As a way to draw increased awareness and attention to some of the standup sponsorship opportunities on our site, we set apart one blog per month to put the “Spotlight on Sponsorship”! If you have a premium level listing on SponsorPark, and would like to have your event featured, please contact Stephanie.Lochmiller@SponsorPark.com to submit your event, as we are currently looking to fill our 2011 Spotlight calendar. This month our spotlight shines on the “Yellow Daisy Festival”.
What is the Yellow Daisy Festival all about?
The 43rd Annual Yellow Daisy Festival is consistently voted one of the top five arts & crafts shows in the nation by Sunshine Artist Magazine, a Southeast Tourism Society Top 20 Event and winner of multiple awards by the Southeast Festival and Events Association. Yellow Daisy Festival began in 1968 with four ladies setting up hand-made crafts for sale in some horse stalls at Stone Mountain Park in Atlanta, Georgia. The event was a modest success and was repeated the next year with more participants and returning guests bringing friends. Fast forward 43 years and you'll see where it all ended up. Close to 500 juried artists (with hundreds not making the cut) hosting more than 200,000 people over four days. The event has become a right of passage experience with mothers introducing it to their daughters, grandma in tow. The event will take place September 8-11th, 2011 in Stone Mountain Park, Atlanta GA.
What makes this opportunity unique?
The Yellow Daisy Festival provides the best of all worlds by providing sponsors with high tech, grass roots and face to face time with consumers. The Festival provides areas for entertainment and socializing, such as the Xfinity Men's Den featuring sports on big-screen TVs and overstuffed recliners and couches to provide a shopping respite for hard-working spouses, and give sponsors the opportunity to gain face time with these attendees.
The one-on-one nature of the event has also lead to a natural transition to social media. Stone Mountain Park maintains a permission-based email list, currently at 65,000, plus an ever-growing base of FaceBook fans. There are 1.2 million unique visitors annually to the Yellow Daisy Festival website.
On the grass roots front, everyone coming to the park for the two weeks leading up to the festival is handed a flier with their park map and parking pass. All 60,000 of these also feature sponsor logos as an added value for those participating.
Surviving Sponsorship in a Heated Economy
Due to a change in recent economic conditions festival organizers are that fixed programs have become much less so and customization with value-added features has been the rallying cry.
Organizers of many events are also also seeing changes courtesy of challenges with traditional media. The Yellow Daisy Festival sponsorship isn't vulnerable to TiVo or impacted by iPods and XM diverting radio listeners. You can't zip and zap past sponsors. Especially those handing out delicious samples or offering goodies. Sponsorships seem to be moving up the totem pole as people become more adept at avoiding paid commercial messages.
Preferred Partners?
According to event organizers landing a global park automotive sponsor is a major objective. Stone Mountain Park provides an amazing number of opportunities tailor-made for a car company. One million people watch the Lasershow Spectacular every year, which lets for projected animated laser commercials onto face of Stone Mountain, five times the size of an IMAX screen. Combine that with test drives, ride & drives, season-long display opportunities, festivals like Yellow Daisy Festival and you have the makings of an amazing sponsorship program. . Yellow Daisy Festival has tremendous brand equity, a phenomenal following built from years of providing an incredible guest experience, giving sponsors the unique ability to pass along brand preference from one generation to another. To learn more about the event check out their SponsorPark listing.