Category: Blog

Women's Sport Draws Fraction of Sponsorship Investment, But Not for Long 18th November, 2011

Having read the recent articles from our most successful Paralympian ever, Baroness Grey-Thompson, I was saddened with how little revenue is generated through sponsorship in women’s sport in the UK. With some very successful elite teams based in the United Kingdom including football, hockey, and netball, I wrongly assumed this would also draw large sponsorship funding to the sport and players.

Perhaps I have been tainted. I have always gone out with women who play sport and whether it’s been pretending to understand the rules of netball or be enthralled with a sublime left foot penalty, female sport has been nearly as big a part of my life as their male counterparts.

So why is it that the rate of interest has gone up but sponsorship hasn’t? Between January 2010 and August 2011 sponsorship of women’s elite sport in the UK contributed just 0.5% of the total market. Shocked? If not, you should be when you compare it to the 61.1% for men’s sport. It is clearly time for a change.

A contributing factor for the significant difference in sponsorship investment is the amount of media coverage that women’s sport receives. As audience awareness is a key benefit for sponsorship rights, this decreased media attention in women’s sport significantly affects the total sponsorship able to be retained.

However, it is possible that this is changing around – if even ever so slowly. On a recent trip to Marrakesh, I was elated to be able to watch the women’s World Cup quarter final live! (albeit via the red button). Also to note that this was due to an unprecendented 700,000 people who had watched England’s final group game.

When looking at the situation from a different angle, it becomes apparent that women’s sport is offering the rare opportunity for brands to associate with sporting athletes, teams and associations without having to compete with a plethora of additional sponsors and advertisers.

These opportunities also come at a heavily discounted price in comparison to the fees generally associated with sports sponsorship. With the London 2012 Olympics on the horizon, there has never been a better time to get involved with this relatively untapped marketing resource.

It seems to me that as long as the general public continue to be attracted to women’s sport in greater numbers, sponsors would be foolish to miss out on an ever growing opportunity as the cost of investment is sure to grow!

Slingshot Sponsorship wins Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2011 28th October, 2011

Jackie Fast managing director of Slingshot Sponsorship has won the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the Camden & Islington Business Awards. The category was open to business owners who have shown exceptional business acumen and achieved consistent business growth since launching.

Slingshot Sponsorship delivers and develops long-term brand strategies that engage targeted audiences through sponsorship rights. Integrated and tailored in each approach, Slingshot Sponsorship diversifies across a range of industries with clients based in publishing, sports, entertainment, media and charities.

Jackie Fast was absolutely ecstatic to win this award, commenting:

It is an absolute pleasure to be nominated, let alone win this category. Since launching Slingshot Sponsorship last year, our business has grown exponentially – which truly shows how valuable our unique business proposition is. And hopefully how it challenges and drives forward the sponsorship industry. It’s fantastic to be recognised by the community for all the hard work put in to developing and launching this agency!

The strict criteria set out for the Camden & Islington Business Awards indicated that only the strongest candidates within the area would be shortlisted for the award. Slingshot’s successful nominations illustrate its capabilities in creating successful partnerships that generate ROI through sponsorship.

The winners of the Camden & Islington Business Awards were announced at the awards ceremony in London on Thursday, 27^th October 2011.

ABOUT SLINGSHOT SPONSORSHIP

Slingshot Sponsorship is a strategic sponsorship agency based in Central London. The sponsorship agency works with brands such as Haymarket, London Irish Rugby Club, the BBC, Mencap and more to manage and develop sponsorship rights. The main focus is on creating long term partnerships with a common goal.

ABOUT THE CAMDEN & ISLINGTON BUSINESS AWARDS (CIBAs)

The purpose of the CIBAs is to recognise and celebrate those business owners in Camden and Islington who have successfully grown and maintained their business positioning throughout 2010 and 2011.

Winning this award is a superb opportunity to raise a company’s business profile and increase PR exposure across London. As the first of its kind in Camden and Islington, it is a great opportunity to meet fellow entrepreneurs, business owners and professionals.

