The Work Behind Our Industry’s Best Sponsorships
This is the first in a series of blog posts that will highlight the many activities and practices of sponsorship management.
What does great sponsorship management look like?
These deals don’t just appear out of thin air and magically drive business results. Those of us who work in the sponsorship space spend countless hours executing across a very unique set of activities.
Some of us work for sponsors (or “brands”)… others work for rights holder organizations (or “properties”)… And many of us work for the agencies and vendors who support sponsors and rights holders.
What exactly goes on behind the scenes in the sponsorship industry? Here’s a high level snapshot.
The Activities
The below framework outlines the activities that go into planning, transacting, executing, and measuring sponsorships:
I will be breaking down each of these activities in some upcoming blog posts… but for now, I want to provide some high level principles to explain how this framework can be understood:
Two Main Perspectives
In sponsorship, there are different activities being performed by those representing the “buyer” of sponsorships (the sponsor) vs. those representing the “seller” of sponsorships (the rights holder) - because these different organizations have different objectives, purposes, and perspectives.
Sequential but Scattered
Although there is a sequential nature to how these activities are carried out, there are often many sponsorships being managed by a given brand or rights holder at once. And because sponsorship opportunities, programming calendars, and fiscal years don’t always line up perfectly, a team might be in the Strategy phase on one of their sponsorships, while simultaneously in the Transaction phase of another.
Cycles
Additionally, the duration of each phase can vary from situation to situation. Many sponsorships in the sports space might follow an annual calendar, as do many brands’ planning processes… but more innovative and modern approaches involve shorter cycles of activating, measuring, and restructuring a given deal.
Terminology
The sponsorship industry is not 100% aligned from a terminology standpoint. Some other common terms for these activities (or related activities) include:
STRATEGY: Planning, Mapping
INVENTORY PLANNING/MANAGEMENT: Architecting, Valuation
OPPORTUNITY ANALYSIS: Assessment, Valuation
SALES: Business Development
ACQUISITION: Deal Structuring, Negotiation
FULFILLMENT: Servicing, Activation
ACTIVATION: Leveraging, Amplifying
MEASUREMENT / EVALUATION: Performance Measurement, Review, Scorecarding, Auditing
What exactly happens within each of these activities, and how do different skillsets contribute to the overall success of a rights holder or brand’s sponsorship practice? More to come!
