As College Athletic Department Revenue Continues To Grow the University of Texas Is Raking In Big Sponsorship Dollars for Its Sports Teams and Bevo

By Paul Bryant Birdwell - paul@roaringforkagency.com - 415 730 - 4854

In recent years college athletic departments have been taking in record amounts of revenue from both the long-running NCAA Basketball Tournament and the just started-up last year College Football Playoff, but postseason tournaments are only part of the story of the large amounts of money that is being generated and spent on sports teams on college campuses in America.

USA Today was out last week with their annual NCAA Finances database of the top 200-plus colleges in America which lists how much athletic departments raise and spend in fielding their sports teams, and not surprising the universities of Oregon, Texas, Michigan, Alabama and Ohio State are at the top with the Oregon Ducks athletic department taking in a gargantuan amount of almost $200 million dollars in 2013 - 2014.  

2013 - 2014 NCAA College Athletic Department Finances - USA Today

The University of Texas has long been at or near the top of college athletic department revenue for decades now and in a recent piece in the Houston Chronicle reporters Mike Finger and John Tedesco used the state of Texas open record laws to learn about the inner-workings of how sponsorship dollars are raised by the UT athletic department which is a fascinating inside look at how the UT athletic department makes money selling sponsorships:

University of Texas rakes in corporate sponsorships, Mike Finger and John Tedesco, Houston Chronicle

“Two years ago, on an afternoon in his final spring as the University of Texas athletic director, DeLoss Dodds attended two meetings. One was to discuss the Longhorns' foundering major sports teams. The other was with a group of executives from Chevrolet.

The conversation with Chevrolet led to a lucrative sponsorship for UT - $4.8 million in cash over three years from the automaker and a new Silverado HD pickup truck worth $63,885 that was dubbed "the official truck of Bevo," the Longhorn mascot.

The contract is one of 19 corporate sponsorships that will provide UT athletics and marketing partner IMG College with $16.4 million in cash, products and services this year, contracts obtained by the San Antonio Express-News show. Through 2021, the multiyear agreements add up to $98 million.

Dodds' successor, Steve Patterson, believes the corporate largess can help UT address those still-relevant questions about performance. As the nation's wealthiest athletic department shakes up its coaching staff and seeks a return to on-field glory, its quest is being funded in part by an impressive stable of private companies.

The corporate deals represent less than a tenth of the athletic department's total revenues, which Patterson estimates will be between $180 million to $185 million this year, including $12.5 million from the Longhorn Network. But the value of UT's sponsorships exceeded the 2013-14 total operating expenses of 100 different Division I athletic programs.

The deals until now have been kept under wraps, and UT and IMG fought the newspaper's requests to make them public. But the Texas attorney general ruled in December they generally are subject to open-records laws. After giving the individual companies time to challenge the ruling, UT recently released the documents.”

Yes, $17 million dollars annually and counting in sponsorship deals for the Texas athletic department is a stunning number, but that is still less than a tenth of UT’s entire athletic revenue from 2013 - 2014 with that other 90% mainly coming from the Longhorn Network and TV contracts associated with the Big 12 Conference and the postseason College Football Playoff which by itself has added over $200 million dollars in new revenue to college football last year.

For those in the sponsorship business it is interesting to note the growth of companies like IMG and Learfield Sports that work with and represent college athletic departments across America that then receive a cut of any monies generated by their sponsorship sales work and there is a section of this Houston Chronicle article on Texas athletics that goes into the details of those business relationships:

“As part of its UT contract, which also enables it to sell advertising, TV and radio rights, and signage at events, IMG keeps 17.5 percent of gross revenue it generates on the school's behalf. For that privilege, IMG pays UT a $2.26 million annual-rights fee.

Because IMG handles so many similar clients, it's able to consolidate deals with national brands to enable those companies to sponsor multiple programs. Chobani, UT's newest sponsor, signed on with the Longhorns and 16 other schools at the same time.”

Just doing some back of the envelope math using the above numbers IMG makes around $700,000 per year on their sponsorship sales deal with the Texas athletic department which is in the 4 to 5 percent range on sponsorships generated which is a little higher than the Roaring Fork Agency would charge for the same work, but pretty much in-line with sponsorship sales work commissions across North America right now.

There has been one constant of more and more money in the last three decades since the Supreme Court decided in the NCAA vs. Board of Regents of University of Oklahoma in favor of schools and conferences right to schedule and put together their own television contracts which has seen an explosion in the amount of intercollegiate athletics that is on TV and money that has continues to flow in ever increasing amounts to college athletic departments across America.

University of Texas rakes in corporate sponsorships - Houston Chronicle

University of Texas Athletics - www.texassports.com

USA Today NCAA Finances - www.sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances

IMG - www.img.com

Learfield Sports - www.learfieldsports.com

NCAA vs. Board of Regents University of Oklahoma - Wikipedia

If you have any questions about event sponsorship or venue naming rights contact the Roaring Fork Agency at:

paul@roaringforkagency.com

415 730 - 4854

Aspen, Colorado

Tiburon, California

Incline Village, Nevada

Santa Monica, California

Newport Beach, California

www.roaringforkagency.com

Twitter - @RoaringForkAgcy

The University of New Mexico Completes Arena Naming Rights Deal With WisePies Pizza In A Very Backend Loaded Deal Indeed

By Paul Bryant Birdwell - paul@roaringforkagency.com - 415 730 - 4854

Naming Rights in intercollegiate athletics is increasingly becoming a way for colleges to raise money to fund their athletic programs and reporter Mark Smith of the Albuquerque Journal has done a great job in a recent story in compiling a list of the current naming rights agreements of basketball arenas in the Mountain West Conference and detailing the University of New Mexico’s search for a Title Sponsor of UNM’s arena now named WisePies Arena after a deal was completed last December:

Naming rights deals vary greatly in MWC, Mark Smith, Albuquerque Journal

“It’s difficult enough to compare naming-rights deals for college basketball arenas because of the numerous differences in local economies, arena marketing – both nationwide and locally – of arenas, the population and such. But it’s even tougher to compare based on the new numbers of arenas that have sponsorships.

Matt Ensor, assistant director of communications at UNM, researched the number of collegiate basketball venues with title sponsors before the school’s deal with WisePies was announced. His discovery is that UNM is in rare company following its $5 million, 10-year deal with WisePies.

“In looking at all 345 NCAA Division I basketball programs, I researched the number of programs who play in a college basketball arena (no professional or semiprofessional teams) with naming rights from a company headquartered or founded in the same state. Including the University of New Mexico, I counted a total of 25 schools out of 345 (7.2%) in this unique situation. Of the 25 facilities, only eight are west of the Mississippi River.”

The Mountain West Conference which is not one of the larger “Power Five Conferences” that now dominate major college sports in America has a number of up-and-coming sports teams including Boise State which has fielded a top college football team for over a decade along with many MWC schools with basketball teams that have made it deep into the NCAA Basketball Tournament on numerous occasions.

Using the data from Mark Smith’s article in the Albuquerque Journal below are the current arena naming rights deals in the Mountain West Conference:

Air Force:  No naming rights deal in place not looking for one

Boise State:  Taco Bell Arena - 15 years $4 Million

Colorado State:  No naming rights deal but looking for one

Fresno State:  SaveMart Center - 23 years $40 Million

Nevada-Reno:  No naming rights deal in place not looking for one

New Mexico:  Wise Pies Arena - 10 years $5 Million

San Diego State:  Viejas Indian Tribe - 10 years $6.9 Million

San Jose State:  No naming rights deal in place

UNLV:  No naming rights deal in place but looking for one

Utah State:  Arena built by donation from founder of Smith’s Grocery

Wyoming:  No naming rights deal but looking for one

It’s always notoriously hard to figure out what each naming rights deal is worth on a year-to-year basis, but of the four Mountain West Conference schools that have arena naming rights deals in place below are the annual payments on those deals:

Boise State = $267,667

Fresno State = $1,739,130

New Mexico = $500,000

San Diego State = $690,000

The New Mexico arena naming rights deal with WisePies which was announced in early December by the UNM…

WisePies gives $5 million gift to support UNM Athletics, University of New Mexico

….is an interesting one indeed when one looks at the particulars of the contract which includes a small payment up-front and much larger payments on the backend.  The Albuquerque Business First has the details of the UNM arena naming deal:

See the $5 million UNM/WisePies contract to rename The Pit, Dan Mayfield, Albuquerque Business First

“On Monday, the University of New Mexico received $100,000 from WisePies Pizza & Salad, which marks its first payment on its $5 million agreement to buy the naming rights to The Pit.

WisePies Arena, formerly The Pit, is named after the local pizza and salad chain.

Though the agreement is for $5 million over 10 years, WisePies will pay $100,000 in 2014 and 2015, and then the chain will pay $600,000 annually for the remaining eight years of the contract, due every December 31, according to the four-page agreement between UNM and WisePies obtained by Business First.”

So this contract between UNM and WisePies calls for WisePies to pay…

$100,000 in 2014

$100,000 in 2015

..and then..

$600,000 annually in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023!

Now that is a backend loaded naming rights contract and if the Roaring Fork Agency had been advising the University of New Mexico on this deal we would have pushed for UNM to get much more compensation upfront from WisePies in the first couple of years because it’s next to impossible to know what will be going on 5-plus years from now with WisePies or any other company for that matter that could go out of business, be bought, be sold, or be part of a much larger company that might not want to be making $600K annual payments for an arena naming rights deal in the early 2020s contract in place or not!

For anyone that is interested in collegiate naming rights deals Kristi Dosh at her website the Business of College Sports has a comprehensive naming rights database that can be accessed just by signing-up for her newsletter:

Naming Rights Deals, The Business of College Sports, Kristi Dosh

If you have any questions about event sponsorship or venue naming rights contact the Roaring Fork Agency at:

paul@roaringforkagency.com

415 730 - 4854

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Tiburon, California

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Santa Monica, California

Newport Beach, California

www.roaringforkagency.com

Twitter - @RoaringForkAgcy

What Sponsors Want Under the Tree From IEG - Aligning the Event with the Sponsoring Company’s Product and/or Services

By Paul Bryant Birdwell - paul@roaringforkagency.com - 415 730 - 4854

If there is one thing we here at the Roaring Fork Agency as representatives of properties in search of sponsorship could do it would be to get better insight into what marketing/advertising decision-makers at companies are thinking when they are considering a sponsorship investment and IEG has delivered a nice gift to us and our clients during this holiday season with the following look at just what companies are looking for when spending sponsorship dollars:

What Sponsors Want Under the Tree, IEG

What do sponsors want to find under the tree for the 2014 holiday season? What would they like to see properties do better?

IEG SR poised those questions to marketing execs at six of the industry’s biggest sponsors: Bank of America, PepsiCo, Nationwide Insurance, SAP, UPS and Volkswagen. Below are edited excerpts from their responses.

Charles Greenstein, sponsorship marketing executive, Bank of America
Wish list: Added value in the form of content with digital and social distribution, coupled with a better understanding of what drives our business and marketing goals and objectives.

What properties need to do better: Identify areas of improvement or best-in-class activations where we could either benefit directly or leverage to drive greater value, as well as business integration with other property partners where there is product and/or brand synergy.

Rich Foster, vice president of enterprise brand marketing, Nationwide Insurance
What properties need to do better:  At Nationwide, we believe sports marketing / sponsorships need to move the needle just like any other part of the marketing mix.  

However, measurement needs in this space require a tremendous amount of work and attribution to specific performance metrics is very difficult. Like most sponsors, finding the secret sauce or "Christmas present" that delivers full attribution of investment and focus against KPIs would be ideal.