CIBAs’ objectives:

To celebrate the work and efforts of businesses across Islington and Camden.
To encourage and champion enterprising behaviour across the 2 neighbouring boroughs
To boost the awareness of SME business success across London and the UK.
To increase the exposure of the local businesses within the Camden and Islington Area.

Make Money with your Blog – Monetising Social Media through Sponsorship 25th October, 2011

Monetising social media is a tricky business. Although we are not experts in this (for social media experts, get in touch and we can pass on some recommendations!), we are however experts at sponsorship and utilising sponsorship to reap financial rewards for our clients.

These sponsorship tips can be utilised on a number of social media platforms, but more commonly can be found and developed on a blog. Freely available (see WordPress), blogs can not only drive conversations and showcase expertise, but can also provide the perfect platform to integrate new sponsorship revenues.

A great example of integrating sponsorship with social media can be seen with the DMA Email Marketing Blog. A fantastic source for everything email marketing and written by industry gurus, this blog is read globally and has become one of the prime resources for email marketers.

Here are some of our tips for integration:

Audience

Sponsorship is only possible if there is an audience. Fortunately, the DMA Email Blog had been going for some time and had a significant number of registrants already. This not only proved that there was appetite for the content, but also that any sponsors involved with the blog would be guaranteed to reach an audience.

Do not try and sell anything until you have a proven audience.

Assets

A number of integrated benefits were provided within the DMA Email Blog sponsorship proposal. These assets were tailored to reach the prospective sponsor’s objectives – the two most important included:

Opportunity to write guest blogs – providing industry expert positioning
Online display advertising – to promote the services or run competitions

Always think about your prospective sponsors before you look to build the assets into your sponsorship proposal. What might be something key for you may not be of value to a brand.

Cost

Pricing for sponsorship can vary, but should always have a value attributed to the tangible benefits you can offer. Tangible benefits typically include media rights, physical space (events), access to a database, etc. As the DMA already provided online advertising on their homepage and throughout the site, there was a base CPM rate for the audience. The sponsorship of the DMA Email Marketing Blog was based on this precedent.

In the case where you do not have anything to base your pricing on, refer to other advertising costs for online display in similar fields bearing in mind that your reach with a blog will be far less than with an online publication.

Measurement

Ensure that you have analytics to back up the cost and show the value to the sponsors you are aligning with. Without measurement in place, sponsorship will have no value and you will not be able to attribute ROI to the brand.

For more information on social media and sponsorship, make sure to check out the presentation Property Rights Owners Make Money with Social Media on SlideShare.

Why Sponsorship Continues to Prevail 24th October, 2011

With sponsorship budgets continuing to increase year upon year, what advantages does this innovative marketing medium have over those more traditional elements of the advertising mix?

Engaging the Consumer

With marketing mediums such as advertising and sales promotions becoming ever more saturated, companies need to be extremely creative in their efforts to gain brand exposure – especially in terms of activations and partnerships.

Especially with today’s average consumer receiving more information on the products and services available to them at a much higher frequency than ever before, traditional marketing methods are becoming significantly less effective as the general public require something more innovative and engaging in order to provide a focal point within today’s plethora of commercial activity.

Cut-through

Sponsorship is invaluable within the marketing mix as it touches on all the consumer interaction with a property and brand. It can include and is typically a combination of brand advertising, sales promotions, email marketing, experiential, sampling, and social media. A truly engaging sponsorship campaign provides cut-through because it has built a relationship and a commitment to the audience. This relationship creates a primed and responsive avenue to deliver brand messaging, ensuring that the marketing does not fall on deaf ears.

Added Value

An additional reason behind the growing use of sponsorship is down to the value that a partner can bring to a property. Whereas simple branding and promotions result in only a financial benefit to the rights holder, sponsorship provides the opportunity for much more engagement with all parties involved. This can include enhancing the experience of the guest whilst giving the sponsor the opportunity to gain first-hand feedback on their products and services whilst achieving extensive exposure amongst their target audience.

As a result of the potential added value, rights holders are increasingly favouring corporate partnerships as an alternative to simple advertising, due to the added depth and quality delivered to the property whilst also increasing the number of channels for promotion.

