Archive for the ‘Sponsorhip’ Category
Posted on March 15, 2011 - by admin
The backbone of a Sponsorship Proposal
Let’s say your sports organization is planning to have a major competition, and you’re in the marketing commission, assigned with the specific tasks of finding suitable sponsors for your event. It seems like a piece of cake – find potential sponsors; call them up; give a sales pitch; and you’re done. Problem is… each company you called asked you for a sponsorship proposal. You sit there, brainstorming on a plan but have no idea how it should look like.
The good thing about this is that you’re not alone. I bet that the majority of administrators assigned to recruit sponsors on a voluntary basis never really thought of the process involved in getting sponsors. The reason for this is that sponsorship in sports has evolved from being a philantropical gesture to a big (and serious) business.
You can decide to outsource the development of a sponsorship proposal to a professional, or in cases that your sports organization doesn’t have such resources, make your own sponsorship plan. There is no perfect framework, but the blueprint below targets the two main targets that every sponsorship proposal should aim at – avoiding rejection and securing a meeting with potential sponsors.
What your sponsorship proposal should have
Before writing your proposal plan, key points such as the overall budget, the type and number of sponsors should be established. These points are important considerations since they will be part of your ‘physical pitch’ in order to lure your potential sponsors
Executive Summary
The executive summary should be located at the beginning of the sponsorship proposal. This will provide your target sponsor a brief but informative description about the event your organization will be holding. The opportunities, benefits and gains should be included as well as the deadline for the sponsor’s decision and their investment. Keep this summary simple and easy to understand.
Introduction
Like every introduction, provide the necessary information your sponsor/s would want to know. This includes details about your organization and the upcoming sports event. Basically provide a background that will let the sponsor know the nature of the organization; the reason for holding a major event; any relevant and important that help in creating a positive response from sponsor prospects.
Description Sports event
In the introduction, though the event is mentioned, it is not broken down detail by detail. It is rather in this section of your sponsorship proposal that you give a comprehensive insight to every detail the upcoming sports event has. Such points may include the day, date and time; the venue of the event; the number of athletes/ teams, what should be achieved in the event and the reason behind each.
Any information about similar and/or past events that the organization has had can be included. This provides the sponsor prospects to see the pattern of how the events went and if it would be ideal for them to support it.
Financial Sponsoring
Simply put, this area of the proposal is a break down of what you want your sponsor to support. This is your organization’s request for the sponsor’s resources which may be their service, cash, prizes, product/s, promotions/advertising, or expertise. It is vital to include a price in this part.
Taking account of the actual and realistic costs will give the sponsor the idea that your organization is ready to make such a commitment. Also make sure that the benefits you propose to offer the sponsor prospect/s corresponds to the amount or level of support your organization is asking from them.
Value in Kind Sponsorship
In some cases you are not only looking for financial support, but for value-in-kind sponsorship. Instead of money, the sponsor could sponsor you with t-shirts, rental cars, beverages, computers to use for free. It is important to be very creative, as this VIK sponsorship could be of great value!
Sponsor Gains/Benefits
This part of the sponsorship plan should be an outline of all benefits and opportunities that the sponsors will gain from supporting the event. Benefits specified should involve tangible and intangible gains.
Quantifying the benefits is also encouraged to give the sponsors a bracket of measurement that they can refer to when considering their decision. Remember to always be flexible and ask the potential sponsor whether they have their any other ideas of getting exposure with the event.
Sponsor Decision Deadline
A deadline of about two weeks lets the sponsor prospect see that your organization is willing to wait a span of time that is reasonable for sponsor consideration. At the same time, it is also a message that sends out a time constraint so that the prospects can give it the proper attention.
This area should be clearly stated so that a timeline can be established. Also so that other scheduled activities, such as setting up a meeting and further presentation, can be followed through on time.
Appendice/Reference
As with every proposal, this part should be a page of reference or sources that were used in stating facts and statistics that support the proposal. This area also includes relevant tables, charts, budget lists, background sources and the like that should help in the enhancement of the sponsorship proposal.