Nationwide's sports marketing objectives are focused on brand building, fan/client engagement and philanthropic support.  It's through that lens that we are able to align specific KPIs for all properties at an enterprise level to ensure sports marketing efforts are driving value.

Jennifer Storms, senior vice president, global sports marketing, PepsiCo
What properties need to do better:  More willingness to co-create value – Properties and brands have greater opportunities to work together to find mutually beneficial solutions, including customizable sponsorship packages tailored to brands and their specific needs.

Better access to fan analytics – Properties know their fan bases best. Providing sponsors with access to those insights and analytics unlocks a wide range of innovative consumer engagement opportunities that enhance the fan experience and help sponsors plan, execute and measure sponsorship activation. For example, insight on a fan’s in-venue location and team preference can allow PepsiCo to create unique consumer touch points, such as mobile offers at concessions (e.g. a coupon for a Pepsi and pizza promotion).

Chris Burton, group vice president, SAP global sponsorships 
What properties need to do better:....”

There is just some great insight in the above IEG article on what decision-makers at companies that are making Billions of Dollars worth of sponsorship investments each year are thinking and these are the kinds of things we talk to our clients about all the time in an effort to build an event and sponsorship program that can drive real value for the sponsoring company which is often committing large amounts of resources to their sponsorship investments and thus want a strong return on their significant sponsorship commitments.

One of the most important things an event and/or their sponsorship sales agency can do when considering what companies to pitch sponsorship opportunities to is to align as best as possible…

The Event with the Sponsoring Company’s Product and/or Services

….and there is no better example of that than the deal that Stryker recently put-together with the PGA Tour which Jason Belzer of GAME Inc. wrote about at Forbes.com:

PGA Tour's Partnership With Stryker A Case Study In Sports Sponsorship, Jason Belzer, Forbes.com

“For non-traditional brands seeking to create awareness among consumers, the usage of sports sponsorship is often the most proficient vehicle in accomplishing just that. There is no better example of this than that which is provided by Stryker Corporation’s recent announcement that it was becoming the “Official Joint Replacement Product of the PGA TOUR”.  While the words joint replacement and professional golf aren’t exactly synonymous, from a marketing perspective there is actually a great deal of synergy between the two.

Much like other medical device and pharmaceutical companies, Stryker Corporation, was faced with a perplexing marketing question – How do they bring awareness of their company and its products to the general public while still adhering to the traditional ethics of the medical industry? After all, it should not be the patient that recommends to the doctor what type of treatment they should be receiving.

Stryker started by looking at the simple fact that both hip and knee replacements have nearly doubled in the United States over the last decade. While such operations often bring relief to patients who have suffered from joint paint and increase basic levels of mobility, they also often severely curtail those individuals capacity to participate in sports that put a great deal of pressure on one’s joints. That being said, recent advances in orthopedic technology by Stryker have greatly reduced such post-surgery constraints, allowing those individuals who are equipped with their products to participate in the activities and sports they love.”

It doesn’t take a rocket-scientist to see the strong connection between active golfers and the potential for marketing Stryker’s hip-replacement products to people that play the game of golf, but it does take the marketing people at Stryker along with the PGA Tour to put together a strong sponsorship partnership program that makes sense for both sides and as Jason Belzer details in his column this is exactly the kind of WIN-WIN sponsorship agreements that need to be put together more often that will drive more customers and thus revenue & profits to the sponsoring company which after all is the only reason why a company should be committing sponsorship dollars in the marketplace.

IEG – www.sponsorship.com

Stryker – www.stryker.com

PGA Tour – www.pgatour.com

GAME Inc. - www.gameinconline.com

If you have any questions about event sponsorship or venue naming rights contact the Roaring Fork Agency at:

paul@roaringforkagency.com

415 730 - 4854

Aspen, Colorado

Tiburon, California

Incline Village, Nevada

Santa Monica, California

Newport Beach, California

www.roaringforkagency.com

Twitter - @RoaringForkAgcy

McKinsey & Company Asks the Question: "Is Sports Sponsorship Worth It?" - Measuring Sponsorship ROI

By Paul Bryant Birdwell - paul@roaringforkagency.com - 415 730 - 4854

If there is an issue that comes up time-and-time again when pitching sponsorships to companies it is the ROI (return-on-investment) that a particular sponsorship could generate and thus figuring out ways to measure the direct impact of sponsorships will be more and more important going forward for both companies and agencies pitching sponsorship opportunities.

McKinsey & Company put out their latest thinking this past summer on best practices with ways to measure ROI on sports sponsorships which is a must read for anyone working in the sponsorship business which we post here with our commentary below:

Is sports sponsorship worth it?, Jeff Jacobs, McKinsey & Company

“The Fédération Internationale de Football Association stands to make $1.4 billion from sponsorship deals with 20 major companies during the World Cup in Brazil. That’s 10 percent more sponsorship revenue than from the last World Cup, in South Africa.1 Although significant, that’s still far below US corporate spending on sports sponsorships, which grew to an estimated $20 billion in 2013—equal to one-third of total US television advertising and one-half of digital advertising.

Considering the huge amounts involved, you would imagine sponsors of athletes and events have clear answers when asked about their return on investment (ROI). You would be wrong. Industry research reveals that about one-third to one-half of US companies don’t have a system in place to measure sponsorship ROI comprehensively. And that’s costly in another way: in our experience, executives who implement a comprehensive approach to gauge the impact of their sponsorships can increase returns by as much as 30 percent.

Scoring sponsorships
To manage sponsorship spending effectively, advertisers must first articulate a clear sponsorship strategy—the overall objective of their portfolio, the target demographic, and which stages of the consumer decision journey (awareness, consideration, purchase, loyalty) sponsorships can support.2 Companies should then implement a complete marketing ROI program based on five metrics to measure the performance of sponsorship spending:

1. Cost per reach. Marketing executives should evaluate cost per reach—the number of people exposed to the sponsorship in person as well as through media such as TV, radio, and print— on a quarterly basis using data from internal sources or the sponsorship agency. Costs include not only rights fees but also activation costs (for example, promotional booths and merchandise) and advertising. Reach calculations should favor exposure to the target demographic over total numbers.

To monitor worldwide sponsorships using cost per reach, one retailer built a database using cost and reach data from its agency, the sponsors, and publicly available sources. Analysis revealed that 15 percent of its properties were twice the average cost per reach as others. Some sponsorships (such as a premier sports team) had high costs while others (a music concert, for instance) delivered low reach. The database also identified the sponsorships that did not reach the advertiser’s target demographic. With these insights, the company reallocated its sponsorship dollars to better vehicles that increased overall reach by 20 percent at the same cost.

2. Unaided awareness per reach. We find that companies often spend a lot of money acquiring sponsorship rights but very little on activation—that is, marketing activities such as promotional booths and merchandise to promote the sponsorship. Our experience, as well as IEG research from 2011, shows wide variance: for every $1 spent on sponsorship rights, companies devote anywhere from $0.50 to $1.60 to activation. That means many corporations skimp, missing huge opportunities to magnify a sponsorship’s impact on sales or awareness. One US consumer-packaged-goods company, for example, allocated 80 percent of its sponsorship budget to rights fees and only 20 percent to activation. After analyzing its efforts, it found that increased activation resulted in greater unaided awareness and higher brand recall. With this insight, the company shifted resources from its low-performing properties to increase activation for its standout sponsorships, increasing unaided awareness of them by 15 percent.

3. Sales/margin per dollar spent. Linking sales directly to sponsorships is typically challenging, but two approaches can help to quantify it. The first is a two-step approach that ties spending on sponsorships to key qualitative marketing measures such as unaided awareness, propensity to buy, and willingness to consider. It then tracks the impact of each variable on short- and long-term sales. The second approach, based on econometrics, uses data on spending and reach (among a host of other media variables) over an extended period to establish links between sponsorships and sales, and then isolate the impact of sponsorships from other marketing and sales activities.

A handset manufacturer, for example, followed the first method, setting up a quarterly consumer survey to measure the impact of sponsorship on sales. By conducting advanced analysis on the data set, the company was able to identify the sponsorships that were truly driving consumer willingness to consider the company’s products, which it then linked to sales. The analysis showed a tenfold ROI difference between the top-quartile and bottom-quartile sponsorships. The company now uses this method to help with negotiations during yearly reviews of its sponsorships.

4. Long-term brand attributes. Sponsorships have the potential to reach beyond short-term sales to build a brand’s identity. Brand strength contributes 60 to 80 percent to overall sales,3 making this benefit critical for sustained, long-term sales growth. A qualitative assessment or survey can help companies identify the brand attributes that each sponsorship property supports. Analysis of those results helps marketers determine which sponsorships are reinforcing a common brand theme. The handset manufacturer above used surveys to determine that a number of its sponsorship properties were misaligned with the brand attributes it wanted to convey—some actually had a negative ROI. The advertiser shed the poor-performing sponsorships and developed new messaging and activation plans for the others.

5. Indirect benefits. Sponsorships may stimulate indirect sales—for instance, when advertisers host executives at sponsored events or when they’re part of a balance-of-trade commitment. Therefore, any analysis of sponsorships must also account for these indirect benefits. Companies often either neglect or overestimate these sources of revenue when calculating ROI. A financial institution, for example, used its sponsorship of a golf tournament to host clients for its wealth-management business. Analysis revealed that the impact of the tournament on indirect sales covered the sponsorship costs, making it one of the most effective sponsorships in its portfolio.

Sponsorships have become an integral component of marketing strategy. Yet many companies still do not effectively quantify the impact of these expenditures, even for events requiring significant spending such as the World Cup. A systematic commitment to a menu of analytics approaches allows executives to identify sponsorships that create value as well as those that don’t live up to their names.”

A key metric that the Roaring Fork Agency has been working on relative to its current sponsorships is Cost Per Reach with a focus on the targeted demographic within the overall group of people that are exposed to the sponsorship which is vital in determining if a sponsor is getting the Bang for their Sponsorship Buck.

It’s not always easy to get an accurate measurement of Cost Per Reach for sponsorships, but it’s worth the effort to try to within an overall goal of figuring out the ROI for each and every sponsorship investment because that will allow companies to both better decide on whether to continue with their current and potential future sponsorship plans.

Another great study by McKinsey & Company on reaching consumers in the marketplace was their look at….

The Consumer Decision Journey, David Court, McKinsey & Company

….from 2009 which opens with some interesting insights into how important it is to reach consumers at critical times when they are making their buying decisions which will often lead companies to considering sponsorship which falls outside of mainstream marketing that is increasingly ignored by a distracted public that can be reached by unique sponsorship strategies that reach consumers directly.

“If marketing has one goal, it’s to reach consumers at the moments that most influence their decisions. That’s why consumer electronics companies make sure not only that customers see their televisions in stores but also that those televisions display vivid high-definition pictures. It’s why Amazon.com, a decade ago, began offering targeted product recommendations to consumers already logged in and ready to buy. And it explains P&G’s decision, long ago, to produce radio and then TV programs to reach the audiences most likely to buy its products—hence, the term “soap opera.”

Marketing has always sought those moments, or touch points, when consumers are open to influence. For years, touch points have been understood through the metaphor of a “funnel”—consumers start with a number of potential brands in mind (the wide end of the funnel), marketing is then directed at them as they methodically reduce that number and move through the funnel, and at the end they emerge with the one brand they chose to purchase (Exhibit 1). But today, the funnel concept fails to capture all the touch points and key buying factors resulting from the explosion of product choices and digital channels, coupled with the emergence of an increasingly discerning, well-informed consumer. A more sophisticated approach is required to help marketers navigate this environment, which is less linear and more complicated than the funnel suggests. We call this approach the consumer decision journey. Our thinking is applicable to any geographic market that has different kinds of media, Internet access, and wide product choice, including big cities in emerging markets such as China and India.”