The Figures

Emphasising the shift from conventional branding to today’s heavily integrated campaigns, sponsorship is continuing to increase its share of the marketing budget. Despite 2009 being the first time in history that corporate partnership spending in North America saw a decrease from the previous year, 2010 saw sponsorship sales back in full swing with expenditures growing by a healthy 3.9 per cent in 2010, with 2011 forecast to see an impressive growth of a further 5.9 per cent, seeing a total of $18.2 billion spent by the end of the year.

Global sponsorship spending, on the other hand, has well and truly weathered the economic storm, with 2011 set to witness similar growth as seen in 2010 of around 5.2 per cent, bringing worldwide spending to $48.7 billion as reported in IEG’s annual year-end review and forecast.

In comparison, advertising in 2010 is only forecast to increase by 3.9 per cent where as sales promotions have by far taken the biggest hit, forecast to show no signs of growth in 2011 and having shrunk by 3.3 per cent in 2010.

The Future of Sponsorship

Over time, sponsorship as a marketing medium has established itself as a key part of the modern advertising mix, providing opportunities for both brands and rights holders that traditional forms of advertising cannot.

With the recent social media boom also taking sponsorship opportunities to a whole new level, the medium is now more powerful than ever. Integrating social media platforms presents a further development of integration with a fraction of the cost you would have with print – creating truly cost-effective marketing campaigns.

With an increasing number of companies owing a boom in brand awareness to engaging corporate partnerships, the growth in sponsorship is showing no sign of slowing down reflecting the increasing demand for innovation in today’s marketing environment.

Premium Car Accessory Leader Thule Teams With What Car? 10th October, 2011

What Car? has signed Thule, the world’s premium leader in sport and utility transportation of car roof racks, bike and car category of the annual motoring Oscars – The What Car? Car of the Year Awards, to be held in January 2012.

Andrew Golby What Car? Publishing Director commented: “We are delighted to be working with Thule, who have joined us as a sponsor of the 2012 What Car? Awards. We spend a great deal of our time assessing family cars, and Thule’s products are an essential part of making big days out and annual holidays safe and enjoyable. It is very apt then, that they are now associated with the family car category of our Awards ceremony. Whichever vehicle wins on the night, there is sure to be a Thule accessory to enhance it even further.”

“Safety is paramount to parents and here at Thule we make it possible to put safety first whilst attaining an active lifestyle with your family in a stylish, easy to use format”, commented Peter Barker, UK General Manager.

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

The What Car? Car of the year awards and acknowledged by many as the UK Motoring Oscars is the automotive industries best known and most influential awards ceremony and the awards themselves are much coveted by car makers both in the UK and overseas.

The event is attended by more than 1200 leading industry figureheads alongside the most influential motoring correspondents from the wider media.

What Car? reaches almost 3,000,000 consumers every month through the website, magazine or PR activity.

The event is to be held at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London on the 12^th January with top class entertainment yet to be announced. Previous headline acts have included Jonathan Ross, Jimmy Carr, Al Murray and Jo Brand.

The sponsorship deal was brokered by Slingshot Sponsorship.

ABOUT What Car?

The What Car? stable includes the long established magazine, the award-winning website whatcar.com, What Car? TV, What Car? Mobile and What Car? Video – available online or as a video podcast.

Latest National Readership survey results indicate that 797,000 people read What Car? magazine every month. Two million unique consumers consult the What Car? website every month.

Haymarket Magazines is the United Kingdom’s largest independently owned publishing company with a portfolio of more than 150 titles, ranging from specialist consumer magazines to business titles and customer publications, published via wholly owned subsidiaries, joint ventures and under licence worldwide.

ABOUT The Thule Brand

The Thule brand was established in Sweden in 1942. Thule is a premium brand used globally for a wide assortment of products with a focus on solving the problem of how to bring equipment with you when using a car (roof racks, bike and water sport carriers, roof boxes). There are also other product areas such as accessories for recreational vehicles, trailers for active life (horses, boats, etc), snow chains and luggage.

Thule is the largest brand in the Thule Group. With its origins in Sweden, Thule is now a truly global brand.

