Value is a very interesting dynamic in economics. Why do we spend $1,000,000 for a Ferrari over $30K for a Toyota?

Are the parts really 33X better? Have they built a brand that is 33X better than Toyota?

In short…yes.

Really, the only thing that matters is HOW the consumer perceives the value that helps set the price.

In sponsorship, it is no different.

There are levers that play a part in increasing and decreasing the perceived value of your assets, but even all the way down to the perceived value of your department & team.

The past 2 weeks on The Inches Podcast, Rich Franklin & I dove into the levers that can affect the perceived value of your assets & team.

You can listen to Episode 1 & Episode 2, but as always I dive in more below.

Before you do anything, you have to identify the need of your sponsors

The old riddle goes “Which weighs more, a pound of rocks or a pound of feathers?” Well, they weigh the same. ( I fell for that as a kid as with most of us).

But flip the question, which is worth more…and you get the grown version of the riddle.

Some would look up the value of each online per pound, but this would be the wrong way of going about it.

A pound of rocks is worth much less to a mattress company than a pound of feathers. The need for the item is more valuable than the weight.

As we really look at the idea of perceived value… I think it would help to get a good definition:

In marketing terminology, perceived value is the customers’ evaluation of the merits of a product or service, and its ability to meet their needs and expectations, especially in comparison with its peers.

Thank you, Investopedia for that definition. But really it is a very concise way to state the items that

The key part that stands out to me is “its ability to meet their needs and expectations”. Perceived value is heavily grounded in the needs of your customers.

With that, it is important to state that the first goal for increasing the perceived value of your sponsorship assets comes with truly understanding the needs of the sponsors you are targeting or renewing.

If most of your current sponsors are going through a hiring freeze, adding new assets around hospitality packages for new hires does not meet their needs. The perceived value of the asset is low at this moment.

If most of your current sponsors are looking to boost their own perception in the community, your community outreach assets will be a prime product and have a higher perceived value.

As we navigate the different ways we can increase the perceived value of our assets…we must first understand that knowing a particular partner’s needs is a foundation to success.

How can you understand their needs? Looking over their company blog is a good start. Discovery calls as well.

Overall, before you start on any aspect of the below items, it is vital that you understand your prospect’s needs in order to know which levers to pull.

Define your audience & fan demographics

We’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast…but we have to jump in again because it is so crucial in our sponsorship assets.

Context.

In short…why should a brand spend their dollars with your team over another source of advertising? It is always vital to understand that we need to build context with our sponsors for why your assets are the best spend of their dollars.

The easiest way to build context, in my opinion, is by showing that your audience syncs up perfectly with their target market. If you can show that your audience and fan demographics are in line with the customer they want to reach, you immediately increase the value of spending dollars with your team

This goes all the way to the point where a brand will spend MORE with you even though your reach is less than other options because your fan demographics are more valuable to them than spending on a wide net reach campaign.

This of course means that you need to invest in ways that show you these demographics. One easy way is if you have a Facebook page, you can see certain demographics of your followers.

I won’t dive in on that on this article but click HERE to see how.

Understanding what you have (your following and audience) is a cornerstone to telling that story for why a sponsor should spend with you.

If you can clearly articulate that your fans are in the desired demographic that your sponsors are looking to reach…you will win more deals. The perceived value of your assets will increase drastically to the brand you are selling to simply because you reach the customers they are looking to get in front of.

I want to pause here and think about this for a second. If you know who your fan is, you can automatically increase your perceived value to sponsors that are looking to reach that fan.

It is as easy as doing the above and seeing where your Facebook following lands demographically that can allow you to increase the value of your assets to sponsors who are looking to reach your fan group.

Exclusivity & Differentiation

People want items that few people have. It’s been proven with cards, exclusive sneakers, cars, etc.

The same goes for your partnership assets. How exclusive the asset is will increase the perceived value.

We’ve seen this in sports for years with jersey sponsorship & stadium naming rights. Only one brand can be the sponsor of those assets. They, therefore, hold a high perceived value.

I want to pause again here and go back to the first point of understanding the need. An exclusive asset, if it does not help fit the need of your sponsor, is useless. We can’t just say a jersey patch has high perceived value to a sponsor just because it is exclusive. If the goal of the sponsor is not focused heavily on increasing brand awareness that asset has a far lower perceived value. It is not worth the price tag to the sponsor.

Exclusivity is not tied with high perceived value. BUT if we can understand which sponsors have that goal of people knowing their brand (I always think back to BioFreeze and the Portland Trailblazers. The company was at a point in their marketing journey where they wanted EVERY household to know their product. The jersey patch was, in my opinion, the perfect asset for their stage of the company).

