Today brands aren’t all about profit. Mainly because today customers demand that a brand make positive impacts on the world and our communities.
This means our sponsorship packages need to adapt as well if we are really looking to drive value for our partners.
We had a great Tip Of The Week jam session with Branden Harvey and the value of it was off the charts on this subject. If you haven’t checked it out, see below for the full episode but I wanted to pull out the key nuggets
First, a background on Branden Harvey
I’m blessed to be in the same space as Branden, who is the CEO of GoodGoodGood. GoodGoodGood is a media company that highlights the good in the world.
His publication works with brands to help promote the good work they do and is an expert on community impact partnerships and working with brands to highlight them.
I’m blessed to work in the same office space as Branden and jam with him on social, sponsorship, and advertising on a regular basis. After our chats, I knew I had to get him on an episode to share his knowledge and views on how we can benefit from sports sponsorship.
Brands are doubling down on community & impact initiatives
As Branden points out today’s community impact has never been more important for brands. Consumers today are more conscious of the positive impact a brand makes over price and even other marketing efforts.
Brands are noticing this trend and putting resources and dollars behind advertising assets that push this message forward and highlight their community initiative.
Knowing this, we need to ensure that we have sponsorship assets that will help them highlight these initiatives and drive reach and acknowledgment for your fans.
Offer assets that highlight these community activations as well as profit promotion
If your sponsor has community impact initiatives and you don’t put assets into your package that addresses them you are flat out throwing money out the window.
How can you find out? Very easily.
Search the company website on the news tab. If they have a company blog they will be highlighting these initiatives. If this fails literally Google “Company Name” community and news should show up.
Once you find these initiatives think of a few options that would really highlight them for your fans. This may be an in-stadium check presentation, Facebook acknowledgment campaign, anything that will get it in front of your fans.
One particular one I liked was one done with Rich & Zoom+ Care, a health company. For mental health awareness night, they had a mix of in-arena announcements and activations as well as a Facebook and Twitter campaign to highlight the initiatives.
When you find their initiative have a few options when pitching them that you can offer to them. It will help you drive the relationship and value you can bring them.
Sometimes the brand wants to put the non-profit front & center
A great point Branden brings up is sometimes the sponsor doesn’t want to be the focus of the activation…but instead puts the charity or non-profit into the forefront.
Make sure you are asking this when chatting about community initiatives. This can help you close the deal and even build a relationship with the non-profit for possible future work.
As you can see above Youth Line is a non-profit that Zoom+ Care has brought into the activation. Sometimes there will be more of a push to highlight them over the sponsor’s brand.
Overall, make sure that community initiatives are on your mind when pitching sponsors
Community impact is a huge part of the consumer buying decision today. Brands know this and are pushing this into their messaging to their customers.
Branden is in the trenches every day in this space and seeing results…there is definitely a carryover to our packages in sponsorship.
Be sure you do the research into which initiatives the brand finds important and put the assets that highlight them into your packages.