Amen to that McKinsey & Company.

Is sports sponsorship worth it?, Jeff Jacobs, McKinsey & Company

The Consumer Decision Journey, David Court, McKinsey & Company

McKinsey & Company – www.mckinsey.com

If you have any questions about event sponsorship or venue naming rights contact the Roaring Fork Agency at:

paul@roaringforkagency.com

415 730 - 4854

Aspen, Colorado

Tiburon, California

Incline Village, Nevada

Santa Monica, California

Newport Beach, California

www.roaringforkagency.com

Twitter - @RoaringForkAgcy

The Sponsorship Tango by Tyler Mazereeuw of Sponsorship Alliance

By Paul Bryant Birdwell - paul@roaringforkagency.com - 415 730 - 4854

Sponsorship is such a segmented market with deals often being put together with people that are doing business with each other for the first time it is often hard to understand what the person sitting across the table is thinking at any given moment during the sponsorship sales process and that is why blogs like the one Tyler Mazereeuw puts together at his Sponsorship Alliance website are so helpful in getting the people’s across the table from you points of view.

In three blog posts from 2013 that we still refer to all the time Tyler Mazereeuw lays out what both the Selling which is often the Event-side of a deal and the Buying which is usually the Company-side of a deal are thinking both before, during, and after a sponsorship deal is being put together and these important insights will never get old or ever go out of date:

Sponsorship Tango Part 1: Top 10 Things that Frustrate me as a Sponsorship Seller, Tyler Mazereeuw, Sponsorship Alliance

“Based on the overwhelming requests for this candid look into the reality of today’s marketplace, I’ve decided to adapt the material and post it on my blog.  There’s a lot of content so I’ll be breaking it up into a few a different parts, which I’ll send out concurrently over the next couple of weeks.

Top 10 Things that frustrate me as a Sponsorship SELLER

1.  Disappearing Act – no return phone calls and/or emails.

2.  Asking for a proposal before a conversation takes place.

3.  Lack of transparency when passing on an opportunity e.g. using budgets as a quick and dismissive tactic.

4.  Unqualified opinions and personal bias towards a property.

5.  Those afraid of saying NO (be honest with us).

6.  Misrepresent decision-making ability or influence

7.  Lack of clarity on brand goals and business objectives

8.  No activation – marketers who think the sponsorship will promote itself

9.  Agencies with their own agenda or ulterior motive

10.  “Takers” (tickets, time, and everything in between)”

The second-part of Tyler Mazereeuw’s blog post on Sponsorship Selling deals with the Buyer-side’s point of view:

Sponsorship Tango Part 2: Top 10 Things that Frustrate me as a Sponsorship Buyer, Tyler Mazereeuw, Sponsorship Alliance

“Following up on my last post – Sponsorship Tango Part 1: Top 10 Things that Frustrate me as a Sponsorship Seller, I wanted to share the candid feedback from the other side of the table.    Spending most of my career on the property side of the business, although my first job was a sponsorship consultant at RBC Royal Bank (fancy word for Intern), this was of particular interest and couldn’t wait to get the feedback from the industry.    Buyers (marketers) are typically polite for the most part, but are sometimes evasive about why exactly they are declining your proposal, refusing to meet or outright just ignoring you… perhaps there’s some great insight.   Here you go:

Top Ten Things that frustrate me as a Sponsorship BUYER

1.  Lack of research and understanding – assuming you know my business.

2.  Relying on just our website for company information, sponsorship strategy etc.

3.  Showing up to the first meeting with a proposal

4.  Over promise, under deliver.

5.  The “Olympic Proposal” – gold, silver and bronze packages.

6.  Inappropriate valuation

7.  “Filler” – don’t fill the page with meaningless information or assets.

8.  Can’t take “no” for an answer…we aren’t at the bar.

9.  Quick sell – no early investment in building a relationship or disappearing once deal is done

10.  Hollow threats – your competitor is waiting in the weeds…”

Tyler Mazereeuw finishes his look at the Sponsorship Selling process with a comprehensive look at all that goes into selling and buying sponsorships from both Event and Company points of view which is such great information that we have reproduced portions of Mazereeuw’s post that we have hung on our office walls at the Roaring Fork Agency.  There is so much in-depth information on this particular blog post that we are only going to post the highlights here but all is worth your time if you work on either side of the sponsorship business:

Sponsorship Tango Part 3: Dance Steps, Tyler Mazereeuw, Sponsorship Alliance

“Before you dive in to this third and final installment of the Sponsorship Tango, be sure to check out Sponsorship Tango Part 1 (Top 10 things that frustrate me as seller) & Sponsorship Tango Part 2 (Top 10 things that frustrate me as buyer) for context.  Here are the five dance steps that will help you maximize your sponsorship discussions.

1.  Back-to-Basics

2.  Preparation (the mark of a professional)

3.  Look for a partner

4.  The Dance

5.  Practice makes perfect”

Thanks again to Tyler Mazereeuw and the great sponsorship insights that he posts at his Sponsorship Alliance website.

Sponsorship Alliance – www.sponsorshipalliance.com

If you have any questions about event sponsorship or venue naming rights contact the Roaring Fork Agency at:

paul@roaringforkagency.com

415 730 - 4854

Aspen, Colorado

Tiburon, California

Incline Village, Nevada

Santa Monica, California

Newport Beach, California

www.roaringforkagency.com

Twitter - @RoaringForkAgcy

Elevent Sponsorship Puts Together the Ultimate Sponsorship Management Guide for Properties

By Paul Bryant Birdwell - paul@roaringforkagency.com - 415 730 - 4854

There is so much that goes into putting together a sponsorship deal for both an event/venue and the sponsoring company that we here at the Roaring Fork Agency often finding ourselves doing a lot of education along the way on the numerous things that need to be worked-through and completed before a successful sponsorship deal is finalized.  Luckily our friends at Elevent Sponsorship in Montreal, Canada have done a great job of putting all of those important sponsorship issues and considerations into one place on in their company blog and it is a must read for anyone involved in the world of sponsorships.

Below you find that sponsorship blog post by Elevent Sponsorship which is such a great read we find ourselves coming back to it again and again and often find ourselves forwarding some or part of it to our event/venue or company partners.  If you click through to the actual blog post on the Elevent Sponsorship webpage you can read a lot more on each of the below Sponsorship Categories.  Enjoy.

Sponsorship Management Guide for Properties, Elevent Sponsorship

"A sponsorship is a sophisticated and complex marketing tool; it entails an entire strategic process of solicitation, negotiation, and customer service. What’s more: professionals who are responsible for sponsorships must fully grasp both traditional and non-traditional marketing communication channels as well as the inner workings of several different markets. Sponsorships can be leveraged to achieve many objectives and reach different target audiences. It is therefore important to understand the basics before launching a full-fledged sponsorship campaign.

This practical guide will help you efficiently develop and manage a results-driven sponsorship proposal. It includes our decades of experience, industry best practices, and the latest research on sponsorship effectiveness. Have a great read!  The Elevent Team.

1. Sponsorship Property and Asset Inventory

A sponsorship is partly based on what a property can offer a sponsor in terms of rights and benefits. The first step to developing an attractive sponsorship proposal is to draw up an inventory list of all the benefits and assets.

2. Sponsorship Structure

A sponsorship structure can be relatively straightforward with different levels: a title sponsor, presenting sponsor, a series of major sponsors, standard sponsors, suppliers, and media partners.

3. Communication Plan

It is essential to establish partnerships with different media outlets to help you build your event’s notoriety and get maximum visibility. You can create a synergy between media partners and sponsors that will generate great results and decrease the costs of the projected media buys in your communication plan.

4. Fee structure and Sponsorship Valuation

Learn the basics for evaluating your sponsorship assets.

5. Soliciting Sponsors

Soliciting sponsors is one of the biggest challenges when trying to raise funds. It takes more than good sales techniques; you must begin by putting together a good strategy and better understanding the inner workings of sponsorships.

6. Negotiating

Never improvise when it comes to negotiating with a potential sponsor. Before entering into negotiations, consider the following:

7. Sponsorship Agreements

Success comes from long-term partnerships. Although signing a long-term agreement over several years may appear risky for both parties, it also offers undeniable advantages.

8. Sponsorship activation

A sponsor’s logo is nothing without activation.  Communication strategies that focus on the association between the sponsor and sponsored property is called the activation of the sponsorship. Sponsorship activation is crucial in optimizing the efficiency of a sponsorship and ensuring a level of visibility for your organization.

 9. Sponsorship Management

As a sponsored organization, you must take decisions on a daily basis. A sponsorship program entails as much management as putting together the event and selling tickets.

10. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Cause Related Marketing (CRM)

Establishing a partnership with a charity or cause may help to increase the sponsorship’s benefits as it represents a much sought-after opportunity for companies and brands. Several different approaches can be taken:

11. Ideas and resources

This practical guide ends with a bonus where you can find sponsorship category examples, generic activation ideas and example of sponsorship inventory."

Sponsorship Management Guide for Properties, Elevent Sponsorship

Elevent Sponsorship - www.elevent.ca

If you have any questions about event sponsorship or venue naming rights contact the Roaring Fork Agency at:

paul@roaringforkagency.com

415 730 - 4854

Aspen, Colorado

Tiburon, California

Incline Village, Nevada

Santa Monica, California

Newport Beach, California

www.roaringforkagency.com

Twitter - @RoaringForkAgcy

The Growing Importance of “Purpose” Driven Sponsorships

By Paul Bryant Birdwell - paul@roaringforkagency.com - 415 730 - 4854

Something that we have seen more and more of in recent years in the sponsorship world is companies attaching a “Purpose” to their sponsorship commitment that spells out in very clear terms that the company hopes to do more than just gain more orders, customers, or sales from the money they are spending on the underlying sponsorship.

Lesa Ukman at the IEG (www.sponsorship.com) blog recently wrote about the new this new kind of “Purpose” sponsorship in the sports area and how adding “Purpose” to a sports sponsorship can drive increased ROI (return on investment):

How Adding Purpose To Sports Amplified ROI, Lesa Ukman, IEG

“Sports is not just a game. It’s big business. (On the backbone of sports, Red Bull built not just a brand but an entirely new category, energy drinks.)

Sports is at the center of globalization (Man City and the New York Yankees formed a Major League Soccer team) and new technologies (think Levi’s Stadium).

Sports is the lifeblood of broadcast and cable networks. Sports apps, video games, fantasy leagues and stats are fueling the growth of new media and new delivery channels.

And increasingly, sports is being used to create social progress.

The link between sports and social progress is found in two of the biggest trends in business today, social media and corporate social responsibility or what we at IEG call corporate social opportunity.

People seek out brands that deliver both great value and great values, so companies need to communicate their values. Sports—with its built-in fan base, media coverage and attention-grabbing athletes—is the highest profile channel for companies to promote their values.”

As Lesa Ukman points out sports is today the ultimate sponsorship platform for companies interested in driving their brand, products, and/or services to wide population groups and an added bonus to gaining lots of eyeballs seeing a company’s name in sporting contests is the deep commitment by sports fans to their teams which is a hard thing to find in the media marketplace of 2014.

Lesa Ukman goes on in her blog post to detail how adding “Purpose” to a sponsorship can really drive the overall ROI of the sponsorship commitment:

“Linking an organization’s reason for being to improving lives and impacting society amplifies the ROI of any sports partnership.

1.  The most viewed ad around the 2014 FIFA World Cup was Shakira’s “La La La (Brazil 2014),” which featured her official song of the tournament and a partnership with Danone’s Activia yogurt in support of the World Food Programme’s School Meals initiative.