With that being said, you should have a fair amount of exclusivity in your inventory base for the sponsors who are willing to pay for it. An exclusive car partner category will have many dealerships fighting for that spot…and knowing they will be the ONLY car partner to reach your fans increases the perceived value.

The next piece to that is differentiation. It is an interesting part of exclusivity that I want to dive into.

If you are the only property in a league to have a larger Snapchat following….you will increase your perceived value to sponsors who either want to reach the customers on that platform OR maybe more importantly are already spending there.

If you are the ONLY team to have certain assets…your perceived value will skyrocket. Again it goes back to the idea of limited supply. If only 5 teams in the country have a big following on a certain platform it will attract a high price to the sponsors looking to be on that platform.

Right now, if you have a large following on YouTube as a team you will have a higher perceived value as brands are dumping money into YouTube ads. If you are one of the only ones in the league to have a high following on this…your perceived value will be insane to certain sponsors.

Exclusivity is key, but don’t forget about differentiation as we think about increasing perceived value due to limited supply. I would differentiation is more valuable if done correctly than exclusivity.

Implied or Actual Endorsement

The best way I can describe this is what transpired this previous off-season with the Tampa Bay Bucs. Tom Brady comes to the team and the perceived value increases.

There are a few reasons in this case. One is he’s Tom Brady and the attention he commands from Primetime games to more news coverage is huge.

Second, the odds of the Bucs heading to the Super Bowl increased quite a bit (this paid off).

The implied or actual endorsement from your staff, players, coaches, mascot, and others can instantly increase the perceived value of your assets and team.

Rich utilizes this amazingly at the Winterhawks. Mike Johnston is the coach and GM of the organization, he also has coached in the NHL and is one hell of a leadership speaker.

A few activations Rich has put together has been bringing Mike to company meetings to speak all the way to hosting a coaching show on YouTube live where fans can listen and season ticket holders can ask questions.

Both of these sponsorship assets have a higher perceived value with the addition of Mike. It fits directly with the sponsor’s goals. His presence has elevated the value of the inventory and activation.

You have people in your organization that to the right person can elevate the perceived value with their addition to the inventory. Don’t count them out.

Wins In Your Area

A track record is a huge part of perceived value. How well you’ve done with a sponsor in your area is critical for the price people are willing to pay for your assets.

As you build these case studies up, you are essentially de-risking others from spending with you. If you can prove that there has been another sponsor that has benefitted from the partnership it shows that there is a good chance others will.

I think this is pretty apparent so I won’t dive in too far here. But I will say it is important to authentically spread this success through your community.

One key way that I see is creating a LinkedIn page specifically for partnerships on your team. There you can highlight campaigns launched with other sponsors and authentically let the business community know about your wins. It is the easiest way to get that word out that I’ve seen.

Using Multiple Platforms For Reach

This goes a little bit back to the differentiation item. If you can show that you have multiple avenues for reaching your diverse fan base…your perceived value will increase with sponsors.

Again it comes down to two items. One, there is a higher chance you have inventory that they are looking to invest in. If you have a wide variety of platforms in which you can reach fans, you can tailor fit it to the needs of the sponsors.

Second, it shows you do have a wide reach of assets with more ways to reach your fans. If you can increase the touch-points with fans it will be more valuable with fans.

Now I am not advocating for a wide reach but shallow engagement. If you have 7 channels but no one engages with 5 of them…it will look enticing at first, but as they dig in it will lose its value if there are no numbers in reach or engagement with them.

It should be on your partnership’s team road map to eventually build these platforms up. It may take a year, but as you add more sponsors will be more interested.

Activation > Impressions

This goes back to a great episode we did with a 17-year-old fan, but activation is more impressive to brands than impressions.

How does this link to perceived value? If you are the team that is peddling impressions only…today brands aren’t buying.

If instead, you show activation, the assets that really get fans involved, the perceived value will increase.

For one, it shows that you are actually doing the work to find inventory that connects with your fans. Impressions are ok, but it is easy to say “your sign has been seen by X fans across the season”. if you can say “ X fans say the halfcourt shot AND we were able to activate 5,000 of them as they guessed on their phone whether the fan would nail the shot.” the value increases due to the more engaged level to the inventory.

Activation is remembered. The recall on these assets is higher than your heavily impression-based ones. Focus on how your inventory can engage and activate your fans over just getting their impression.

Reach Of Sports Sponsorship

This goes back a little bit with the demographics point, but the big thing about sports is really the reach of sports.