You may understand that one article cannot cover the topic of finding sponsors in sports. I will conclude with some tips, that I will elaborate on in future articles:
- Always over perform
- Don’t be afraid to refuse a sponsor
- Be professional
- Protect your sponsors
- Involve your athletes
- ……leave your tip in the comments below………
Posted on February 9, 2011 - by Remco
Examples of sponsorships
Like I wrote in this article, sports cannot do without the support of volunteers. This goes the same for sponsorships. I’ve heard numerous (small) sports organizations state that they cannot develop their sports, due to the lack of sponsors. I have come to the belief though that most of the times this is not true.
I say this because whenever I than ask what actions those sport organizations exactly take to attract sponsors, I then find out that they don’t have a marketing programme or regularly apply for sponsorships. Others just take any sponsorship that is “thrown to them” like it’s the best deal ever.
I am convinced though that sponsorships are pure business, even on the lowest levels of sports. Business that not necessarily is only about money. The so called “value in kind” sponsorships may even be more important for small organizations. Companies can support those with knowhow, products and services and as such raise the level of professionalism.
I recommend anyone looking for sponsorship to think out of the box, and offer companies more than the traditional company logo on some T-shirts. Your athletes can give clinics for employees, or perhaps even give PowerPoint presentations about their hard work, and development as an athlete. The sky is really the limit.
Take hereby good note that the image of the specific sports, with its administrators, is one of the biggest factors for getting sponsors on board. Therefore sport organizations should continuously look for positive press coverage. It is important that the potential sponsors already heard/ read about your sport organization, prior to receiving your application.
I recently read about a situation which is a clear example of sponsorship being done for the wrong reasons. The badminton federation of the Netherlands signed an agreement with a racket supplier, that prohibited the badminton players to play with rackets other than the one of the sponsor.
It seemed however that the top 4 badminton players already had their personal sponsorship with another brand, which consequently led to a dispute as the players didn’t want to change rackets and break their promises/ agreements. Instead of looking in the best interest of the players, the federation decided to stick to their agreement, and consequently the players could not play in none of the official competitions.
This is a typical mistake of having the sponsorship agreement as an end goal, and not a means to help/support your athletes. The federation should have known about the rackets of their top players, and in my opinion should have made provisions for their players. The first objective of getting sponsors on board is to get your athletes on a higher level than they already are. Athletes should never be asked to obligatory replace their sports material (rackets, shoes, swimsuits) just for economic advantages. It is as simple as that.
Posted on January 4, 2011 - by Remco
SPORT INDUSTRY - robust growth predicted up to 2013
Price Waterhouse Coopers in a research mid 2010, predicted that the sport industry will grow on average of 3.8 per cent each year to 2013. The global sport industry at the time was valued at US$114 billion and is expected to reach US $133 billion. Julie Clark, UK head of sport, Price Waterhouse Coopers suggested that “an underlying trend of steady spending is emerging.”
Gate receipts will expand from $43.2 billion in 2009 to $49 billion in 2013 and remain the largest component of the market.
Sponsorship will be the fastest-growing sector of the industry, increasing value from $29.4 billion in 2009 to $35.2 billion in 2013; while media rights will grow from $23.1 billion in 2009 to $26.7 billion four years later.
The PWC article is published here
Source: Carole Beckford (Publicist of Usain Bolt)
Posted on December 5, 2010 - by admin
Sponsorship Evaluation: Moving from Theory to Practice (2)
Each sport property also has a unique set of exploitable sponsorship components to offer prospective sponsors. This brings to focus one of the basic theoretical changes in marketing with the last 25 years.
The move from a product orientation (Sell what you make) or a Market Orientation (Make what will sell). Clearly this must function in the area of sponsorship as well.
My 1998 research with the top 50 sponsors in the US indicated that too often, sport properties were trying to sell their inventory rather than looking to meet sponsor needs.
Thus, the Filter Component of the Model is the inventory which the Sport Property has to offer through which the sponsor objectives may be met. Certainly alternative marketing opportunities, other than sport sponsorship, will be considered by the sponsor as well.
The flow of objectives through the filter will yield the Activated Components
Activated Components
These would naturally vary depending on the sponsors and the property.
Give the unique nature of each sponsor, customized proposals and tailored sponsor benefits must be constructed.
Evaluation Protocol
Previous research by Irwin and Sutton presented and empirically test criteria utilized by corporations to select appropriate sponsorship opportunities. However, they did not address evaluation. According to the principles set forth in exchange theory, in order to justify continued spending on sport sponsorships, corporations must ascertain if their benefits support their expenditures
An evaluation model for sponsors based on this scheme has yet to evolve. This evaluation model must be based on the ideas presented thus far wherein the most appropriate measure of effectiveness emanate, not from what the sponsorship accomplished, but from whether the specific marketing objectives of the corporation were met.