2.  Chobani, sponsor of the U.S. Olympic Team, incorporated opposition to Russia's anti-gay laws into its packaging and creative during the Sochi 2014 Winter Games. Its visible support of human rights provided a point of differentiation and measurably increased purchase consideration, according to YouGov BrandIndex.

3.  Research by Lloyds, official bank of London 2012, revealed that customers aware of its Olympic partnership were 40 percent more likely to recommend the bank, but customers aware of its Olympic tie as well as its community overlay to the Games, Lloyds Local Heroes, were 60 percent more likely to recommend Lloyds.

Purpose can take many forms—breaking down barriers for disabled athletes and normalizing views on disable sport, combating childhood obesity, empowering disadvantaged communities, and more.

What they all have in common is a new approach to driving shareholder value, a shift from marketing to service, from pushing messages out to drawing people in by making a positive difference—to individuals, communities and/or the planet.

Everyone in sports should be looking at the social value of what they are doing, because there is a cause-and-effect relationship between financial performance and purpose.

Brands that mean more make more. People connect with products and services that speak to powerful emotional drives and give meaning to purchasing decisions or strengthen loyalty to a team or club.

To help elevate the world of sports, the value that you create as sponsor, broadcaster or rightsholder should be in this zone.

So how are you working to help make the world a better place through sport?”

Answering the last question that Lesa Ukman posed…

“So how are you working to help make the world a better place through sport?”

….a recent major sponsorship commitment is a terrific example of how adding “Purpose” to a sponsorship can fundamentally change how a company’s commitment to things beyond the bottom-line could be viewed in the marketplace.  

Check-out the “Purpose” sponsorship agreement that AutoNation just made with a new college bowl game in Orlando, Florida:

AutoNation To Be New Title Sponsor of New Bowl Game in 2015, Amy Wilson, AdAge.com

“Beginning in 2015, AutoNation Inc. will become title sponsor of a new college football bowl game that will raise money for breast-cancer research.

The AutoNation Cure Bowl, played at the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, will feature teams from the American Athletic and Sun Belt conferences. The first matchup will air Dec. 19, 2015, on CBS.

AutoNation has been working on the sponsorship for a year, but it wouldn't have happened if it were a traditional bowl game, without the charitable tie-in, CEO Mike Jackson said. The net proceeds of the bowl game will benefit the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

"If it was a marketing effort, hmm, that's not for us," Mr. Jackson said. "Now when you combined it with our national cause of fighting cancer and a respected research fund and a college football bowl in one of our major markets, then I said, 'I like that. We should do it.'"”

AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson explains very well that just sponsoring a college bowl game wasn’t enough to entice his company to become the sponsor of this new college bowl game but that when the sponsorship was tethered to raising money for breast-cancer research which is the underlying “Purpose” of the sponsorship commitment then Jackson and AutoNation became very interested in becoming involved in the event.

The lesson that can be drawn from companies being more willing to commit to sponsoring events when there is an underlying “Purpose” that the event will be supporting is that there are ways to put together “Win-Win” sponsorship arrangements that go beyond just trading a company’s money for sponsorship and it is this kind of out-of-the box thinking that can help to put together both more sponsorship arrangments and more meaningful sponsorship deals.

IEG - www.sponsorship.com

Ad Age - www.adage.com

AutoNation Cure Bowl - www.curebowl.com

If you have any questions about event sponsorship or venue naming rights contact the Roaring Fork Agency at:

paul@roaringforkagency.com

415 730 - 4854

Aspen, Colorado

Tiburon, California

Incline Village, Nevada

Santa Monica, California

Newport Beach, California

www.roaringforkagency.com

Twitter - @RoaringForkAgcy

Importance of Companies & Brands Making Strong “Connections” With Consumers and How Simple & Precise Sponsorships Can Make That Happen

By Paul Birdwell (paul@roaringforkagency.com)

If there is one thing we hear over and over again from the companies we are pitching sponsorships to and then working with to successfully implement event sponsorship partnerships it is how important that the company and brand connect directly to the consumers it is trying to reach with their sponsorship investment.

Chief Strategy Officer for the advertising agency The Engine Group, Pete Edwards, recently posted on the Synergy Blog a terrific treatise on the entire brand “connection” issue titled:

Only Connect:  Sponsorship and Connections Planning, Pete Edwards, Synergy Blog

“I love this brand, I’ll buy this brand, I’ll tell others how great this brand is…

Ensuring that consumers have a positive opinion of their brand is an essential part of a marketer’s job. ‘Connecting’ consumers with brands in positive and meaningful ways is vital. What value the experience a fan has from meeting his sporting hero courtesy of brand x’s facilitation? To borrow Mastercard’s line; ‘Priceless’…

Which explains in part why ‘Connections Planning’ has become so popular in modern marketing departments. What is the best way for brands to ‘connect’? Where should my brand be, what should it say, what type of behaviors should it exhibit?

But what are the golden rules to successful connections planning? Is there a connections Silver Bullet, a one size fits all approach? What types of connections work best? And what is the role of sponsorship in all this?

One school of thought advocates that in a digital and data driven world, great brand connections come from personalization. The more we know about customers, the more targeted our communications can be. One-to-one, personalized, sniper-like interventions. Personalized messages, served to tiny groups of individuals, hitting consumers at the appropriate time, place, weather or even mood. Hence programmatic buying, demand-side platforms, real-time bidding and the like. The assumption is that pin-point targeting delivers the holy grail or marketing ROI. In sponsorship circles, this places much emphasis on personalized activation, pre-event, live and afterwards.

But does ‘connecting’ only mean personalized and precise – can connecting in a meaningful way still take place at a mass or blanket level, and does it have the same value? Where a recipient of a message knows that what they are receiving and experiencing is the same as Mike next door, Manuel in Spain or Minal in India. What’s the value of this delivery?

As sophisticated and individual as we like to think we are, we are still instinctively and inherently gregarious, group animals that desire the acknowledgement that one is not alone. In this case, the recipient is connected to the millions of others round the world simultaneously consuming the same content/event; they are part of an interest group, like-minded and joined, fulfilling a simple human need to be ‘part of something’. In this situation, a message that simply drives awareness and recognition of a brand to millions, simultaneously, has as much virtue given the right circumstances.”

Translation of what Pete Edwards wrote above:  A Simple and Precise Message Can Very Successfully Drive Brand Awareness to Millions of People

Case In Point:  The recent deal by Levi’s to secure naming rights of the new stadium for the San Francisco 49ers football team which will drive the Levi’s brand for a decades to come as football and many other events are held at the stadium with each time the name…

“Levi’s Stadium”

….being mentioned prominently by any all media outlets covering events at the stadium.

(Levi’s Stadium:  49ers’ new Santa Clara home gets a name in $220 million deal, Mike Rosenberg, San Jose Mercury News)

Pete Edwards goes on in his blog post to detail what companies should be directly focused on as they battle for a spot in the minds of consumers with their marketing, advertising and yes even…..sponsorship Dollars:

“Without doubt the source of enlightenment will always come from the consumer and the brand’s current and desired position and role in that consumer’s life. Clients attempting to unpick the ‘connections’ question are using ever more sophisticated and, crucially, integrated digital and social methods. But the basic questions still hold true:

Who are we trying to connect with? – a deep attitudinal and behavioral understanding of the audience – using technology and, in particular, social to inform the view of the customer.

What is the market context, where does the brand fit in?

What does the brand need to say? – the key brand messages required to create desire.

And, finally, connections are not fixed. Be prepared to be flexible and adaptive on how and what to do – listen and change dynamically; great connections change and evolve as fast as those consumers the brands are trying to reach.”

That is just Brilliant and Precise Language by Pete Edwards on exactly who and what companies should have their focus on when trying to drive brand awareness in the marketplace!

“Who are we trying to connect with?”

“What is the market context, where does the brand fit in?”

“What does the brand need to say?”

Now we here at the Roaring Fork Agency are off to incorporate Pete Edwards’ ideas into our next sponsorship pitch!  Thanks Pete!

The Engine Group - www.theenginegroup.com

Pete Edwards' LinkedIn Profile - www.linkedin.com

Synergy Sponsorship Blog - www.synergy-sponsorship.com/blog

Levi's Stadium - www.levisstadium.com

If you have any questions about event sponsorship or venue naming rights contact the Roaring Fork Agency at:

paul@roaringforkagency.com

415 730 - 4854

Aspen, Colorado

Tiburon, California

Incline Village, Nevada

Santa Monica, California

Newport Beach, California

www.roaringforkagency.com

Twitter - @RoaringForkAgcy

The Importance of Measuring Sponsorship Worth - How To Get More Out of Any Sponsorship

By Paul Birdwell (paul@roaringforkagency.com)

There is some great sponsorship research being done these days and a subject that far too few companies that sponsor events pay attention to is the real world return on investment (ROI) that the company is getting for their investment sponsorship Dollars and no doubt about it sponsorship is no different than any other marketing function in today’s world in that it must perform and positively impact the bottom-line of the company.

The consulting firm McKinsey & Company churns out on a consistent basis some of the best business research in the world and a January 2014 posting to the McKinsey on Marketing & Sales blog caught our attention and it should yours too if you are investing sponsorship Dollars on behalf of your company:

What’s your sports sponsorship worth?, Dan Singer, McKinsey & Company

“How much is it worth to sponsor Tiger Woods or Lionel Messi or Rafael Nadal? What’s the payoff for being a sponsor of the Olympic Games or the World Cup? Considering the huge amounts being spent on sponsorships, companies have surprising difficulty answering these questions.

Corporate spending on sponsorships in the United States is expected to grow to $20 billion in 2013—equal to one-third of total US television advertising and one-half of digital advertising. Yet industry research reveals that about one-third to one-half of US companies don’t have a system in place to measure sponsorship ROI comprehensively. In our experience, executives who implement a comprehensive approach to gauge the impact of their sponsorships can increase returns by as much as 30 percent.

To manage sponsorship spending effectively, advertisers need to first articulate a clear sponsorship strategy―the overall objective of their portfolio, the target demographic, and which stages in the consumer decision journey (awareness, consideration, purchase, loyalty) sponsorships can support. Companies should then implement a complete Marketing ROI program based on five metrics to measure the performance of sponsorship spending:”

Dan Singer goes on to list five important metrics to measure how a company can access its return on investment (ROI) on sports sponsorship or any sponsorship for that matter:

1.  Cost per reach

2.  Unaided awareness per reach

3.  Sales/margin per dollar spent

4.  Long-term brand attributes

5.  Indirect benefits

Dan Singer includes just how one would go about using the above five metrics in measuring what the sponsorship investments a company is making are actually worth which we would heartedly recommend to anyone that works in the world of sponsorship to read and take to heart because any marketing investment that is not performing in the marketplace is a just a failed marketing investment.

What’s your sports sponsorship worth?, Dan Singer, McKinsey & Company

Another great article related to sports sponsorships which also could be applied to any event sponsorship was penned by E. J. Schultz of Ad Age Magazine and Jim Andrews, IEG Senior-VP for Content:

How to Get the Most Out of Your Sports Sponsorship, E. J. Schultz, Ad Age

“Marketers are expected to spend $14.35 billion on sports sponsorship deals this year, a 4.9% increase from 2013 when spending grew 5.1%, according to a report from IEG. While the rate of increase is forecast to slow, sports still dominates the sponsorship business, accounting for 70% of all dollars, the WPP-owned sponsorship, research and consulting firm found. (Entertainment sponsorship comes in at 10%, causes at 9% and arts at 4%.)