Geographically in some cases, it is global. In others, the local reach aspect while smaller reach is more valuable.

Overall, sports is one of the only places where you can reach a wide variety of customers in one shot. It checks the boxes for customer reach for a lot of brands.

As we talked about with platform reach, showing sponsors that they can get more bang for their buck by efficiently reaching multiple types of fans & customers will increase the perceived value of your package.

Success Stories & Track Record

Again, this may be compounding with the wins in your area but it is a little bit nuanced here. If you have a track record of delivering results with sponsors, your value increases.

I’m sure you have seen the opposite of this where a brand may have asked “what other car dealers have you worked with?” and having no direct case study. It is really hard to grab a deal when you haven’t proven that you can perform on their needs with your package.

Does this mean you can’t ever close a car partner? Absolutely not. If you don’t have a track record in a certain vertical, you can find a success story in a similar space

For example, most car dealers want to ensure that you can connect their salespeople with fans looking to buy cars. If you have had a campaign that does this with say an insurance company and it was successful, there is a good chance it will translate to a successful campaign in the future with this car sponsor.

Success stories mean you’ve come through for someone else to help reach their goals. If you can promote these to other sponsors, it is a great way to increase the perceived value of your assets.

Appealing To The Ego Of Decision Maker

Ego may be the wrong word here…but it’s one we found best described how to grow this part of perceived value. When we sell to people, we are selling to humans. More than a transaction, these are real people with families, interests, hopes, & dreams.

There is no easier way to show you actually care about building a relationship with a prospect or client than tying into their ego.

For example, does your prospect have kids? If so, offer to host them in the penalty box before the game.

Has one of your prospects or current clients always dreamed of shooting a free throw on an NBA court? Invite them pre-game to take a shot.

If you can bring value to your prospect, it will go a long way to building trust. Sometimes it is as easy as mailing a sports card of their favorite player.

YOU

People buy things from people they trust & like. You are absolutely a HUGE piece of increasing perceived value.

Think of it like when a superstar joins a sports team, it immediately increases the perceived value of the team and their chances of winning it all. Adding a superstar sponsorship salesperson to your staff and team will do the same thing.

How you interact with your prospects and sell to them will increase (or decrease) your perceived value. Have a bad call with a prospect? You can expect that to bring down the value.

At the next meeting, you fulfill their needs and wow them…you’ll increase that value.

I think the best way to show this is in the actual prospecting process. If off the bat you are sending robotic, spammy emails…you will immediately drive down the perceived value. If you are creative and stand out with a thoughtful outreach…you can immediately increase that perceived value.

You are a big piece in the sales process. Don’t discount that in helping build your department’s perceived value with sponsors.

Notice how none of these had anything to do with your team’s performance on the field with wins & losses!

There is a perception that the perceived value will only increase with how well the team is doing. I hear it all the time “well we aren’t doing very well on the field so it makes sense why we have less value in our packages.”

None of the above has anything to do with the play on the field. You can absolutely grow your perceived value by going 0–16 in a season.

And it comes back full circle to the first point here of knowing the needs of your sponsors. If you are creating a place where brands trust that your assets will reach their marketing goals no matter the team record.

The list above is all items you can increase your perceived value despite the quality on the field (or ice or court).

Last, most of these are easy to do

A lot of these items are easy to do & implement to increase your perceived value. There are many items here that you can within hours create packages and reports on.

In my mind, there is no reason you should NOT implement the above in your sponsorship department. These may be the easiest way to drive more revenue.

And really this is a way to make closes easier. If you can increase the perceived value of your assets and department as a whole, those sales calls and meetings are much easier.

The prospect sees you in a better light. They understand who you are as an organization and where you can bring value better. This all leads to an increase in trust.

I’ll end this with increasing perceived value is really increasing trust

Why do people buy Ferrari at such a high price? It’s the centuries of increasing perceived value to build trust that when you buy one for millions of dollars, you are getting one of the finest automobiles in the world.

The same will be the case for your sponsorship department and assets. If you can be patient, lay the groundwork, and build upon the above factors…you will be simultaneously building trust in your team.

More trust that you can deliver to your sponsor’s goal, the higher the perceived value to brands.

As you go forward with your 2021 planning, I challenge you to really audit these items and see where you land. These are all levers of perceived value, they can decrease your perceived value faster than increase if you aren’t thinking about them in many cases.

Humans are creatures of habits. It is extremely hard once we’ve entered a habit to change it.

In reverse, it takes a lot for us to build new habits. But there was a pandemic that rewired a lot of our actions as humans in the way we go about our daily lives.