So What are these measures of ROI?
What is the relative measure of effectiveness of sport sponsorship?
Key performance indicators must be established and an evaluation protocol developed for each performance indicator.
Because of the complexity, most corporations have not engaged in measuring sponsorship effectiveness. Some have accepted data and reports from sponsored properties that attempted to measure what the sponsorship accomplished, with little regard to the sponsor’s objectives.
Therefore, specific and authentic measure related to each objective must be undertaken. As noted in the Model, these could include:
- recognition and recall measure,
- Qualitative interviews,
- employee morale measure within the sponsor company.
- Consumer-based focus groups
- sales data collected pre and post event.
These are supported in the literature, yet all too often not in practice.
There have been sporadic measures as illustrated by the following
1. During the 2002 Olympics, Samsung conducted recognition and recall measures in 10 different markets around the world.
2. Qualitative interviews again, after the Olympics, VISA asked consumers about their sue of the VISA card. 65% of all consumers interviewed (18 and over with annual income of over $20,000) were aware of VISA sponsorship of the Olympics. 20% of those indicade that they used their VISA card more in the last month than they had the month prior to the Games.
3. NASCAR has been famous for consumer-based focus groups. Data has been widely reported that indicate that consumers are positively influenced in their purchasing by a sponsors’ participation in NASCAR sponsorship. Similarly, Pitts found that the participants of the Gay Games were incredibly loyal to the sponsors.
4. Sales data are also important measures related to corporate objectives. Coke’s research during the 2002 Olympic Games found that first quarter sales increased in the US, Japan, Mexico, and Germany more than 5%.
While these present just a few examples, the general opinion is that no systematic protocol or model has been presented which provides a comprehensive over view of how theory can shape current proactive.
Hopefully this model can be utilized to bridge the gap between theory and practice in sport sponsorship. Those who propose theory without a connection to practice are as misguided as practitioners who disregard theoretical underpinnings.
Go to the first part of this article
David K. Stotlar
University of Northern Colorado
[email protected]
Posted on December 4, 2010 - by admin
Sponsorship Evaluation: Moving from Theory to Practice (1)
Theoretical Bases
Sponsorship is based on Exchange Theory
Sponsorship activities principally rely on exchange theory (McCarville & Copeland, 1994), an appropriate transfer of value between parties through the sponsorship.
Sustainable Competitive Advantage
Sport sponsorship has proven to be effective in shaping competitive advantages in the market (Amis, Pant & Slack, 1997).
Movement from philanthropy to ROI
Well documented in the literature and most recently by Sweet in the April 29 Sport Business Journal (p. 27). ROI Drawing Closer Attention from Sponsors. “Many sport sponsors say they are taking a closer look at their return on investment, especially in light of the slow economy and a sport landscape that offers a wider variety of opportunities.”
Stadium naming rights fees, that had seen tremendous growth during the past 10 years, experienced a 16% decrease in value in 2001 (Bernstein, 2001a).
In addition, the downward movement in many corporate stocks and projected earnings shortfalls and decreased company profitability may cause some shareholders to question sport sponsorship as an appropriate expenditure of funds.
The work of Kuzma, Shanklin, and McCally (1993) laid a framework based on a construct for sport organization engaged in packaging and selling sponsorship with an underlying premise focused on sponsor objectives.
Berrett and Slack (1999) contend that a multitude of unique factors within the sponsor’s infrastructure have a substantial influence on sponsorship decisions and tactics. Similarly, Ludwig and Karabetsos (1999) reported a high level of variability with sponsor objectives for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.
This is represented in the Model through the Input module.
Research in the field has suggested that a variety of corporate objectives can be pursued through sport sponsorship including (Stotlar, 2001, Pope & Voges, 2000; Thwaites & Aguilar-Manjarrez, 1997; Copeland, Frisby, & McCarville, 1996; Irwin & Sutton, 1994; Kuzma, Shanklin & McCally, 1993):
- hospitality
- trade relations
- enhanced corporate image
- increased marketshare
- client acquisition
- product awareness
- on-site sales
Go to the second part of this article
David K. Stotlar
University of Northern Colorado
[email protected]