ESA Excellence Awards 2017 29th March, 2017

The European Sponsorship Association is the voice of the sponsorship industry in Europe. It seeks to inspire, educate and raise standards within the sponsorship industry. As a membership association, it strives to lead the industry through activities relating to policy and governance, corporate responsibility, education and training, provision of information and networking.

The ESA Excellence Awards is the flagship event where agencies, brands and rights holders across the continent come together to celebrate the best sponsorship campaigns of the year, covering the entire spectrum of the sponsorship disciplines.

To win or even be shortlisted for an award at the ceremony is a huge endorsement, adding unrivalled credibility to that organisation and the service they provide.

Slingshot have sought to drive the event to new heights by collaborating with some of the most forward thinking organisations in the space. Our vision was to engage larger European audiences, reinvigorating the awards programme as an international platform. We delivered in this regard as we increased the number European entries by 100% since 2014.

On the 9th February 2017, Slingshot managed the 10th ESA Excellence Awards held at the stunning Porchester Hall in London, which attracted over 300 attendees. This year, Slingshot brokered deals with 9 organisations with each partner delivering high quality services and activations across the evening. Highlights included a truly unique photo installation by The Bosco, engaging gif technology from Pictures Experience and fantastic VR content from Infinite360. In addition to this, the awards introduced a number of new categories, which led to a new record of entries, further signifying the continuous rise of the prestigious industry event.

IGO Adventures 17th June, 2016

IGO Adventures appointed Slingshot Sponsorship to host a Bootcamp at the early stage of the organisations launch – in order to ensure the sponsorship packages were in line with the market.  Through a full evaluation and assessment, Slingshot worked with IGO to identify the key assets that could be packaged for rights, developed a valuation on the packages, benchmarked against their competitors, and trained the team on effective sponsorship sales strategies.

World Hepatitis Alliance 17th June, 2016

Slingshot Sponsorship were appointed to develop a commercial strategy for the World Hepatitis Alliance.

World Hepatitis Alliance is a not for profit, non-governmental organisation working to eliminate viral hepatitis by 2030. The World Hepatitis Alliance appointed Slingshot after 194 Member States committed to the implementation of the World Health Organization’s first ever Elimination Strategy for Viral Hepatitis at the World Health Assembly. As part of this significant achievement, the World Hepatitis Alliance aimed to bring greater awareness by launching #NOhep – the global campaign to eliminate hepatitis globally by 2030. With the objective of decreasing the organisation’s reliance on pharmaceutical companies, Slingshot developed a robust commercial strategy which uncovered the key assets required to drive value to brands.

By harnessing the value of the World Hepatitis Alliance’s 230 members worldwide, a framework for commercial support was developed – with execution of sponsorship activation at the ground level.

Muscular Dystrophy UK 17th June, 2016

Slingshot Sponsorship developed a commercial strategy for Muscular Dystrophy UK which supports 70,000 people in the UK with muscle-wasting conditions.

Muscular Dystrophy UK saw an opportunity to commercially grow further through sponsorship and appointed Slingshot after a competitive pitch to build and develop a sponsorship and communications strategy to maximise the commercial value of their events and gain new corporate sponsors.

Slingshot focused on a wide-scale audit of assets, events, communications, social media, and internal resource to uncover the key assets within the organisation. The findings from the audit allowed Slingshot to uncover the unique commercial offerings available for potential sponsors and developed a focussed strategy to differentiate from competing charities.

The developed strategy highlighted the need for wider event partners in sports to build awareness of activities, a full valuation of assets, packaging of rights, a strong focus on what is most valuable to structure internal teams, and the full commercial toolkit to take their offering to market.

Danny Bent 19th January, 2016

Danny Bent was voted one of the 100 happiest people in the UK and one of the 50 most inspirational people in London. He is an award winning author and journalist, Guinness World Record holder, and celebrated adventurer and community leader.  

After taking part in the BBC’s Ultimate Hell Week in 2015, Danny wanted to capitalise on his personality and unleash his addictive enthusiasm to the world.  Slingshot Sponsorship developed a tailored Bootcamp to help Danny attract the right brand partners, which would help him spread his vision as well as developing his personality and brand management within the UK.  Through effective benchmarking, strategic PR and communications development, along with celebrity brand management Slingshot developed a robust plan to launch Danny to the world!

GB Taekwondo 19th January, 2016

Following the extremely successful London Olympics, the gold winning GB Taekwondo team wanted to build stronger relationships with brands in the Road to Rio 2016 and worked with Slingshot Sponsorship to create the commercial strategy and take the opportunity out to market.

Taekwondo ranked the third sport within Team GB in terms of ROI from investment to medals won at the London Olympics.  From their success, they wanted to capitalise on interest and actively went out to brand partners for their Road to Rio.  By harnessing a unique set of assets and significant athlete access, GB Taekwondo created a number of successful staff engagement programmes for their partners in the lead up to Rio Olympics.  These programmes built up direct relationships between staff, their families and the athletes that will form Team GB.  We can’t wait to see the results!

Chartered Institute of Marketing 23rd June, 2017

During the CIM’s rebrand in 2014, the organisation wanted to restructure their commercial offerings and hired Slingshot Sponsorship to develop a 3 year commercial plan.

CIM’s membership comprises of leading marketers – a prime audience for B2B sponsorship.  Although sponsorship had been undertaken previously, the organisation felt they were not able to truly capitalise on it due to resource constraints.  The time of the rebrand was perfect to launch a completely new proposition with partnership approached in a more innovative way by looking at the key physical and online assets – creating exclusive access and activation that resonates.

With a new commercial team hired to deliver the strategy Slingshot created, CIM developed and built a completely new sponsorship department.