Some are for the better, some for the worse.

But, what if you could help re-wire your fans to go back to some of the habits they had before this pandemic hit? What if through our assets we could build habits into the daily lives of our fans?

In this article, I’m diving into habits. How do they form? And how can we in sponsorship form positive habits that benefit both our fans and sponsors?

Let’s dive in.

First, why do we need to create habits?

In short, you may not need to. But I think there are plenty of cases where it is beneficial to start creating those habits around. As we are a year into this pandemic, our fans have totally created new habits in their lives.

For example, many of us aren’t flying as of now. Maybe we’ve found road trips to be more comfortable. We’re ordering our food through an app, maybe that is a good thing for some sponsors…but it could be a bad thing for others.

Overall we should look at each of our sponsors and find the positive habits that have been created with their consumers. Are they good for the sponsor? Great, let’s build assets to reinforce them.

Are they bad for the sponsor? Let’s build packages that can re-build the habits that are profitable for them.

I am not suggesting that we fight major trends like digital access etc. Some habits like that are so far pushed forward that it would be impossible to jump back. But we can identify the new habits that affect our clients and find ways to either change or reinforce them.

The beauty of habits is if you build it…it can be repeatable value with little work each game by you or your sponsor. Our goal in sponsorship should be to build reinforcing habits into our packages.

Ok, but what psychologically makes a habit?

Before we can dive into how we can create habits through our assets, we have to understand the psychology behind how we create habits as humans. How do we re-wire our brains to create a habit?

After diving into a few places, this article from NPR was a great resource.

“It turns out that every habit starts with a psychological pattern called a ‘habit loop,’ which is a three-part process. First, there’s a cue, or trigger, that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and let a behavior unfold.

“Then there’s the routine, which is the behavior itself,” Duhigg tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “That’s what we think about when we think about habits.”

The third step, he says, is the reward: something that your brain likes that helps it remember the “habit loop” in the future.”

What a perfect set of steps that we can start with to build into our assets.

The Cue or Trigger — The Routine — The Reward

These are the foundations we need to look at if we plan to build our assets and activations into a habit for our fans. Let’s individually break those down

The Trigger

On our podcast, The Inches, Rich and I have gone into this idea which Rich calls the stunt.

In order to start a new habit, we need a trigger. Something that breaks your pattern of our fans and changes their current habit.

Rich gives an example that he had in his radio days with a young Jimmy Kimmel starting a morning show on KZOK in Seattle. Most people are in the habit of their own morning radio show, they’ve been tuning in for years.

If Jimmy Kimmel had just come onto the show, maybe they get a few listens…but they needed to have a trigger or stunt to break the pattern of listeners to listen to something new.

So they had Jimmy and his co-host drive down the highway in downtown Seattle on a giant steam pipe organ while doing some segments of their show on the organ.

Could you imagine seeing a giant steam pipe organ headed down the major highway at rush hour with a radio guy on the top? That is enough to get anyone to tune in and try it from their previous radio show.

As we think through our campaigns, we have to have a Trigger that breaks our fan’s habit of what they are currently doing. You can’t just casually announce the activation, you need to make it unique enough to grab their attention.

The trigger is the foundation for building a habit. If you can’t land the trigger, fans will go back to what they were doing before.

Get creative with the trigger. The crazier the better. You need something that is worth my intrigue as a fan to change my current habit. How can you grab my focus and get me to try something new?

The Routine

The next step is consistency. In order to get fans to truly build a habit, you have to make it operate like clockwork game in and game out.

We get conditioned to do things usually chronologically. Think about when you’ve scheduled your workouts all over the place as opposed to every M-W-F at 7 PM. In my experience when you don’t have that set time…you fall off the wagon in keeping your routine.

This is no different with our activations. You can’t just do it every other game when you feel like it. You need to condition fans that the activation comes on every day at a certain time. That could be the second media timeout of the second period in a hockey game (as we have with our Toyota Trivia with the Portland Winterhawks). That could be every game when the team enters the court for a warmup.

Maybe it isn’t around a game. Maybe it is a day of the week (Freebee Fridays) or even building into the routine of the day (when you have breakfast, you have to eat X food). These are routines that we can build into the outside of the confines of our gameday.

No matter what it is, if you build a routine you help cement the new habit you have a much better chance of it succeeding. You have to be persistent and committed to it.

The Reward

We see this a lot at SQWAD with our activations. As fun as activations are…fans like to win stuff. If they are going to spend time engaging with your activation…it needs to be worth the reward.

An example from today, Why do people wait hours on the Top Shot waiting line to get a pack…even when it seems impossible that they will get a pack?