In 1942, Thule was founded by the Thulin family, when Erik Thulin, a true lover of the outdoors, put the Thule name on a Pike Trap that he designed and began selling to the fisherman of Scandinavia. It wasn’t long before he added other practical things to his company’s portfolio. Business boomed, gaining profitably year after year.

By the 1960s, the company began to concentrate its business on car-related product

The Thulin family sold Thule to the publicly listed company Eldon in 1979. It continued to grow both organically and through acquisitions (trailers and rooftop box manufacturing), and Thule has been in growth mode ever since. New markets have been opened, product categories have been launched and several companies have joined.s, and before long the first roof rack was born. New product categories were added in the 1970s and new markets were opened worldwide (e.g. US, Japan).

In 2004, the Thule Group acquired Italian snow chain manufacturer König. An ensuing close collaboration resulted in a series of Thule branded snow chains for passenger cars. A year later, in 2005, RV Accessories company Omnistor was added to the Thule Group portfolio and integrated with Thule. By acquiring towing systems company Brink in 2006, Thule Group added yet another product range to its portfolio. This integration has resulted in a series of towbars and bike carrier solutions. Since 2007, Case Logic has been part of Thule Group. As a consequence of the collaboration between Thule and business area Carry Solutions, a range of Thule branded luggage, bags and cases was launched in 2010.

5 Tips to Sponsoring an Email Marketing Event 28th September, 2011

Sponsorship is a fantastic way for email marketers to stand out from their competitors. If done strategically, sponsorship can not only generate significant leads, but can also provide a platform to showcase expertise and present client testimonials. In such a small market, sponsorship can be one of the most cost-effective ways to differentiate an email service provider.

Sponsorship Options for Email Service Providers

There are a number of sponsorship opportunities for ESPs in a range of budgets. From large exhibitions such as Ad:Tech and Marketing Week’s Online Marketing Show to smaller intimate breakfast sessions with the DMA Email Marketing Council and online webinars, how can you be sure you are not only choosing the best sponsorship opportunity, but also making the most of it?

In order to help you leverage your potential opportunities, there are a few things to consider:

1. Do you even need to sponsor this event?

Sponsorship is a great way to access an audience and help build affiliation. However, there are other ways to do this through marketing and just simply by attending the event in question with a couple of good sales people who can work the room.

But if your competitors are also attending the same events, then sponsorship is a great way to stand out from the crowd.
Based on the audience you are targeting, options can include:

If the audience you are trying to reach is not familiar with your brand, I’d recommend exclusive sponsorship of the event ensuring that you also receive an opportunity to speak and present what you do best.
If you want to create loyalty with an audience who is familiar with you, then consider sponsoring an element of the event that you are trying to target and align new product launches.
To reposition your brand, look at alternative opportunities, such as sponsoring the photo booth or after party. This can help reposition an otherwise ‘dull’ brand as an engaging and approachable one.

2. How much?

Ensure you take into account everything that is required to make the most of any event that you sponsor. Your budget should not just include the cost of purchasing the sponsorship rights, but also any additional activation costs to make sure that your sponsorship is effective.

Activations can include:

Prizes or promotions on the day
Communications you want to send out to your current clients about your sponsorship
Secondary leverage options such as posters to promote your sponsorship
Follow up activity on those people you met through your sponsorship

3. Is your audience going to be there?

The best way to identify whether the audience you want to reach will be attending the event you wish to sponsor is to gather as much information about previous delegates. Although the lists won’t be identical, they should provide you with enough information on the level of delegate. Specifically ensure that the audience isn’t filled with organising staff and/or partners.

The second way to ensure that the audience you want to reach will be at the event is to invite them yourself. As a sponsor, you should ensure you receive a number of complimentary tickets to your sponsored event and co-ordinate those invitations with your sales team to set up an engagement programme. These invitations can also be used to further promote your sponsorship of the event helping to reinforce your affiliation with your current clients.

In some instances you can also request that the organiser invite specific brands you’d like to target – it never hurts to ask.

4. SHOUT about it

Sponsorship helps build fan loyalty with your brand and fans are people we all want on our side. If you aren’t telling people about your sponsorship then you aren’t getting the most out of the inherent rights that you’ve purchased – and best of all it doesn’t need to cost you a thing!

