardising their personal time.

One of our most recent clients Caterham Cars has put together a corporate event programme that ticks all the boxes above. I recently took on the challenge and attended one of their public days – watch Slingshot Sponsorship’s YouTube Channel here to see my race against the clock.

If you are interested in discussing Caterham for your corporate event, please get in touch with us: 0207 226 5052.

More than Cold Hard Cash: How to Get More From Your Brand Sponsors 7th June, 2012

What Else Should Sponsoring Organisations Be Getting Out Of Their Sponsors?

This blog actually comes from a question I received on Twitter last week – always a great source of inspiration for posts. Although I’ve alluded to the answers throughout our blog, I have never written a blog about what the property rights owner should be getting out of their sponsorship. The reason being, the most obvious answer is money. However, a sponsor’s investment should not end there – there’s so much more they can offer to benefit the rights owner.

Brand Awareness

As a rights owner, you tend to focus on issues that are of the most immediate concern. Once all sponsors are on board you’ve then got to focus on ticket sales and the invites (and let’s not forget the small matters of sorting out catering, setting up the venue etc.). Before you know it the event has finished and you are back to square one of renewing the event’s sponsors and the cycle starts again. Time is needed to integrate departments and partners and typically with the urgency of sales and action during a slow economy, there is little time to do much else.

By integrating the objectives of the sales and marketing departments you can make the cycle much smoother for everyone involved and add value to the sponsors of your events.

Brand sponsors tend to have significantly larger customer databases than the rights owners they sponsor. As such, it can be a cheaper way to bring brand awareness of the event in question through effective marketing campaigns. These campaigns can then drive ticket sales without the added costs of advertisements and new creative. Furthermore sending communications to the sponsor’s database helps the sponsor as they want to bring awareness to their customers of the events that they are involved with – that is why they have got involved in the first place.

Joint communication is just a starting block, but once you start thinking more integrated you can come up with a range of communications that benefit all parties, saving you time and money.

Physical Space

One of the things we have started to really push with our sponsors and rights owners is physical space. For larger brands, they tend to have an abundance of space with the presence of roof top terraces overlooking the Thames that are rarely used to whole floors that no one is working in. This presents a fantastic opportunity to integrate the brand and the rights owner.

Venue costs are typically the area where most events fall down on – especially charities. Charities tend to be very rich in terms of content – with celebrity brand ambassadors and a meaningful cause; however, tend not to be able to put on the events they wish they could based on up-front costs such as venue hire. We have started working with our sponsors more directly and have hosted a number of events within sponsor buildings instead. This not only saves the charity (or rights owner) money, but also shows a truly integrated approach to brand partnerships. Furthermore, this provides the brand an opportunity to showcase their own building, their culture and their internal teams.

People

Another benefit that sponsors can bring to rights owners is actual people. In terms of staff engagement, this tends to work best in charities and is often a key reason that brands get involved with national causes – to get their teams working together on something greater than the 9 to 5. It also helps create a team environment even with their staff are based all over the country. Staff engagement or volunteering for the sponsored charity is a key benefit that charities should try and incorporate within their sponsorship proposal whenever possible. This not only provides additional volunteers for the charity which is always needed, but also can go a long way in terms of securing internal buy in from the brand itself – future proofing the financial investment.

These are just some of the benefits that sponsors can bring to organisations apart from cold hard cash, but there are many more. The key is to find the synergies between the rights owner and the brand sponsor – understanding every party’s objective and collaborating with each other to help achieve something that is greater than the sum of its parts is what a true partnership is all about.

'Terrible Twos' Slingshot Sponsorship has its Second Birthday 31st May, 2012

We have reached a fantastic milestone, today is Slingshot Sponsorship’s 2^nd Birthday!

Last year I wrote about what we’ve learnt in the past year (see last year’s Birthday Blog here), whilst this year I thought I might compare our agency’s development to that of the notorious ‘Terrible Twos’. And although I do hope that it won’t be following the same path as my friend’s toddlers, there are strangely some similarities…

“I Choose”

The ‘Terrible Twos’ is so named because it is a period of child development in which children initially begin to make their own choices – the toddler realises that (s)he can make their own mind up about things.

We’ve been very fortunate to work with amazing clients so this doesn’t exactly relate to our sponsorship agency, but we do now have the amazing staff on hand in order for us to fully start going after some clients we really believe we can help. We are also able to take more risks now giving us more flexibility on who we are able to work with.

Earlier this year we secured the exclusive opportunity to work with an extremely iconic and forward-thinking brand – Caterham Cars. Their innovative thinking coincides with our own and we can’t wait to start showcasing what we can do across all of the commercial areas we will be leveraging (more on our involvement with Caterham Cars can be found here).

“I Want That”

The ‘Terrible Twos’ are always wanting and if they scream loud enough, more likely than not they tend to get what they want.

Although ‘scream’ is probably not the best description for how we’d like to go about getting our own way, I do think that by constantly discussing, meeting new people, and communicating your proposition the more people will understand what you are trying to achieve and will help where they can. After all, we are working in an industry which insists that two heads (or brands) are better than one, and we take this seriously throughout every interaction and relationship we have.

In terms of screaming about the benefits of sponsorship, one of the things we are very excited about is putting together a sponsorship module next semester to educate the technology industry in London about how sponsorship is beneficial, and more fundamentally what it is and what it can do. As sponsorship reaches so many disciplines it is important to not only be at the forefront of digital technology, but it is also vital for us to impart knowledge of how sponsorship can work when applied to different industries – not just educating those within the marketing discipline.

Questions, Questions, Questions

The best thing I’ve heard recently is a question from a child to her mother, “Mummy, what if everyone in the world broke both their arms at one time?”