The reward is worth the time spent waiting.

Can you build a habit without the reward? Maybe…but the experience needs to be CRAZY fun so the reward is that experience.

99% of the time in order to have fans come back each week or game you need to have a reward worth it enough to come back.

The reward helps solidify why the fan comes back on the routine side of things.

Ok, so I have the steps. How does this translate to sponsors?

These 3 steps will build a habit loop with your fans. The more times they come back and go through that loop…the more likely they are to continue the habit.

There are very real activations that we can build into packages that can change the habits of our fans. There are categories that we can really zone in on to drive the value through habits. Here are a few below:

Building a habit in travel

As I said above, habits don’t have to come around our game day. We can absolutely insert our sponsors into certain habits in daily life.

For example, when we travel, we usually have very specific ways we purchase our tickets…and even the mode in which we travel for that matter.

Maybe we like to take the train over flying….maybe we choose a certain airline for different attributes. Those are habits that we are comfortable with.

In this instance, if we are an airline that fans don’t usually use…we need to find ways in which we can insert the brand into the routine to change the habit.

One of my favorite examples of this is the activation between The Portland Timbers and Alaska Airlines. Alaska has been the kit sponsor for the Timbers for many years.

It’s one thing to pay for the jersey sponsorship with the goal of building awareness…but why should we stop there.

Assuming that the goal was to drive more travelers to book with Alaska, the team added a masterful piece to the deal that would change the travel habits of Timbers fans with an easy campaign.

If you wear your Timbers gear at the airport when boarding you get to board early. Simplicity at its core and a beautiful way to help change a habit.

Think about it, when we travel the boarding process is anything but pleasant….and other airlines even charge money if you want to board early. With one simple tweak, the club is giving fans a reason to fly Alaska.

And think about it from a fan’s perspective. As you are in the habit of booking a flight with another airline…and you see the early boarding fee…immediately you think to how you would be able to get that for free if you flew with Alaska and wore your Timbers shirt.

This is changing the habit for fans in how they choose to purchase flights…the power of this is sponsorship gold.

And all you have to do is get them to take advantage of it once. Once they do it…they have the incentive to build it into a routine of doing it every time they fly.

And the reward? Getting something for free that other airlines charge for to make for a more pleasant flight experience.

This is a perfect example of how activation can change a buying habit for your sponsors. The more fans take advantage of it…the more likely that Alaska becomes THE airline they choose while traveling.

This case study will be KEY as your airline travel picks up. How can you build those habits back for your travel partners into your fan’s buying process?

Happy Hour…and your restaurant partners

Happy hour started as a way to break the habit that you didn’t go to the restaurant until it was dinner time. For many people getting off work, when you were done you headed home and waited for dinner to eat.

This meant a valuable hour was missed by bars and restaurants. With few customers…it was a lost opportunity to drive sales.

Happy hour was built to change your habit. It was inserted into life to get you to go to happy hour drinks with co-workers after work with the reward of cheaper drinks. Once we as society adopted it…there was no turning back. It was ingrained into our culture.

And really this came with restaurants understanding our migration paths after work. We finished our work and headed home…but we walked by restaurants with no incentive to stop. The trigger of lower-priced food and drinks (also a reward) took us out of our migration routine and

I bring all of this up because we have similar migration patterns on game day. Fans come from all parts of the city…and sometimes state in order to watch our games. How can you build a habit of eating at a location before the game… or after the game?

If you can build in a program that helps build a habit of an after-game dinner… you bring repeatable business to that sponsor. The fan is already headed home on a certain route

For example…imagine that one route is extremely packed with traffic after games. People are going to be sitting in their cars…why not have them sit in a restaurant eating?

If you had the Traffic Hour restaurant sponsor that offered 20% off food during the high traffic hours, you will get fans to break the habit of sitting in traffic and redirect them to sit in a nice restaurant continuing the game experience.

This example helps bring value in two ways. First, we give the fan the lower-cost food, which the restaurant doesn’t care about because their sales were probably slow due to most fans just sitting in traffic.

Second, you are rewarding the fan with a better experience than sitting in a car. They were going to get home at the same time anyways…why wait in a cramped car? Why not spend that time continuing the great night at a restaurant?

I would bet that this even could lead fans to not leave a game early. If you really burn this habit into a fan’s game experience, you could make the offer only after the end of the game. If you left early, you would miss it (and let’s be honest, you probably would still sit in traffic with other fans leaving).

This habit may be a slow start. But maybe you have a celebrity show up at the Traffic Hour…maybe a band plays. Maybe a post-game live show. Now it is something fans need to be a part of.

