For sponsors
You invest in sponsorship
Brands, government, media, and anyone spending money to build something through an audience someone else has already gathered. Here’s the version of this site that’s relevant to you.
Sound familiar?
The four problems sponsors bring me
In some order, and usually more than one at a time.
“Our portfolio is a museum of old decisions.”
Sponsorships nobody would sign today, kept alive by relationships, politics, or a multi-year contract. You need an audit, a rationale, and a way to exit without market blowback.
Portfolio audits & strategy“I can’t prove the return.”
You’re being asked for numbers by people who think sponsorship is a luxury spend. The problem is usually the objectives, not the measurement — you can’t measure your way out of a vague objective.
The measurement chapter“Leverage is an afterthought.”
The rights fee gets signed, then someone remembers to do something with it. Leverage is where the return actually lives, and it needs to be planned before you sign, not after.
Read the white paper“We have to cut, and cut fast.”
Recession, restructure, or a new CMO. Cutting evenly is the worst option — you want to keep the most leverageable assets, which are often not the most obvious ones.
Downturn consultingFree first
Start with the free stuff
Genuinely. If reading three things fixes it, that’s a better outcome for both of us than an invoice.
Last Generation Sponsorship Redux
The framework everything else here sits on. Free PDF.
Read moreBest of: for sponsors
The curated reading path, in order.
Read moreBest of: for CMOs
The big-picture version, for the person above you.
Read moreSponsorship Guidelines template
Tell rightsholders what you actually need. Free Word doc.
Read moreWhen you want help
And when reading isn’t enough
Get the strategy right first
A sponsorship review and strategy pinpoints what’s going wrong, gets to the core of how sponsorship works for your brand and your markets, and gives you something the whole organisation can get behind.
Or get it fast, in the room
A strategy session over a day or two. No beautiful written document, but the analysis, advice, and forward plan — plus the buy-in that comes from your people building it themselves.
Then build the skills to run it
In-house training for frontline teams, broader stakeholders, regional management, and the board — each group needs a different thing.
Fix the partners while you’re at it
Unsophisticated rightsholders cost you time and money. Partner training makes the properties you sponsor easier and more valuable to work with.
Make it stick across the organisation
If sponsorship happens in fifteen places at once, systems design gives everyone the same fundamentals with tools adapted to their own goals.
Kim introduced us to the Win-Win-Win principle that I believe is a true game changer in how to approach sponsorship in any company, within any sector. Since working with Kim we have seen a significant decrease in verbal/brand slap deals of old and an increase in next level best practice sponsorship.
Kim helped our customers think beyond the four walls of their convention and consider more sophisticated sponsor opportunities that not only provided a win for the in person participants, but also the remote fans.
Kim has the expertise and knowledge which could impress even the most experienced, but presents in a way that is the opposite of drinking from a fire hose.
What’s the actual problem?
Send me a couple of paragraphs about the portfolio, the pressure you’re under, and what “fixed” would look like. I’ll tell you straight whether I can help.