But how should corporate sponsors make the most of that money? Ad Age recently caught up with IEG senior-VP for content Jim Andrews for some tips.

1. SEEK FAN DATA
Individual sports teams are collecting more data from season-ticket holders than ever, from personal information to concession-buying habits, with some of it collected through smartphone-enabled ticketing, Mr. Andrews said. Sponsors should ask for some of that data, which consumers are more willing to give to their favorite team than a corporate brand.

In one execution, for example, Verizon Precision Market Insights was able to tell the NBA's Phoenix Suns if fans went to a specific fast-food franchise after a game, thus testing the effectiveness of a sponsorship. "We're able to track the activity of the folks who are at the stadium on qualifying events, what they do the day afterward," Zaheer Benjamin, the Suns' VP-business planning and basketball analytics, told an audience at the 2013 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.”

Jim Andrews goes on to list three other important ways that companies can get the most out of their sponsorships which is very much worth your time to read if you work on the event or sponsoring company side of the sponsorship business:

How to Get the Most Out of Your Sports Sponsorship, E. J. Schultz, Ad Age

The Lessons Learned for us here at the Roaring Fork Agency from the above two sponsorship articles are:

1.  That we as a sponsorship agency should spend plenty of time helping both our event and sponsoring company clients measure the return on investment (ROI) of sponsorship investments

2.  The performance at the event itself by both the event personnel and the sponsoring company in how it activates its sponsorship can have a big impact on how successful a sponsorship performs in the marketplace and how much it impacts the bottom-line of the company.

If you have any questions about event sponsorship or venue naming rights contact the Roaring Fork Agency at:

paul@roaringforkagency.com

415 730 - 4854

Aspen, Colorado

Tiburon, California

Incline Village, Nevada

Santa Monica, California

Newport Beach, California

www.roaringforkagency.com

Twitter - @RoaringForkAgcy

Singapore Marathon Completes Impressive Sponsorship Deal With Their Current Title Sponsor: Standard Chartered Bank

By Paul Birdwell (paul@roaringforkagency.com)

One thing we here at the Roaring Fork Agency like to keep an eye on are sponsorship deals done outside of North America which in emerging and fast-growing markets like Asia can be quite eye-popping in nature such as a recently completed deal for Standard Chartered bank to continue as the Title Sponsor of the Singapore Marathon.  Channel NewsAsia has the story:

Standard Chartered extends Singapore Marathon sponsorship till 2016, Channel NewsAsia

“Standard Chartered Bank has renewed its sponsorship of the Singapore marathon for another three years.

The deal, worth S$10.5 million, means the bank will remain as the event's title sponsor until 2016.

Sport Singapore’s chief executive officer Lim Teck Yin said that the event has played an instrumental role in propelling the Republic into the ranks of Asia's premier sports destinations.

He said: "Standard Chartered Bank has long been a valued partner of sport in Singapore, and her contribution through the Standard Chartered Marathon Singapore exemplifies how a sports event could be grown over the years to reach out to young and old, and inspire people to live better through sport."

The Standard Chartered Marathon Singapore began with just 6,000 runners in 2002 before reaching a peak of 65,000 runners in 2011.

Last year, 54,000 participants took part in the event.”

Wow!

Converting the Singapore Dollar value of this 3-Year Title Sponsorship $10.5 Million Singapore Dollar deal makes it worth…

$8.38 Million US Dollars over Three Years

….or….

$2.79 Million US Dollars Per Year

….which is a very impressive sponsorship deal that dwarfs the kind of sponsorship Dollars that many marathons in America are now getting and asking for with their Title Sponsorship opportunities.

Kudos to Sport Singapore and Standard Chartered Bank for putting together this terrific long-term sponsorship deal!

Standard Chartered Bank Marathon – www.marathonsingapore.com

Standard Chartered Bank – www.sc.com

Sport Singapore – www.sportsingapore.gov

If you have any questions about event sponsorship or venue naming rights contact the Roaring Fork Agency at:

paul@roaringforkagency.com

415 730 - 4854

Aspen, Colorado

Tiburon, California

Incline Village, Nevada

Santa Monica, California

Newport Beach, California

www.roaringforkagency.com

Twitter - @RoaringForkAgcy

The Key Factor Found In People Running Successful Events & Festivals = PASSION! - 12 Habits of Really Successful People (Mad Men Edition)

By Paul Birdwell (paul@roaringforkagency.com)

We here at the Roaring Fork Agency talk to events and festivals all over America about working with them to find corporate sponsorship and if there is one piece of advice we could give to people considering the idea of starting an event or festival it is the thought detailed in a recent Asheville Citizen-Times newspaper story on Asheville, North Carolina area festivals which we here at RFA are taking to heart as we move into the event management business:

Asheville festival success tied to mission, not money, Carol Motsinger, Asheville Citizen-Times

“For Jennifer Pickering, success is a once-shy young musician playing trumpet on stage in front of his beaming parents.

One of Laura Hope-Gill's proudest moments came after a webcast reading, when she saw that people in 18 nations had tuned in. Matthew Kern's achievement metric? The number of hugs he received from thrilled festival-goers.

All three are event organizers who produced large-scale festivals when the economy flourished — and when it failed. Under sunny and stormy skies.

Each of these events slated for May is vastly different: Pickering has produced the arts-filled Lake Eden Arts Festival for 19 years; Hope-Gill, a local poet, directs the seventh annual Asheville Wordfest; while Kern and four close friends have produced the music- and outdoors-focused French Broad River Festival for 17 years.

These myriad activities, ranging from rhyming to rafting, are connected by motivation: Each event is designed around mission — not money. Since 2013, six major Asheville entertainment events and festivals, from decades-old block parties to zombie walks, have been put on pause or canceled outright. Many organizers cited money woes or unendurable infrastructure and planning limitations as reasons for the struggles.

"We don't do it for the money," said Kern. "If all of sudden we started making money, that would be a great thing. If you are in it for the money, I think that's why a lot of (festivals) don't make it. I don't blame them for that, if someone gets fed up because they are not making money and quit. We just all have altruistic bones in our bodies."”

What was that again?

“We don’t do it for the money!”

Amen to that Matthew Kern who has been involved in running the French Broad River Festival for 17 years.

What we have picked-up over the years in the sponsorship business is that the most successful events and festivals regardless of whether they have strong corporate support or not is that the events and festivals that are run by people that have a…

PASSION

…for what they are doing will inevitably when we get these PASSIONATE people in front of potential corporate sponsors display their love for what they are doing so strongly that often the company is ready to write a check to sponsor the event on the spot!

What then is the Essential Lesson that people running events and festivals should know about above all else?

Have PASSION for what you are doing in life and especially have a PASSION for the event or festival you are running!

With the above in mind Inc. Magazine has some great advice that is a fun read drawn from the television show Mad Men:

12 Habits of Really Successful People (Mad Men Edition), Bill Murphy, Jr., Inc. Magazine

“Years go by, fashion changes, but the things that really successful people do each day are timeless.

Here's a case in point: Mad Men, the hit television show about the partners and employees in a 1960s advertising agency, now entering its seventh season. I've written before about how the real star of the program isn't Don Draper or Peggy Olson but the advertising agency itself. More than that, if you take notes, you'll see that the plot lines and characters offer great examples of how to get ahead every single day--and how not to.

1. Trust your creative side.
Series protagonist Draper's title is "creative director," which has to be one of the most apt job descriptions ever, given his penchant for reinvention. However, he does seem to understand how his creative mind works. Among his practices, he'll spend a lot of time thinking about a creative challenge, then forget it, allowing his subconscious mind to do the heavy lifting.

2. Fake it until you make it.
Draper is secretly living another man's life, and with the development of another character, Bob Benson, it looks as though he's not the only one. When the firm was small, it would go out of its way to try to look bigger and more accomplished. You don't want to be dishonest or disingenuous, but you do want to visualize what success would look like and behave as if you already fit the part.

3. Get ahead of your customers.
Here's the key to advertising. Dealing with people effectively is about finding a way to help them get what they want. The challenge is that so few people are truly self-aware. Thus, your mission is to figure it out for them and find a solution to a problem they didn't even know about.

4. Think bigger.
Olson rose from secretary to creative director. Joan Holloway is now a partner bringing in new accounts. Both characters have reached higher levels than they originally dreamed of, only to find that the prize for climbing a mountain is often another bigger mountain. Plans change, goals shift, but it's the people who are willing to dream bigger who actually accomplish things.

5. Plan ahead.
Mad Men opened years ago with its characters facing a professional challenge. The U.S. government was about to start cracking down on cigarette advertisers, and the firm needed to find both a new way to pitch its tobacco clients and a new direction to find more clients. This required long-term thinking that didn't exactly come naturally to all of the characters.

6. Don't be afraid to quit.
The show is about beginnings and endings, over and over and over--fired clients; fired employees; marriages, business deals, and client engagements that the characters walk away from because they're not working out. From the destruction each time comes a new opportunity.

7.  Have fun.
The show is known for its unflinching look at a kind of 1960s debauchery, with all kinds of drinking, sleeping around, and drug experimentation. It's a really unhealthy way to live your life, but it also seems to be the way that the characters blow off steam--and they've got a lot of steam. Don't become an alcoholic philanderer, but be sure to have fun (in healthier ways, I hope).”

That last piece of advice to HAVE FUN is especially important in today's challenging business world and below is a link to the other 5 Habits of Really Successful People (Mad Men Edition) from Inc. Magazine:

12 Habits of Really Successful People (Mad Men Edition), Bill Murphy, Jr., Inc. Magazine

Explore Asheville – www.exploreasheville.com

Lake Eden Arts Festival – www.leaf.com

Asheville Wordfest – www.ashevillewordfest.com

French Broad River Festival – www.frenchbroadriverfestival.com

Inc. Magazine – www.inc.com

Mad Men – AMC-TV – www.amctv.com/shows/mad-men

If you have any questions about event sponsorship or venue naming rights contact the Roaring Fork Agency at:

paul@roaringforkagency.com

415 730 - 4854

Aspen, Colorado

Tiburon, California

Incline Village, Nevada

Santa Monica, California

Newport Beach, California

www.roaringforkagency.com

Twitter - @RoaringForkAgcy

Three Sponsorship Stories That Caught Our Attention: Track & Field Athletes Boycott - PepsiCo Demanding More Exposure During Indian Cricket Matches

By Paul Birdwell (paul@roaringforkagency.com)

Three stories in the world of sponsorship that caught our attention in recent days were of an interest to us so they might be of an interest to the readers of the RFA Blog as well:

Nike, Brooks Running Get Entangled in Track Controversy, Sara Germano, Wall Street Journal

“The sporting world got a jolt last week from the prospect that college football players might unionize. Now another surprise is afoot: U.S. track stars are considering a strike.

Top professional track and field athletes are preparing for collective action against the sport's governing body that could lead some athletes to boycott the U.S. national track and field championships in June.

Discontent has been building among athletes over how USA Track & Field runs its meets and applies rules. Anger peaked after a pair of controversial decisions at the indoor national track and field championships in February, including the disqualification of a runner at the insistence of a coach with USATF principal sponsor Nike Inc. 

A group representing elite runners, shot putters and pole-vaulters is seeking a greater role in monitoring such issues.

The athletes' demands are entangling sponsors such as Nike and Brooks Running Co., which use the affiliations to drive sales of shoes and other running gear. The $7 billion running-shoe industry is the main source of income for athletes as well as the USATF. The organization relies on sponsorships for about half its $19 million budget.”