All the while, you are building the overall habit that this restaurant is THE best experience for entertainment events. As my grandpa loves going to Denny’s because of the senior deal…you can build a habit that whenever a fan says “it’s a special night…where should we eat?” the first thing that pops into their head is that restaurant.

And it all started with understanding the migration habit of fans and offering a better option…

Do fans visit your sponsor car dealership lots anymore?

During the pandemic, there was a huge shift for car dealers as they had to sell a car without the car lot experience they had relied on for decades. Sure, you can buy a car online…but how do you make it so it isn’t a commoditized sale?

How can your team help build a habit of visiting the dealership lot again? Better yet, can we build a new habit of connecting with the dealers directly in parts of our game in order to drive purchases?

What if instead of pushing fans to the dealership to start that relationship, you built the habit of building a relationship with a dealer through other mediums?

What if every pre-game a new salesperson came on to give a game recap for the past game…or some color commenting on an upcoming game? What if fans could compete in a prediction game against that dealer on a stat?

Now we are building a new habit of fans building a relationship with a dealer before they even step foot on the lot. When they think in their head “where should I buy a car?” That salesperson that went on a 5 correct streak in the prediction game comes to mind.

With the example above we may be throwing aside a previous buying process habit that isn’t as relevant today for one that better fits how we consume as fans.

The dealership’s goal is usually to connect fans with salespeople…we are just changing where that relationship is built.

Sometimes the habit will come with understanding the goal and rethinking how a new, more successful habit can be formed.

This process will become extremely important in your assets post-pandemic

we have gotten into some habits that aren’t great for our sponsors. Maybe we aren’t eating out as much…or traveling as much. Those new habits have real consequences for our sponsor’s businesses.

As always in sponsorship, our goal is to help solve our sponsor’s problems. Changing habits will be critical in that goal. If a restaurant was driving in-person traffic before the pandemic…but not as many in the pandemic….how can we help them revert the habits back to purchases?

And really sometimes it can come as a simple reminder of old habits. What can you do to get your fans back in the habit that they may have abandoned during the pandemic? How can you, for example, trigger fans to get back into traveling?

In the new sponsorship era, the teams that understand the habits of fans that help their sponsors thrive and can create assets that solidify those habits will be bringing repeatable value to their sponsors. When we talk about items that get our sponsors to come back week in and week out…this is the golden ticket.

If you can reinforce these habits…you can make it so sponsors can’t live without your partnership. If they do…they risk a shift in habits that are profitable to them.

In this new age of sponsorship…the teams that become obsessed with fan habits will win deals.

Everyone always talks about stories in sales…and rightfully so. As humans, we are physiologically conditioned to accept stories more than any other form of communication.

Stories build trust, they build empathy. Neuroscientists found that when listening to a well-told story, the exact same areas of the brain light up on an MRI in both the storyteller and listener. Your brain, as the listener, mirrors the brain of the storyteller.

We love stories so much as humans, our brains continue to consume them as we sleep when we dream.

Many times though in sponsorship, we look at our packages as a menu and sell them as such. This sign, this rink board, this sponsored tweet…

This causes our sponsors to see them as commodities. When you rip out the story, we only see black and white products.

Today I’m diving into how you can craft your sponsorship package pitch as a story to bring more context to answer the question “Why should I spend my marketing dollars with your team.”

Looking at the foundations of a story

As we look at stories, there are many frameworks we can follow. The heroes journey, rags to riches, Icarus, etc. They are all good models to go off.

But the insight I love to start with comes with this TED talk by Andrew Stanton. He is a storyteller from Pixar behind some of their greatest hits like Finding Nemo.

Click HERE to see the whole talk.

I draw a lot of this from his talk, which is one of the best I’ve seen on the fundamentals of stories. I’ll dive into the key parts below, but definitely check out the talk as it has an abundance of ideas and insights.

Andrew takes us through his journey to becoming a storyteller. It’s a great dive into the foundations he realized while working at Pixar. It’s beautifully crafted into a succinct video.

I’ll dive into some of the key points below, but one key part of the talk comes when he talks about the rules for constructing a story.

Before the story comes the research.

Before I dive into the ideas from Andrew, I think one key item comes with understanding your audience.

Knowing your audience helps you craft a better story. It helps you build in that unscratchable itch and promise (more on these below). It helps you craft the most compelling story before you even craft it.

Different stories fit different audiences in different ways. For example, I am a dog lover. You tell me a story about a dog, I’m interested. If it is a story about a cat, it better be an earth-shattering & compelling story to keep my interest.