Although Slingshot may not be questioning exactly the same topics as a ‘Terrible Two’, I do think it’s important to question our industry, our work, and our objectives. I truly and whole heartedly believe that sponsorship can be one of the most effective and unique forms of marketing (obviously depending on the objectives) and that every brand, rights owner, charity, small business owner and individual needs to consider working with sponsorship in some form. Whether it is sponsoring your local community football team, integrating sponsorship on your foodie blog or spending millions on purchasing rights to a building – sponsorship works. Because the parameters can be hugely varied, it does take some ingenuity to tailor the proposition, but when tailored correctly (and continually) it can create engaging experiences that are larger than the sum of its parts.

Make sure to keep track of our progress in Year 3, by signing up to our Blog & YouTube Channel.

Slingshot's Top Ten Sponsorship Blogs You Should Read 2012 9th May, 2012

I wrote a Top Ten Sponsorship Blogs You Should Read article last year (to view the last list click here) and thought I’d revise the list for 2012. There are some old favourites that have remained on our list, but also some new blogs that have launched which are fantastic reads and definitely worth subscribing to.

As the sponsorship industry changes so much and encompasses so many disciplines and mediums, blogs are just one of the ways that the Slingshot team continues to learn from others. Here are our Top Ten (not in a particular order!):

Synergy Sponsorship Blog: Great overall sponsorship blog from both a sponsorship and brand perspective. There are many different bloggers and so it provides a good perspective from different angles and the content is always excellent.
Mike Walsh/Tomorrow Blog: although not technically sponsorship, we discovered Mike at our client’s event the BBC Showcase. Truly inspirational, we’ve been following his blog ever since. A forward thinker in terms of brand innovation, partnerships and the future of marketing.
Generate Sponsorship Blog: Regularly updated and always worth a read. It is great for sport sponsorship activations and opinions in the sponsorship industry.
Unofficial Partner – Richard Gillis provides insight on a variety of sponsorship related topics, not to mention he’s a great blogger so it always makes for a great read.
Ben Wells Blog: This is a fantastic blog – Ben thinks very much in line with us at Slingshot and so we wait with anticipation to receive his insight in our inbox. His experience in the sponsorship industry makes him uniquely placed to provide great opinions into today’s sponsorship marketplace.
Power Sponsorship: Well known in the industry, Kim Skildum-Reid provides practical sponsorship knowledge and best practice tips.
Sponsor Park: A good blog, but more helpful in terms of what sponsorship rights are being purchased, where and by whom. Sponsor Park highlight the sponsorship deals signed via Twitter so I’d recommend following them @SponsorPark if that’s a key thing you are interested in.
IEG Blog: Provides international insight on the brands that IEG works with – namely in reference to analysis and best practice.
Sports Marketing Frontiers: Another good blog to track newly signed sponsorship deals as well as new sponsorship opportunities that have recently become available.
Slingshot Sponsorship Blog: And of course, we couldn’t miss out our own blog featuring sponsorship insight, top sponsorship tips, and general sponsorship and brand partnership developments. If you haven’t yet, you can sign up to receive our newsletter here.

Enjoy!

How to Build Working Relationships 24th April, 2012

Many companies feel that sales people are the face of the company and therefore are the only ones who need to foster relationships. This could not be farther from the truth. As the divide between marketing and sales grows thinner it becomes increasingly important for everyone to appreciate developing and growing working relationships – this includes the creative executive designing ads in an agency to the marketing manager in a brand. Collaboration is not just necessary in smaller communities – it is everywhere. It exists within your office as well as outside of your office – between departments and between agencies.

At Slingshot Sponsorship, building relationships is not just a service we provide; it’s the vital component to our business’s survival. Fortunately, we are blessed with amazing, talented clients and sponsors so our job is not too difficult; however, there are some key tips we use to help us build lasting working relationships:

1. TRANSPARENCY – Far too often there are too many secret squirrel discussions going on – between the agency, client, brand, creative team, etc. But 99% of the time everyone is trying to achieve the same objective and so being transparent highlights where there are gaps in misunderstanding. Sorting these gaps out early helps speed up the project. Transparancy can also highlight where people have been given different information, which can also be the reason for delays.

In our sponsorship agency, we like to be transparent with everything – from the prices of our sponsorship proposals to the rates we charge our clients. There is a value to everything we do and everything we sell; therefore the need to hide pricing is unnecessary. For example, you wouldn’t pay £7 for a bag of Haribo because it’s not worth that (unless you were in a ski resort in the Alps).

2. COMMUNICATE – This goes without saying, but communication is an obvious way to build relationships. Furthermore, by communicating with your clients/sponsors/agencies you can find out changes within the business faster than by reading about it on the latest edition of Marketing Week. This not only helps you build your relationship, but helps you deliver the best value.

For our rights owner clients, we try and help forge this communication with face-to-face interaction mid-way through a sponsorship programme. For example, we sign sponsors to the What Car? Awards in May leaving a large gap of time between signing contracts and the awards ceremony (January). In order to keep the communication maintained we have introduced a Sponsors Lunch in September to update sponsors and more importantly to build relationships – between both the rights owner and sponsor, but also between sponsors.

3. CARE – True relationships are not built on the used-car salesman technique of faking it. If you are like most people, you will be working in the same industry for the majority of your career – as will your peers. People like to work with people they like and people tend to like people who are helpful, considerate, and knowledgeable. If you don’t care about your job, you certainly won’t care about someone else’s – which is never a good starting point to fostering a relationship.

As a sponsorship agency, most of what we do is build relationships – however, the importance for building lasting relationships applies for every industry and every job you are in.

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