Deadspin.com did a great write-up on the entire disqualification of a runner involving Nike sponsored coach Alberto Salazar at the recent 2014 USA Indoor Track and Field which will give some more background on what is driving a potential boycott and the organization of track and field athletes:

When A Famed Nike Coach Tried To Steal A Race, A Track Protest Was Born, Sarah Barker, Deadspin.com

However the potential boycotting of events and unionization by track and field athletes ends no doubt there is fine line that needs to be walked by companies that are significant sponsors of coaches, athletes and even organizing entities that have a tremendous amount of power to determine the outcome of the competitive events they stage.

The second story that caught our attention is out of India with PepsiCo demanding more visibility for its branding and signage at stadiums in one of the largest cricket tournaments in the world the twenty20 tournament:

PepsiCo demands higher visibility at IPL venues, Raha Bhushan, Economic Times

“The American snacks and beverages major is seeking increased visibility in boxes in the stadium, perimeter boards, dug-outs and drinks trolleys among others, after the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced that the first phase of the IPL will be played in the United Arab Emirates because of the Lok Sabha elections in India. 

A PepsiCo spokesperson confirmed the same. "We are working closely with the BCCI team and will rely on them to devote more resources to actively support us to manage the complexity of activation across two countries," the spokesperson said. "We are also talking to them to increase fan engagement with the best locations for visibility and other engagement assets." 

PepsiCo will leverage the twenty20 tournament moving to the UAE, where it enjoys a dominant three-fourths share in the cola market. The Middle East is primarily a PepsiCo market with people perceiving Coca-Cola as an 'American' brand and Pepsi as 'local'.”

Did you catch the two fascinating facts in that last paragraph above?

1.  “PepsiCo will leverage the twenty20 tournament moving to the UAE, where it enjoys a dominant three-fourths share in the cola market.”

AND

2.  “The Middle East is primarily a PepsiCo market with people perceiving Coca-Cola as an 'American' brand and Pepsi as 'local'.”

For those of us that have traveled throughout the Middle East one of the things that struck us as Americans was the very strong position that PepsiCo has with its beverage products across the Persian Gulf – Indian Ocean region and how hard it is has been for Coca-Cola to breakthrough when it is considered the “American” brand in that area of the world which is not always a moniker a company wants to have attached to its brand it seems.

The third story is yet another Good News story for the world of sponsorship with Verizon Wireless taking over the Title Sponsorship of the IndyCar Series which is a much-needed shot in the arm for IndyCar racing:

IndyCar:  Verizon title sponsorship a “game changer”, Robin Miller, Racer.com

“Friday's official confirmation that Verizon is the new title sponsor for the IndyCar series can be simplified into this analogy: one of the most visible and vibrant companies in the country will try to raise the awareness of a sport that's starved for attention.

"We think it's a game changer for the IndyCar series," said Mark Miles, CEO of Hulman & Company. "I can't imagine a more perfect partner than Verizon to take innovation forward and showcase technology.“ We can't wait to activate."

No terms were revealed but it's thought to be a 10-year-deal worth $10 million annually.

As reported Monday on RACER.com by Marshall Pruett, Verizon's sponsorship replaces IZOD's five-year run but unlike some other past title sponsors, this seems more like a continuation of a good thing. Verizon has sponsored front-runner Will Power at Team Penske the past four years and is also backing Juan Montoya's return to IndyCar in 2014 in addition to providing the pole position award and being an official partner of the series.

"We've become increasingly selective with the organizations we partner with, we've got a good relationship with IndyCar and now it's time to step up," said Brian Angiolet, vice president of marketing for Verizon Wireless. "We are not just mobile, wireless or a phone company, we're more of a technology company and IndyCar is a perfect place to apply our technology."

Two things that jumped out at us here at the Roaring Fork Agency from the above story:

1.  The IndyCar Title Sponsorship sold for $1 Million Annually with a 10-Year Deal between IndyCar and Verizon Wireless

2.  The Verizon Wireless representative talking about how being able to leverage and promote Verizon’s technology with the IndyCar sponsorship which is what all mobile companies have now evolved into in recent years and something events seeking sponsorship should keep in mind when pitching technology companies like Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, etc..

Below is the video that IndyCar and Verizon Wireless put together on their new Title Sponsorship partnership:

Yes, fascinating stuff in all of the above three recent sponsorship news stories.

If you have any questions about event sponsorship or venue naming rights contact the Roaring Fork Agency at:

paul@roaringforkagency.com

415 730 - 4854

Aspen, Colorado

Tiburon, California

Incline Village, Nevada

Santa Monica, California

Newport Beach, California

www.roaringforkagency.com

Twitter - @RoaringForkAgcy

Kim Skildum-Reid At Her Power Sponsorship Website Has Some Great SAQ (Should-Ask Questions) That Corporate Marketing Folks Considering Sponsorship Investments Should Be Asking Themselves

By Paul Birdwell (paul@roaringforkagency.com)

There is no better Sponsorship resource on the Internet than Kim Skildum-Reid’s Power Sponsorship website…

www.powersponsorship.com

….and in a blog post from October 2011 Kim Skildum-Reid laid out the essential questions that anyone working at a company that is considering sponsoring an event should be asking themselves before making that sponsorship investment:

Corporate Sponsorship SAQ (Should-Ask Questions), Power Sponsorship, Kim Skildum-Reid

“Questions sponsors should ask, but usually don’t…

Why are we sponsoring this? Why are we sponsoring anything?

This is THE big question, and while many sponsors do ask it, most don’t really dig for the answer.

If you answer this question with anything having to do with the sponsorship itself, you’ve got it wrong. You aren’t sponsoring it for awareness. You aren’t sponsoring it because it’s a good cause. You aren’t sponsoring it because it’s a bargain. You aren’t sponsoring it because it’s iconic or prestigious or well-matched. You are sponsoring for only two reasons:

To change people’s behaviors

To change people’s perceptions

Everything, EVERYTHING you do with sponsorship – as a whole and individually – is about one or both of those things. If you can specify exactly what you are trying to change – all tying back to your overall brand or company objectives – suddenly, everything else will fall into place. You’ll know how to leverage your investments. You’ll know how to measure the results.

Do we have the resources to make the most of this investment?

When most people think of “resources”, they are really thinking “money”. Honestly, money is the least of your concerns, as it is possible to leverage sponsorship fantastically for far less money than you probably think (10-25% of the value of the fee, in most cases). Instead, you really need to think in terms of all of the resources you’re going to need:

Lead time – Do you have the lead time to plan and implement a strong leverage plan?

Human resources – Do you have the people and the hours to make the most of this investment?

Buy-in – Do the stakeholders within your company see the potential? Are they keen to use it across what they do?

Budget – Do you have (or can you access from other budgets) enough to make the investment and leverage it?

Does this sponsorship have the critical mass of care to leverage effectively?
This is another big question. A sponsorship doesn’t have to be huge to work, it has to have...."

One can find the rest of Kim’s Corporate Sponsorship SAQ (Should-Ask Questions and blog post here…

Corporate Sponsorship SAQ (Should-Ask Questions, Power Sponsorship, Kim Skildum-Reid

….and when someone finds themselves in a position of considering a sponsorship investment in an event, venue naming rights opportunity or anything else where corporate Dollars are going to be spent in the sponsorship arena it is a MUST that the critical questions around what the return-on-investment will be on that sponsorship commitment be asked before the Dollars head out the door.

The Bottom-Line Question that we often ask ourselves here at the Roaring Fork Agency when considering what companies to approach about sponsoring an event or a venue naming rights opportunity is:

If the company we pitched decided to make the investment would the event sponsorship or venue naming rights opportunity impact in a positive way the Bottom-Line of the company in question?

If we cannot answer the above question with a resounding….

YES!

….then we are wasting our time, their time, the event or venue’s time or in other words…

Everyone’s Time!

Anyone interested in Sponsorship issues could not find a better place on the Internet than Kim Skildum-Reid’s…

Power Sponsorship – www.powersponsorship.com

….website and three books of Kim’s that we have had around our offices for years that are a MUST to own & read for anyone involved in the sponsorship business on the agency or corporate side are:

The Corporate Sponsorship Toolkit

Sponsorship Seeker’s Toolkit

Ambush Marketing Toolkit

….which can all be ordered right off of Kim’s website at:

www.powersponsorship.com/books-by-kim-skildum-reid/

If you have any questions about event sponsorship or venue naming rights contact the Roaring Fork Agency at:

paul@roaringforkagency.com

415 730 - 4854

Aspen, Colorado

Tiburon, California

Incline Village, Nevada

Santa Monica, California

Newport Beach, California

www.roaringforkagency.com

Twitter - @RoaringForkAgcy

Orlando's Florida Citrus Bowl Stadium Now Under Renovation With A Future Corporate Naming Rights Deal on the Horizon

By Paul Birdwell (paul@roaringforkagency.com)

The long-standing Florida Citrus Bowl Stadium which has hosted the long running Florida Citrus Bowl football game (now Capital One Bowl) since 1947 is now under a $200 Million Dollar Plus demolition & renovation and along with that renovation will come a new “corporate name” with “Citrus” being sacrificed for the revenues that partnering with a corporate partner to takeover the “name” of the new stadium.

Florida Citrus Sports – www.floridacitrussports.com

The Orlando Sentinel has the story….

“Citrus" will be squeezed out of Florida Citrus Bowl’s name, Mark Schlueb, Orlando Sentinel

Citrus' days are likely numbered at the Florida Citrus Bowl.

In a region where citrus was once king, one of the most prominent vestiges of that heritage — the Florida Citrus Bowl stadium — will drop "citrus" from its name.

For the right price.

Florida Citrus Sports, the organization that hosts college-football bowl games and other events at the venue, is trying to sell naming rights to a corporate sponsor. If successful, some company — likely with no connection to the citrus industry — will slap its name on the stadium.

"In this day and age, that's what comes with major sports in our country," said Steve Hogan, chief executive officer of the FCS.

It wouldn't be the first name change for the stadium, but it has been associated with the citrus industry for most of its 78 years.

It was called Orlando Stadium from 1936 to 1946 but was renamed the Tangerine Bowl for the next 28 years. In 1976, it took the name Citrus Bowl, then returned to the original Orlando Stadium name for the next five years. It was first named the Florida Citrus Bowl in 1983, and it's been called that ever since.

The name came from the state Citrus Commission, which used taxes collected from growers to sponsor the New Year's Day bowl game now known as the Capital One Bowl. The stadium took the same citrus moniker as the game and kept it even after the Citrus Commission ended its longtime, $657,000-a-year sponsorship in 2002.

Citrus used to be a dominant Florida industry but has declined through the years.

Groves have been smacked by disease and devastated by freezes.

Growers have given in to development pressure, selling off acres of orange and grapefruit trees for suburban housing developments.

Citrus greening, a bacterial disease that arrived in 2005, represents the biggest danger yet and threatens to kill the industry.

Longtime citrus grower Jerry Chicone Jr. helped push for the Citrus Bowl name, and said he prefers old names such as the Sugar Bowl and Cotton Bowl to the corporate names now tacked on.

But he understands that money matters.

"We worked very hard back in the early days to name the Florida Citrus Bowl," he said. "But across the country, because these facilities cost so darn much money, the new tradition is they all sell the name.

"One of the necessities today is to have a corporate name. In the industry, they'll probably hang me, but everything changes."

What might the corporate “naming rights” to the soon-to-be Florida Citrus Bowl be worth to the City of Orlando in the marketplace?

Well, checking some of the recent “naming rights” lists that have been put out by various media organizations in recent years…

Top 100 North American Stadium Naming Rights Deals, The Sport Market

Naming Rights Deals, Sports Business Daily

Playing the Stadium Name Game, New York Times

….and a few news stories on recent large “naming rights” deals….