The same comes with the story we tell to our sponsors. In order to keep them interested and make it worth their while, you will have to do your research.

We’ve talked about this in the past, but there are many ways that our clients & prospects tell us exactly what they want. You can check out their company blog for news on product launches or initiatives. You can check out the ads they are running on Facebook and Instagram to see what messages they are willing to pay money to get to their customers.

You can also do it the old fashion way and simply ask them in a discovery call.

Before you can tell a compelling story to your brand, you have to understand their needs. Before you can even start crafting the story, do the research. It will help you tell a story that connects with your audience.

Your sponsor with that unscratchable itch (goal)

Andrew dives into a really intriguing part of the video that I think really resonates with our storytelling in sponsorship.

He talks about in his character creation process that every great character has an unscratchable itch. A passion or a mission that seemingly is just out of reach that they are obsessed with solving. In Toy Story, Woody wants to be liked and the top toy. In Wall-E, the little robot is looking for connection and friendship.

In every great story, the character has an itch that they are on a mission to scratch.

In every great sponsorship relationship, we have the same thing. Our prospects all have a goal, a passion, a mission that they are looking to achieve through advertising.

For a car dealership, it might be as “simple” as doubling their sales volume over the next 5 years. For an insurance partner, it may be to become a pillar in community outreach.

Every brand prospect has that unscratchable itch we can craft our stories around. It will help pull them in. More than pull them in, it will show that you care about their goals. It will make your story their story. The focus then becomes their goals and not the assets you are looking to sell.

This may be the most important part of the storytelling process. This sets up everything we need to help draw them in and get them hooked. It may take a lot of research, it may take a few comp tickets to get them out to the game and chat with them…but they all have an unscratchable itch in their business.

“How am I going to achieve X this year/decade?” Find this unscratchable itch. It is the destination that your story will lead to in order to help get them sold.

Make Me A Promise (connection)

This is where you capitalize on the unscratchable itch to pull them in. The next step is to hook the partner in the first slide.

You see, our time is valuable. In order to ensure they will listen to your story, you need to make sure you do something to grab their attention.

In the video, Andrew calls this the “make me a promise” section. Every great story pulls its audience in with a promise that they hope you fulfill throughout the narrative. Sometimes the promise is as simple as “Once upon a time”. It pulls us in, begging us to learn more.

And really, this is the “Make Me Care” part. We need to get our buyers emotionally invested in what is to come with our story.

Think of this as a trailer for a movie. The goal of the trailer is to make me care enough to spend my time and money to head to the movie theatre. If the trailer is bad…I’m not going.

A big part of having success here comes with the unscratchable itch. If we know what the unscratchable itch revolves around, we can directly link our promise to it to pull them in.

For example, if a car partner’s unscratchable itch is to regain top market share in the city your promise should revolve around this. Maybe it’s; “What if I told you we can help you get back to #1 through the power of fan affinity and love for our team mixed with calculated retargeting to drive purchases?”

Immediately, I want to learn more if I have this itch. I may not believe you at first (that is what the rest of the story is for)…but I am intrigued.

I can’t ignore it. The desire to scratch my itch is too much to not listen.

This is how you hook them in to hear the story. This is how you make them care enough to listen attentively for the entire pitch. They are curious, they want to learn more…they need to learn more.

Finding the itch and making the promise is the first key step to closing the deal. Nail that promise and will have their attention.

Finally, craft the assets around those story elements

Notice how we haven’t touched which assets yet to use? This is on purpose.

To be honest, until you know your sponsor’s unscratchable itch and the promise you’ll start with…you don’t know what story to craft. how could you?

You can’t structure your story without these two elements. You may have an idea, but you can’t make it flow without these two north stars.

Both of the above items are on the map. They help guide us where our story will go and the details.

And really, you are crafting the story of the fan journey. How will you get your fans to eventually get to the partner’s unscratchable itch? What is the journey to that goal? What is cadence? What steps will they have to take to get there?

For a car sponsor, if we start at a fan not knowing anything about the dealership or cars…what are the assets and steps we’ll take to guide them to connecting with a dealer and making a purchase?

Some journeys are long, like a car sponsor. A fan maybe makes one purchase every 5–9 years. This is a long, trilogy-type sponsorship story (which leads to justification for a multi-year deal).

Some journeys are short, like a QSR partner’s story may be. Most of the time, the goal is a fast purchase…but we want them to come back multiple times in the season to make many purchases at the location.

With the QSR sponsor story, we’ll tell a story of multiple sales and the journey there with our assets. One that is much different from the car sponsor’s.

