I used to run track in high school. Specifically the hurdles – and I loved them. The most excruciating moments, and possibly the most critical, were those just before and just after the gun went off and you came out of the blocks. Your start affected the entire race – if it was bad, there was no bouncing back; if it was good – you could break records. The quality of the activation of your sponsorship partnership is like coming out of the blocks; if you are not intentionally and uncompromisingly placing every step with vigor unlike any other, you simply aren’t going to make anything memorable out of it. In high school, being memorable on the field isn’t nearly as high a priority as it is to be memorable in sponsorship; so let’s talk about coming out of the blocks with activation efforts that leave you absolutely unforgettable.
Here’s a question to ask: What does our audience experience when they attend? What keeps them coming back year to year? What would make the experience more enjoyable for them? When you start understanding the perspective of your audience and you see things from their reality vs. your perception, you can really start answering questions about how to meet their needs. The whole goal of your sponsor is to activate a partnership that leaves them in good standing with your audience – to be remembered as a reason they had a good experience. As we have mentioned before, putting up a bunch of signs just isn’t really noteworthy anymore.
Interaction is one way to really be memorable. When you consider the classes you were most engaged in during school years, weren’t they the discussions vs. the lectures? Or the practicum’s or labs vs. the monologue you heard from your professor? VERY few lecturers can engage an audience in the same way as a professor that calls your name and asks for your answer. Banners are like monologues, at some point, people just tune out. When you drive interaction through various means where the sponsor meets a need, you’re activating creatively and effectively. One example was of an event I attended this summer where the parking was really pretty ridiculous. In order to get to the hub of the activities, you had to seriously trek it – lace up your shoes and grab a bottled water, because you were going to pay for your fun with about the next week’s worth of a work out. So the property ended up landing a sponsor who handled shuttling attendees back and forth to their parking spots. I’m not going to lie – I will never forget the relief I felt as I prepared for the marathon walk back to my car and stumbled upon a friendly driver and his invitation to take us back. We were hot, tired, famished, and suddenly relieved – that sponsor’s activation effort turned them into my hero. They weren’t just a banner, they were an answer to a problem. Now, if only there had been an ice cream sponsor…
Long term reminders are another way to drive the message home. One of my favorite examples of this is pictures. Everyone likes to have their pictures taken, right? So maybe you create a way for your audience to get their pictures taken with their families, or with a celebrity. They will likely not only purchase the picture, but take them home and reference them indefinitely. If the picture was made possible by “fill in the blank” sponsor, they’ve just placed themselves on a piece of material that isn’t going into the garbage and out of the mind for a very long time if ever. When you go on a cruise, everytime you port, there’s a picture crew waiting to take your picture – and because we love the local culture we’re getting pictured with, and we’re “on vacation” we all end up buying those pictures, don’t we?! As a culture, we love pictures don’t we?
So when you’re coming out of the blocks you aren’t thinking of the last hurdle, you’re thinking of the first eight steps. When you’re activating out of the blocks you’re asking yourself what things are going to impact your audience with interaction, long term memories, meet specific needs of theirs and keep them coming back. Then you consider with those first eight steps how your partners can meet those needs. So when the gun goes off, and the event starts, those first eight steps are dynamic, well placed, something that inspires oohs and ahhs and sets the pace for the rest of the race. You had a good work out, now the fun really begins because those steps, lunges and leaps matter!