Sponsorship Proposal Basic Steps

Jitao Wu

Twitter:  JackOrzlol

LinkedIn:  www.linkedin.com/pub/jitao-wu/65/2a3/197/

My Blog:  https://mktg420.wordpress.com/2013/08/07/sponsorship-proposal-basic-steps/

As we are in major of Marketing, sponsorship proposals are not unfamiliar to us. I believe most of people are not clear about how to write a successful sponsorship proposal. Therefore, I do the research and listen to some lectures to help me learning how to write sponsorship proposal. These advice might not be always right. Just take it as examples.

As Kim Skildum-Reid, a corporate sponsorship expert and author said, 99 percent of proposals have these similarities. First of all, they concentrate on their needs instead of sponsor’s. Secondly, they make the sponsor do all the work, such as digging for relevance and figuring out what to do with it. They don’t make a business case as well. In addition to that they offer the same four benefits. The most important one is they are hard to read. some of them are not enough information, some are structured poorly, and some are unprofessionally presented. These are also why 99% of proposals fail.

Here is a link that talks about this:  http://www.sponsorship.com/IEGSR/2012/10/22/Best-Practices–Sponsorship-Proposals.aspx

If you do have those problems in your proposals, you need to pay attention on them. Here are some advice that come from the lectures. Sell solutions not sponsorship. Sell what’s most marketable, not what needs funding. Highlight benefits, not features. Don’t prorate the packages. Tailor to sponsor category. Go to everyone in the category at once. Sign the media partners first. Don’t send a proposal until after the initial discussion. Commit full-time. Put a deadline on the offers. The last but not least, base fees on value, not budget. These are advice concluded from Lesa Ukman, a famous author.

The revolution of the sports sponsorship

Xiaolong Chen

Follow me on twitter @vsvm369

LinkedIn:www.linkedin.com/pub/xiaolong-chen/75/710/25a/

As the development of the high technology, it highly changed the way of marketing. Traditional commercials cannot play a dominant role in the advertisement market, the Internet and social networking website has attracted more attention. The revolution has occurred, and the biggest challenge for marketer is fragmentation.

Traditionally, how to evaluative the effectiveness of one’s commercial is simple. Whoever spends more and aims to as much as to television, newspaper, and broadcast, which is the winner. There is statistic shows that America major sports leverage sponsorship revenue that is NFL for $1.01 billion, MLB for $628 million, NBA for $610 million, and NHL for $372 million. The most impressed one is adidas to sponsor 2012 London Olympic for $106 million for two weeks.  They spend such huge money to sponsor those events in order to retain their customers and attract more potential customers. But is it works, and is it worth? It is hard to say.

Time is changed; the public’s free time’s entertainment has become more diversity. Now, you have dozen of channel to draw attention of customers, not only in traditional media, but also online, local and emerging sports; the impact of social media, and new trends emerging every day. It means that the marketer should cover every potential cable channel because every channel has followers who are your customers or potential customers. According to Edward Gold who is State farm’s Advertisement Director, they spend $5 million dollar advertising 15years ago, but now it’s close to $4 billion.

Facing to so many challenges, some new ways to advertise has came out such as Facebook advertisement, Twitter advertisement, YouTube advertisement, LinkedIn and Instagram advertisement. Advertisement has covered every corner of our daily life. Guerilla advertisement emerging in the movies and TV shows, but it still not enough. Some feature films same to be more powerful, and more popular.

Overall, living in this speedy age, everything is fast, emerged and disappeared. In the meanwhile, it also provides more opportunity to marketer to creative.

How to Leverage an Event Sponsorship

By Qi Wu

Twitter @KikiWuqi

LinkedIn:www.linkedin.com/pub/qi-wu/75/6bb/27/

Finding ways to leverage the sponsorship is especially critical. Any collateral communication or activity reinforc- ing the link between a brand and an event is referred to as leveraging or activating a sponsorship. Events can be leveraged as ways to entertain important clients, recruit new cus- tomers, motivate the firm’s salespeople, and generally enhance employee morale. Events provide unique opportunities for face-to-face contact with key customers. Here is an example of “SAMSUNG activation”

From the SAMSUNG activation @ Sensation white, we can find a guideline for successful Event Sponsorship:

1. Match the brand to the event. From the video, we find there were some logo flag on Arena Deck at the beginning of the video. People who was invited to this event must wear in white, we can find the automopher is totally match the brand.

2. Tightly define the target audience. The audience of Samsung Mobile is very clear, people who like high tech, fashion are the key audience.

3. Deliver exclusivity. The target audience wants to know that this event is special. So Samsung Mobile use photo wall to show there audience that this event is special.

4. Stick to a few key messages. Stick to a few key messages and repeat them often. Develop a plot line. An event is most effective when it is like great theater or a great novel. Samsung Mobile use bluethooth to connect audience with event. And also provide SAMSUNG Mobil commercial on bar screens, expect that they also setup the Samsung Mobile Lounge to let the audience to chec out the newest Samsung Phones. The last one is Sumsung integration in show.

5. Use the Internet. The Internet is a great way to promote the event, maintain continuous communication with the target audience, and follow up with the audience after an event.