StubHub takes naming rights at Home Depot Center, Dan Muret, Sports Business Daily

AT&T gets naming rights to Cowboys stadium, Ft. Worth Star-Telegram

49ers’ Levi’s Stadium the 3rd-biggest naming rights deal in American sports, Louis Bien, SB Nation

….one can come up with the following list of the current top Naming Rights Deals in America:

Top 27 Stadium Naming Rights Deals in USA - $5M Plus (M = Millions of Dollars)

1.  Citi Field - Queens, New York City - $20M per yr ($400M Total)   
2.  Barclay’s Center - Brooklyn, New York - $20 per yr ($400M Total)    
3.  AT&T Stadium - Arlington, Texas - $19M per yr ($380M Total)    
4.  MetLife Stadium - Meadowlands, New Jersey - $16M per yr ($400M Total)
6.  Levi’s Stadium - Santa Clara, California - $11 per yr ($220M Total)
7.  Reliant Stadium - Houston, Texas - $10M per yr ($330M Total)
8.  Mercedes-Benz Superdome - New Orleans, Louisiana - $10M per yr ($100M Total)
9.  StubHub Center - Carson, California - $10M per yr ($100M Total)
10.  Phillips Arena - Atlanta, Georgia - $9.1M per yr ($181.9M Total)
11.  Gillette Stadium - Foxborough, Mass. - $8M per yr ($120M Total)
12.  University of Phoenix Stadium - Glendale, Arizona - $7.72M per yr ($154.5M Total)
13.  FedEx Field - Landover, Maryland - $7.59M per yr ($205M Total)
14.  SunLife Stadium - Miami, Florida - $7.5M per yr ($37.5M Total)
15.  Bank of America Stadium - Charlotte, North Carolina - $7M per yr ($140M Total)
16.  Lincoln Financial Field - Philadelphia, Penn. - $6.98M per yr ($139.6M Total)
17.  American Airlines Center - Dallas, Texas - $6.5M per yr ($195M Total)
18.  Minute Maid Park - Houston, Texas - $6.36M per yr ($178M Total)
19.  Lucas Oil Stadium - Indianapolis, Indiana - $6.07M per yr ($121.5M Total)
20.  Sports Authority Field - Denver, Colorado - $6M per yr ($150M Total)
21.  TD Garden - Boston, Mass. - $6M per yr ($120M Total)
22.  Staples Center - Los Angeles, California - $5.8M per yr ($116M Total)
23.  Prudential Center - Newark, New Jersey - $5.25M per yr ($105M Total)
24.  Target Field - Minneapolis, Minnesota - $5M per yr ($125M Total)
25.  CenturyLink Field - Seattle, Washington - $5M ($75M Total)
26.  Toyota Center - Houston, Texas - $5M per yr ($100M Total)
27.  M & T Bank Stadium - Baltimore, Maryland - $5M per yr ($75M Total)

Our educated guess here at the Roaring Fork Agency is that the Florida Citrus Commission could sell the “naming rights” to the current Florida Citrus Bowl to a corporate partner for somewhere around….

$3 to $5 Million Dollars per year

…..with a contract deal length in the 10 to 20 year time frame.  In today’s fast-changing corporate world we would recommend a 10-year deal with an option for the Florida Citrus Commission to extend that deal in two 5-year periods for a total potential 20-year “naming rights” deal worth a potential…

$60 to $100 Million Dollars

It will be interesting to see what kind of deal the Florida Citrus Commission can put together for the “naming rights” of the current Florida Citrus Bowl and we here at the Roaring Fork Agency have a handful of clients that we are going to pitch this stadium’s naming rights opportunity to in the near future.

Florida Citrus Sports – www.floridacitrussports.com

If you have any questions about event sponsorship or venue naming rights contact the Roaring Fork Agency at:

paul@roaringforkagency.com

415 730 - 4854

Aspen, Colorado

Tiburon, California

Incline Village, Nevada

Santa Monica, California

Newport Beach, California

www.roaringforkagency.com

Twitter - @RoaringForkAgcy

Fast Company With Some Great Advice On "17 Productive Ways To Spend 5 Minutes Instead of Checking Your Email (Again)"

By Paul Birdwell (paul@roaringforkagency.com)

Most of us here at the Roaring Fork Agency spend our workdays dreaming of ways to put together sponsorship deals for our clients but every once in awhile we need a break from that dreaming and Laura Vanderkam at Fast Company has come up with some great advice for spending any extra 5 minutes we might have available during taxing days at the office:

17 Productive Ways To Spend 5 Minutes Instead of Checking Your Email (Again), Laura Vanderkam, Fast Company

“The ubiquity of smart phones means we never lack for a way to spend time. Stuck waiting for the elevator for 30 seconds? Next thing you know you’ve got your phone out of your pocket, and you’re deleting newsletters you can’t remember subscribing to.

Cleaning out the inbox feels productive, but in the grand scheme of things it’s not all that fun. Nor is it accomplishing much. At the end of your life, no one’s going to talk about your pristine inbox. Here are 17 better ways to spend bits of time to bring bits of joy into an ordinary day:

1. WORK ON YOUR BUCKET LIST
Pull it up, read what you’ve got on it, and start adding.

2. LISTEN TO A FAVORITE SONG.
Yes, you’ll need to use your headphones, but jamming out to Katy Perry for three minutes and 30 seconds will probably leave you feeling more energized than deleting marketing emails for a similar quantity of time.

3. READ A LITTLE BIT
Want to read more? You don’t need free hours to make it happen. DailyLit.com sends bite sized chunks of classics to your inbox, but you can also just keep a regular book in your desk drawer and read it, one page at a time. Books of poetry are good for this. You’re in and out (unless it’s The Wasteland).

4. TEXT YOUR PARTNER OR YOUR CHILDREN
Tell them you’re thinking about them. Text a friend to ask her about her day. Call, if you think the person might be available.

5. WRITE IN A JOURNAL
Jotting down a sentence here and there on specific moments of awesomeness can help you remember that your life is, in fact, awesome.

6. WRITE A REAL LETTER
Keep some note cards and stationery around and write a note to someone whose birthday is coming up, or a friend or colleague who did something intriguing. There’s no need to write more than three or four sentences, and you can definitely do that in five minutes. A random thank you note to someone who isn’t expecting one could actually make someone’s day.

7. STRETCH
Assume some other posture than the usual one of your rear in the chair, and breathe deeply.”

Read the other 10 Productive Ways To Spend 5 Minutes Instead of Checking Your Email (Again) here...

17 Productive Ways To Spend 5 Minutes Instead of Checking Your Email (Again), Laura Vanderkam, Fast Company

Also don’t miss at Fast Company their terrific Work – Smart section which is a regularly updated blog that details “the apps, tactics, tips, and brain hacks to help you work smarter instead of harder” which is must-read in the Go-Go World that we all live in today.

Fast Company Work – Smart

Fast Company - www.fastcompany.com

If you have any questions about event sponsorship or venue naming rights contact the Roaring Fork Agency at:

paul@roaringforkagency.com

415 730 - 4854

Aspen, Colorado

Tiburon, California

Incline Village, Nevada

Santa Monica, California

Newport Beach, California

www.roaringforkagency.com

Twitter - @RoaringForkAgcy

Great News! Two Major PGA Tour Tournaments Secured Future Sponsorship Commitments From Their Current Title Sponsors

By Paul Birdwell (paul@roaringforkagency.com)

In an age where large sports sponsorships involve a tremendous amount of work by everyone to put together successfully there was some great news this past week from the PGA Tour which saw two major tournaments receive new sponsorship commitments from their current Title Sponsors:

Quail Hollow to keep PGA Tour sponsor Wells Fargo for 5 more years, David Scott, Charlotte Observer

“In a time during which title sponsorships can be hard to come by on the PGA Tour, Charlotte’s Quail Hollow Club has received another strong shot of stability.

The tour announced Tuesday that Wells Fargo has renewed its sponsorship of Charlotte’s tour stop for five years. That means the Wells Fargo Championship will be in Charlotte through 2019 – except for 2017, when it temporarily will move to Wilmington’s Eagle Point Golf Club to accommodate the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow.

“We think the future is really bright for this tournament,” PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem said of the Charlotte tournament, which is scheduled for May 1-4 this year (it will keep its date on the PGA Tour schedule).

The tournament – one of the most popular among players on tour and a consistent sellout – has been at Quail Hollow since 2003. In all but two years, it has been sponsored by Wells Fargo or its predecessor, Wachovia.

“The championship has proven to be an incredible branding asset,” said Wells Fargo chief marketing officer Jamie Moldafsky. “We’re delighted we’ll have uninterrupted continuation of one of the tour’s premiere events.”

Several PGA tournaments have struggled to retain title sponsors during recent seasons, including Hilton Head Island, S.C., Innisbrook in Tampa, Fla., and Washington’s Congressional Golf Club.

“This is a big statement for Wells Fargo and Charlotte,” said Ed Kiernan, president of the Engine Shop sports marketing agency. “The tour has lots of title sponsor (contracts) coming up and renewing in this climate has become increasingly difficult. To secure what they have in Charlotte for that length is really impressive.””

Kudos to Ed Kiernan and Engine Shop which has been putting together some very innovative sponsorship deals in the last few years.

The other event that just extended a sponsorship deal with their Title Sponsor is the Regions Tradition:

Regions re-ups with Champions Tour in Birmingham, Golfweek

“The Champions Tour will continue to play its season-opening major championship in Birmingham, Ala., through 2018.

Regions Financial Corp. has extended title-sponsorship of the Regions Tradition, the Champions Tour announced Tuesday.

This year's $2.2 million event will be played May 15-18 at Shoal Creek, with David Frost as the defending champion. After next year's Regions Tradition at Shoal Creek, the tournament will move to nearby Greystone Golf & Country Club for 2016-18.”

The Champions Tour major Regions Tradition has been staged in the Birmingham, Alabama area under a couple of different Title Sponsors over the years and will be returning to its original “home” in 2016 the Greystone Golf & Country Club which was the site of the first inaugural…

Bruno’s Memorial Classic in 1992

Congratulations to the folks at Bruno Event Team for extending Regions Financial as the Title Sponsor of the Regions Tradition and best of luck with your great tournament into the future.

Wells Fargo Championship – www.wellsfargochampionship.com

Engine Shop Agency – www.engineshopagency.com

Regions Tradition – www.regionstradition.com

Bruno Event Team – www.brunoeventteam.com

PGA Tour – www.pgatour.com

If you have any questions about event sponsorship or venue naming rights contact the Roaring Fork Agency at:

paul@roaringforkagency.com

415 730 - 4854

Aspen, Colorado

Tiburon, California

Incline Village, Nevada

Santa Monica, California

Newport Beach, California

www.roaringforkagency.com

Twitter - @RoaringForkAgcy

Duck Commander Takes Title Sponsorship of Independence Bowl In Unique Deal

By Paul Birdwell (paul@roaringforkagency.com)

If there is one thing we hear over and over again from the companies we talk to about sponsoring the events we represent it is that they really want…

BANG for Their Sponsorship BUCK

…..and that is because every marketing Dollar spent in today’s world needs to return “X” amount of business to a company and sponsorship Dollars are competing right along with every other marketing channel and thus sponsorships better dang hit their target.

A great example of an event, agency and company thinking “out of the box” recently was the hit TV series Duck Commander agreeing to become the Title Sponsor of the Independence Bowl college football game which was a deal put together by Bill Glenn and The Breakout Group in Dallas, Texas:

I-Bowl, Duck Commander form unique partnership, Roy Lang III, The News Star

“Although Shreveport’s postseason college football game can’t match the net worth of the stars of “Duck Dynasty,” the game’s officials can certainly sympathize with tireless hours and questions about whether the business can and should remain open.

