To quote Abbott and Costello's baseball Comedy act, "Look Abbott, if you're the coach, you must know all the players." Or more appropriately, if you're presenting a sponsorship opportunity, it's important that you reveal active players/sponsors. Sponsors have indicated to us that this is very important information, for the following reasons:
- It offers your current efforts credibility.
- Sponsors want to know if your opportunity/partners align with their marketing efforts.
- Sponsors need to be aware of any competitor involvement.
These factors can make or break a partnership opportunity, so to save time and energy for everyone involved it's important to lay these things out up front.
Let's say you have a high profile event and you're working to secure a title sponsor, and you want to reach out to both Pepsi and Coke to offer them the opportunity. My advice here is transparency. Let both Pepsi and Coke know that you're working with the other and that you're willing to offer brand exclusivity for the event to either party. Not only will this light a fire under each company to start making decisions, but assuming you really do have the right event, you may be able to negotiate repeat sponsorships. IEG's blog recently highlighted just how important brand exclusivity can be for a sponsor, and how it can make or break a partnership.
Next, lets consider the opportunity for cross partnerships among your sponsors. Consider what one may have to offer another when it comes to activation programs and added value within your sponsorship opportunity. By bringing another sponsor on board you can make current sponsorship programs more valuable, but first you'll have to communicate who these sponsors are. Once you've established these relationships, why not offer a Sponsor Summit where all of your partners have the opportunity to come together and network with each other. This builds loyality among your sponsors and gives them the opportunity to forge relationships/partnerships of their own, all worth the extra steps involved.
Now suppose you work for your local non-profit that is dedicated to lowering underage drinking rates among college students, and you've invested a substantial amount of money sponsoring a welcome wagon kit for your local college or university. This welcome wagon kit goes to each student on campus so numerous local vendors are sponsoring it for advertising space. Brilliant way to reach your target market right? Get to the college kids before they are influenced by their peers and other sources? Well... Maybe. Your ad comes to you in the mail and you see that you have been sandwiched between a giant Budweiser ad and another ad featuring "College Night at Tony's Tavern" featuring $1 draws with your student id. While you scramble to fix this error, 25k copies have headed to the printer and are en route to the school. Whoops!
While this could have been a great campaign, the sponsorship opportunity should have been more aware of this potential conflict, and placed the sponsorship ad accordingly. Again, by being transparent with your partners, a potential disaster can be avoided by something as simple as ad placement. This is just a mild example in my make believe blog world, and I'm sure you've been through worse. To make yourself feel better check out these other Sponsorship deals gone wrong.
So in conclusion, you should be upfront about who your current sponsors are and who your potential sponsors are. Not only can it make you look more credible and boost sponsorships, it could potentially save you from embarrassment and poorly executed sponsorships.