Traditional versus Creative Sponsorship
In a thesaurus, the word “sponsorship” has a variety of synonyms, including backing, support, funding, aid, finance and protection. I am yawning as I write this. But in the world of marketing, it truly means a way to reach out to a potential new target market with the aim of making more sales and building your reputation. Not so tiresome, but not far behind. OK, what I really mean to say is sponsorship can be creative, fun, inspiring and most importantly, it can get you new business!
Traditional sponsorship is still out there, but the best innovative minds will want to pull together a unique, jaw dropping marketing adventure that will get the attention of your audience. Didn’t know sponsorship could be so cool, eh? Well let me give you a couple of past sponsorship initiatives I have been involved with.
I was working on an event with zero budget and was in desperate need of creative design. At the time, designers were in very high demand and unavailable. Finding a designer to sponsor and donate their talent in kind was a big challenge. I was connected to this brilliant designer who had a banking day job and did design part time after hours. We approached her employer, a large credit union. The company ended up sponsoring the event by donating her days at work to creative days of work on the event. A win win for everyone!
Another innovative story is on sponsorship recognition. Gone should be the days of the rolling PowerPoint with logos (I am back yawning again). Instead of recognizing sponsors this way in front of a large audience, we did messaging throughout the day for each sponsor on what philanthropic achievements they achieved in their business. The crowd loved it, it was engaging, it was educational and it really highlighted their business! So, over to you savvy marketing minded readers … traditional or creative?
Treena Innes
BCAMA Director of Sponsorship
PS. Get in contact with me anytime to talk creative sponsorship, would love to hear from you: tkm1313@shaw.ca