For the Independence Bowl, those lean times didn’t just take place in its infancy. With every departure of a title sponsor came gloom and doom from outsiders and a fear the gates at Independence Stadium would be forever locked to such an event.

But again, thanks to a creative title sponsorship package with Duck Commander, the Independence Bowl marches on.

Bill Glenn of The Breakout Group in Dallas created and brokered an unprecedented agreement between the I-Bowl and Duck Commander. Instead of the typical deal where the title sponsor writes a fat check, this relationship has several different layers.

The deal’s current structure (under terms stated by a letter of intent) gives the Independence Bowl Foundation the opportunity to leverage the red-hot Duck Commander brand throughout the year. In addition, Duck Commander will bring some of its partners to the table to create synergies (sponsorships/revenue) with the foundation.

“I wish I could claim (the idea of the sponsorship package),” Robertson said of Glenn’s concept. “They had it where it would make sense. They knew I would tear (the deal) apart and figure it out. By the time they brought it to me, it was unique, it was different. I loved the opportunity. I said, ‘Yeah, let’s go for it.’”

Bowl leaders are hopeful, under this structure, the grand total of dollars generated by the “title sponsor” has the potential to exceed that of your typical sticker price (the most recent tag ran AdvoCare about $800,000 per year). Thursday, Duck Commander Independence Bowl executive director Missy Setters declined to comment on the title sponsorship structure. However, Wednesday, she stated she expected the agreement between Duck Commander and the game to be guaranteed for “at least” three years.

The ability to leverage multiple assets involved with Duck Commander and the creation of personal appearances and events can help raise the level of awareness and value of the Independence Bowl brand.

“I’ve been a fan of the bowl, so for us to be able to be involved — we’re just going to come up with some really cool ways to make it a super experience for the fans,” Robertson said. “What we can help bring to the table — certainly with the notoriety that we have — I think it will be a good fit. North Louisiana should be proudly represented.”

There are very few instances where this would work. IBM could write a $1 million check to put its name on a bowl game, but the subsequent dollars the game could generate, simply because it’s named the “IBM Bowl” would be minimal. There is nothing wrong with a large, one-off deposit. However, the Independence Bowl wasn’t exactly in the position to call its own shot of that magnitude. Is there more uncertainty under this plan? Sure, but Glenn’s idea could prove ingenious and certainly fits into the I-Bowl’s means.

The I-Bowl can tether itself to Duck Commander during its mission to be on the community’s mind on a year-round basis, not just during the final week of December.”

Wow!

That is some innovative thinking to say the least and this new Title Sponsorship deal will no doubt keep the folks at the Independence Bowl busy year-round making sure that they are generating buzz in their local community of Shreveport, across the state of Louisiana and across the country which if done right might put the Independence Bowl into a position where it is one of the better known college football bowls in America.

In many ways Duck Commander becoming the Title Sponsor of the Independence Bowl is a throwback to an age when well-known media personalities put their own names on PGA Tour events which included some great tournament names from the past…

The Bob Hope Desert Classic

The Bing Crosby National Pro-Am

The Danny Thomas Classic

The Glen Campbell Los Angeles Open

The Jackie Gleason Inverrary Classic

….with the events often leveraging their “name” Title Sponsors to attract both public and media attention to their events on a year-round basis.

Kudos to Willie Robertson of Duck Commander, Bill Glenn of The Breakout Group and the Independence Bowl for coming up with a new and fascinating way to put together a large Title Sponsorship that we just might try ourselves for a couple of the events that the Roaring Fork Agency is now representing.

Independence Bowl – www.independencebowl.org

Duck Commander – www.duckcommander.com

Bill Glenn – The Breakout Group – www.twitter/Sponczar

If you have any questions about event sponsorship or venue naming rights contact the Roaring Fork Agency at:

paul@roaringforkagency.com

415 730 - 4854

Aspen, Colorado

Tiburon, California

Incline Village, Nevada

Santa Monica, California

Newport Beach, California

www.roaringforkagency.com

Twitter - @RoaringForkAgcy

Essential Insights From the Stanford Graduate School of Business

By Paul Birdwell (paul@roaringforkagency.com)

In the spirit and words of the Late Great Nelson Mandela that....

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

....it never hurts to educate oneself on the latest business trends and there is no better place than the best business in school in the land....the Stanford Graduate School of Business....to pick-up some invaluable knowledge that will help anyone run their business and live their life.  Enjoy.

Stanford Graduate School of Business Videos

Laughter: Serious Business

Greg McKewon:  Essentialism - The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

​Huggy Rao & Bob Sutton:  Scaling Up Excellence

​Frederico Finan:  Higher Wages Atrract Better Workers

​Robin Chase:  How to Find New Ideas

​Denise Brosseau:  How to Become a Thought Leader

Pattie Sellers:  Tell Your Own Story

​Baba Shiv:  How to Make Better Decisions

Melanie Rudd:  How Awe Expands Our Perception of Time

Jennifer Aaker:  What Makes Us Happy?

Andy Rachleff:  Where Do the Best Ideas Come From?

​Steve Blank:  The Importance of Curiosity

Chip Conley:  The Rebel Rules

Stanley McChrystal:  Leadership is a Choice

​Chef Thomas Keller:  Bouncing Back from Setbacks

​Jack Welch:  Creative Candor in the Workplace

​Alan Mulally of Ford:  Leaders Must Serve with Courage

George Roberts:  Don't Miss Opportunities

Stanford Graduate School of Business - www.gsb.stanford.edu

Stanford University - www.stanford.edu

If you have any questions about event sponsorship or venue naming rights contact the Roaring Fork Agency at:

paul@roaringforkagency.com

415 730 - 4854

Aspen, Colorado

Tiburon, California

Incline Village, Nevada

Santa Monica, California

Newport Beach, California

www.roaringforkagency.com

Twitter - @RoaringForkAgcy

IEG Details the Amount of Money the Major Olympic Sponsors Are Spending To Fulfill Their Large Olympic Sponsorship Investments

By Paul Birdwell (paul@roaringforkagency.com)

With the XXII Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia now over a week into competition there is something that is never far from our minds here at the Roaring Fork Agency when we are talking to companies about becoming sponsors of the events we represent is the amount of investment required beyond the cost of sponsorship which is otherwise known in the sponsorship business as the….

Cost of Fulfilling the Sponsorship

IEG (www.sponsorship.com) has done some great work over the years clarifying and quantifying the amount that corporate sponsors spend on Fulfilling their Sponsorships in Events and this past week IEG put up a great presentation that details all that the largest Olympic Sponsors do in and around the Olympic Game to make their large sponsorship investments payoff which is worth anyone’s time that has an interest in the world of sponsorship.

Sochi 2014 Olympic Sponsorship Insights, IEG

Below is an example of one of the Sochi Sponsor Profiles that IEG has put together for the largest corporate Olympic Sponsors with this profile detailing Coca-Cola’s Sponsorship Fulfillment Efforts around the XXII Winter Olympic Games in Sochi:

Sochi Sponsorship Profile – Coca-Cola, IEG.com

As we recently detailed in the Roaring Fork Agency Blog…

Top-Tier Olympic Sponsors Spend $100 to $400 Million Dollars On the Olympic Games - Is It Worth It?, February 6, 2014

….Olympic Sponsors will spend around…

$100 Million Dollars

….to be a major sponsor of the Olympic Games and then spend…

$300 to $400 Million Dollars

….to make that sponsorship really pay off for their companies which is a ratio of…

Sponsorship Cost to Fulfillment of Sponsorship Cost

….that companies now sponsoring events or that are considering sponsoring events in the future should keep in mind if they really want their sponsorship investments to payoff in more customers, revenues and profits which in the end if the bottom-line of any marketing/advertising expenditure.

For sponsorships less than $1 Million Dollars we here at the Roaring Fork Agency usually tell companies sponsoring events we represent that they should expect to invest….

1 Times

….the cost of the underlying sponsorship if they really want the most bang-for-the-buck from their sponsorship efforts which for example means that a company spending….

$100,000

….on a sponsorship should expect to invest another…

$100,000

….fulfilling that sponsorship investment to really make it payoff for the company, for the event and in the marketplace.

IEG – www.sponsorship.com

XXII Olympic Winter Games – www.sochi2014.com

Coca Cola – Olympic Games – www.theolympics.coca-cola.com

NBC Olympics – www.nbcolympics.com

International Olympic Committee – www.olympic.org

If you have any questions about event sponsorship or venue naming rights contact the Roaring Fork Agency at:

paul@roaringforkagency.com

415 730 - 4854

Aspen, Colorado

Tiburon, California

Incline Village, Nevada

Santa Monica, California

Newport Beach, California

www.roaringforkagency.com

Twitter - @RoaringForkAgcy

David Ogilvy's 10 Tips for Clear, Concise Writing & 10 Qualities of Creative Leaders

By Paul Birdwell (paul@roaringforkagency.com)

If there is one thing we could always stand to better here at the Roaring Fork Agency it is to…

Write Better

…..and with that in mind it is never a bad time tor review the memo that famous advertising man David Ogilvy sent to his employees in September 1982 which was recently referenced in an article at PR Daily:

David Ogilvy's 10 tips for clear, concise writing, David Wright Smith, PR Daily

"Today we study Ogilvy's successful advertising campaigns to learn how to persuade prospective customers, influence readers and create memorable, evergreen content. But the "father of advertising" also has plenty to teach us about productivity, branding, research, ambition—and writing.

On Sept. 7, 1982, Ogilvy sent the following internal memo, titled "How to Write," to his employees:

"The better you write, the higher you go in Ogilvy & Mather. People who think well, write well. Woolly-minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches. Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well. Here are 10 hints:

1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it three times.

2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.

3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.

4. Never use jargon words like 'reconceptualize,' 'demassification,' 'attitudinally,' 'judgmentally.' They are hallmarks of pretense.

5. Never write more than two pages on any subject.

6. Check your quotations.

7. Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning—and then edit it.

8. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.

9. Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure it is crystal-clear what you want the recipient to do.

10. If you want ACTION, don't write. Go and tell the guy what you want."

GENIUS!

Thanks to David Wright Smith for reminding us again of the simple greatness of David Ogilvy.

Below is an Ad Week video on David Ogilvy titled Essentials:

A great David Ogilvy book that we always have nearby to flip through when we have a spare few minutes is....

Unpublished David Ogilvy, Amazon.com

....in which Ogilvy lists the 10 Qualities he looks for in Creative Leaders which not surprisingly are the defining characteristics of most successful people from any walk of life:

1.  High standards of personal ethics.
2.  Big people, without pettiness.
3.  Guts under pressure, resilience in defeat.
4.  Brilliant brains — not safe plodders.
5.  A capacity for hard work and midnight oil.
6.  Charisma — charm and persuasiveness.
7.  A streak of unorthodoxy — creative innovators.
8.  The courage to make tough decisions.
9.  Inspiring enthusiasts — with trust and gusto.
10.  A sense of humor.

Brilliant!

Yes, a hearty thanks is in order to the Late Great David Ogilvy for his great advice and continued inspiration to those of us that work every day to try and engage our fellow human beings in an interesting way so they will consider purchasing our clients products and services!

Ogilvy & Mather - www.ogilvy.com

Ogilvy & Mather Biography of David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy on Wikipedia

If you have any questions about event sponsorship or venue naming rights contact the Roaring Fork Agency at:

paul@roaringforkagency.com

415 730 - 4854

Aspen, Colorado

Tiburon, California

Incline Village, Nevada

Santa Monica, California

Newport Beach, California

www.roaringforkagency.com

Twitter - @RoaringForkAgcy