Don’t touch the assets until you have the unscratchable itch & promise nailed. Once you have them…use the assets as the key points to help get the fan to the itch.

Every asset needs a part in that story

The reason why stories sell is they bring context to the assets. They bring the “WHY”.

Context allows us to add more assets if they fit that why in the journey. They also help us thin out the assets that don’t make sense and hurt the story.

Nothing is worse in a movie when an obscure scene has nothing to do with the end plot of the movie. It wastes our time and distracts us.

I’ve said this before, but nothing hurts our credibility in selling more than when we offer an asset that doesn’t lead to the sponsor’s goal.

Many times, it’s because we are looking to reach a sales goal. But we cannot just throw in assets because we have them. Every asset has a role in completing the story. If the stories we tell have bad assets in them, we’ll get called out.

On the flip side, if an asset that the sponsor thought wasn’t important fits well into the story…then we have the opportunity to craft it into the story. This makes it so the sponsor could see it in a new light with newfound value.

Like a well-made dish, your assets need to make sense toward the end goal.

If there is an asset out of place, it will show and ruin the story. When a director makes a bad movie…sometimes it is a long time before they get another shot.

Storytelling also helps us ask the hard question “is this asset still relevant in today’s age of advertising?”

There are many assets that we sell in sponsorship that simply aren’t effective in the modern world of advertising. We sell them because they are legacy remnants from a time that is no longer relevant in effectively reaching customers.

For example, I believe hockey rink boards are overpriced and honestly useless in terms of today’s advertising (again, my opinion).

Before I get rocks thrown at me for the last sentence, our stories are a great way to test this statement.

As we craft these stories for the fan journey, if an asset continues to not fit into the stories we create, you have to have a real (and sometimes hard) conversation with yourself and your team as to whether you should still be selling it.

If there is little reason to add them (they don’t fit into the story) it quickly turns the meeting from “they want to help me” to “they want to sell to me” in the mind of your prospect. It instantly turns the meeting into a transactional one.

Nothing kills a sales meeting more than when it turns into purely a transactional one.

If assets like rink boards don’t fit most of the stories you are crafting for sponsors, you need to cut them. I know that sounds crazy, but it will hurt more than help you, in the long run, to continue to jam them down your sponsor’s throat if it doesn’t have a key place in their story.

A clearly defined story helps you prove the value (ROI)

In every crafted story there is a mission. We talked about it a bit before with the unscratchable itch. Each brand has a mission that this story helps achieve.

The beautiful thing about crafting these stories is we have initial landmarks we can use to show value.

Let’s say the mission is car sales for a sponsor. Most of the time one sign, activation, or sponsored tweet doesn’t sell the car. We need to condition the fan to have that brand top of mind with awareness assets mixed with leads generated.

Where are the story points that trigger the next step toward those goals?

These trigger points are what your recaps will be made of. How many fans made it through each milestone to reach the end goal?

When a sponsor asks “how did the scoreboard read perform in this asset toward our goal?” you have an answer because you are tracking each tactic and milestone. If X amount of fans saw the scoreboard read, which led to Y amount of fans going to the next step in the fan journey…you can justify the purchase of that scoreboard read asset.

This also sets up the reasoning on why they should continue to spend on certain assets in your recap meetings.

By turning your package into a story, you are giving relevance to each asset. You are giving a “why” to those assets. They now are vital to the investment and can’t be cut next season or during renewals.

You’ve taken something that may have been commoditized and give it meaning & value. More importantly, you can now report on the steps of the story and get your sponsor obsessed with them.

In today’s age of needing to prove ROI and cut waste spending by brands…this can save you thousands of dollars in revenue in sponsorship sales.

Every sponsor package needs a story

Context in sales always wins. It answers the question of “why should I invest with you?” context helps you frame the value of assets that a sponsor may have seen in a different light.

Stories build context.

For too long in the industry, we’ve offered up a menu of assets with no context. We’ve forced the sponsor to choose individual items with little context. This strategy commoditizes our assets. It lessens their value.

If we build these assets into a story that shows how they help guide fans to their overall goals, it builds their value. It increases the likelihood a sponsor says yes.

Overall though I think the biggest value this brings to a sponsorship department is truly vet out which assets we should think about cutting from our packages. If we craft stories around our packages, we’ll start to see which ones no longer fit into the journey that fans go through TODAY instead of the journey they went through 5 years ago.

It may hurt us in the short run (lost revenue from rink boards), but it will help us in the long run through building relationships and selling the right assets.

Before your next pitch, build a story for your sponsor. Ditch the menu.