Depending on the sponsorship, it can and should be reflected in your client and prospect communications. These can include:

Email signatures
Social networks
Blogs
Email campaigns
Promotions
Your reception area
Giveaways
Website

5. Get them working for you!

Typically the event will have its own PR team who will be trying to promote the event you are sponsoring. Set up a meeting or at the very least send them your press kit so they can include your messaging whenever possible. Find out about their communication and marketing schedule and find ways of linking in with it. Typically providing a prize tends to lend itself well to being included with communications as the organisers also want to add value to their delegates.

Making sure that you really ‘work’ your sponsorship rights can add significant value over and above the rights that you have purchased with your sponsored event. Most of these tips can be done with little or no cost, but just make sure you have the resources to make your sponsorship truly work for you!

This blog was originally posted on the DMA Email Marketing Blog. For more email marketing articles, make sure to register here.

Price Follows Prestige: Brand Asset Valuations 22nd September, 2011

Do you know how much your sponsorship proposal is truly worth? We do.

One of the key causes of poor sponsorship sales is over-priced fees. This is often down to a methodology which focuses on covering the production costs of a property, rather than looking into the actual market value of the assets offered. Although making a property available for sponsorship can be a lucrative revenue stream, key factors such as the quality and quantity of rights and benefits, establishment of the property and brand exposure are all highly influential in determining the degree of investment a sponsor will be willing to make for association.

Therefore despite an event potentially carrying high production and running costs, rights holders need to be realistic ensuring that sponsorship fees rise in correlation with the calibre of the assets offered. The concept of price following prestige can also be seen by other rights holders within their respective industries, such as a start-up magazine, with the initial focus on publishing quality content and building circulation figures in order to then attract advertising revenue.

In order to create a fair and realistically priced sponsorship proposal, each of the following factors need to be taken into account:

Tangible Assets

These are benefits of a sponsorship package that can be measured and in turn given a specific monetary value, including such factors as signage, media collateral and tickets. Tangible assets are useful in giving the sponsor a direct insight into where a percentage of their investment will be spent.

Intangible Assets

These are qualitative factors that cannot be given an exact value but are also of significant benefit to the sponsor, such as audience engagement, branding prominence, property establishment etc. Intangible assets can only be measured by the opinion of the audience and therefore their value will alter from person to person, depending on perception. However, by conducting research such as surveys, which offer structured and quantitative feedback, a qualitative benefit can be given an estimated market worth.

Exposure and Reach

Whether a brand is looking to reinforce or alter its image via association with a sponsorship platform, this will only be worthwhile if a sizeable audience is going to be reached. Therefore the PR reach and geographical exposure of a brand’s association is a key factor in determining the overall value of a sponsorship package.

Lead-time

Approaching prospective sponsorship leads can be a time intensive process and therefore properties with short lead times (from commencing of sales approaches to execution) should be prepared to lower their fees if wanting to secure any sponsor investment at all. Corporate sponsorship responsibles have a strong knowledge of the properties within their market along with the value of the assets offered. Therefore by reducing fees, companies will be much more likely to invest when presented with a good deal, much more so than paying full price for something that they know the rights holder is in fact desperate to sell.

How can a sponsorship agency help?

Hiring an agency will bring experience and expertise in the area of optimising and valuating existing brand assets as well as discovering new beneficial aspects of a property that the rights holder may not have even thought of. With unjustifiable valuations being one of the key reasons behind unsuccessful sponsorship sales, an agency will help improve a rights holder’s understanding of the assets they are selling plus create additional benefits to offer, instilling confidence in the salesperson whilst providing a significantly more attractive proposition for prospective sponsors to invest in.

For further information on how Slingshot can provide professional advice on brand asset valuations, plus additional insight into your sponsorship potential, see the Slingshot Sponsorship Boot Camp.

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:

Be relevant
Provide insight
Offer competitions or money-can’t buy benefits for engaging with you
Provide exclusive content they can’t find anywhere else
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.

To connect with Slingshot’s social networks sign up to our Blog or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

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