As a sponsor, walk into the evaluation of a property you’re considering with a sound valuation methodology and you’ll discover that the disparity between the value of different but similarly priced assets can wind up being significant.

Take, for example, the outfield wall in a professional baseball team’s stadium.  The rights holder, the team, may price logo placement on the left, right and centre outfield walls at the same rate.

Branding on the outfield walls will be picked up on-camera during each game’s broadcast.  The outfield walls will also deliver visibility from all or a fair portion of the in-stadium audience, depending on the building.

The value of the outfield wall – centre, left or right positions – from an in-stadium visibility perspective may be relatively even by comparison, again – depending on the building.   But if you look at those same outfield wall positions from a broadcast visibly perspective, you’ll find that
the right outfield wall carries considerably higher value.  The right outfield wall winds up being on-camera, on average, in the range of 40% more than the left outfield wall and about 25% more than the centre outfield wall   If you wind up choosing a position on the left outfield wall, you’re going to wind up with less value than if you’re brand logo is placed on a right field wall position.

While a camera visible logo placement is what I call a ‘wallpaper’ asset (a logo impression doesn’t wind up getting the consumer to change the way they feel about your brand), it still winds up driving a good deal of value in a professional sports team sponsorship.  A MLB team’s regular season is 162 games, 81 at home.  If the team’s game broadcasts are drawing 400,000 viewers a game, the difference in the value between a right outfield wall placement and a left outfield wall placement adds up.

Be choiceful in the sponsorship assets you buy in all of your sponsorship deals and don’t rely on what the rights holder says each asset is worth as your only source to assign value.  If you don’t have a process for valuation of sponsorship assets, hire sponsorship experts who do (like us, for example).  The impact on the value you buy could be significant.

Once again, we’ve highlighted some deals below which we hope you will find of interest.

P&G Aligns Tide with NFL and its 32 Teams

The most-advertised household product brand, Tide, will be an official partner of all 32 NFL franchises, as well as the league itself beginning in the fall of 2012. The deal is part of an option within Proctor & Gamble’s massive deal with the NFL to align one specific brand with all 32 teams. PepsiCo’s Gatorade is the only other brand with such rights. Retail activation via marks on product packaging, amongst other integrated communications efforts, are planned to leverage the sponsorship.

Wyndham Worldwide signs Masters Co-Leader Dufner to Sponsorship Deal

The hotels and resorts brand signed the PGA Tour journeyman in the middle of the prestigious Masters tournament, in between the second and third rounds, to a deal including logo placement on his shirt. Dufner was the overnight co-leader after two rounds of play and there’s no doubt that this position influenced the company’s decision – rightfully so, as being in contention would lead to more television exposure for the shirt.

Castrol Edge Motor Oil signs Washington Redskins’ Robert Griffin III to Endorsement Deal

Motor Oil companies commonly sponsor athletes and teams in traditional motorsports, such as NASCAR and F1, but to sponsor a football player is a rather unconventional move for the category. The brand’s rational for the deal is that they can break through the clutter more easily with a football sponsorship (as their NFL partnership proved last year) than in motorsports. Griffin will be featured in the brand’s ads and in an online game. He will also promote the partnership through Twitter.

Iceberg Vodka Sponsors Titanic Book Launch

In hindsight, author Lindsay Gibbs likely wishes she hadn’t agreed to Iceberg Vodka’s sponsorship of her book, “Titanic: The Tennis Story.”, launch party. Alignment with the brand has caused several PR issues, including backlash from one of the book’s deceased subjects’ granddaughter.

Please feel free to pass any deals that you find to be outside the norm along to mitch@desperadomarketing.com so they can be posted on our upcoming “Distinctive Sponsorship Deals” blog.

Each piece of business we work on is different and unique. How one client in one industry needs to measure sponsorship ROI is very different from another client in another industry sector. This complexity means that there is no out-of-the-box, silver bullet solution to sponsorship measurement. Sorry about that, there just isn’t.

Figuring out sponsorship ROI for your brand is hard work, but its extremely worthwhile work. Being able to effectively measure sponsorship ROI helps you better manage your sponsorship portfolio and it helps you to better activate the properties in your portfolio. Being able to credibly track the return to your business from the investments you’re making in sponsorship marketing makes your job easier and it mitigates business risk. It takes guess work, gut feel and hope out of the equation and enables you to make sound business decisions based on sound business intelligence.

A reliable means of measuring sponsorship ROI, like our own customizable sponsorship measurement protocol True ROI™, doesn’t come out of a box. Instead it is an adaptive set of processes that measures what matters for your business and maps against your own business model. It produces a set of dashboards unique to your business, again – measuring what maters.

An airline that sells directly to passengers, also sells through traditional and online travel agents and competes heavily on price is going to have different data inputs and different measurement outputs than a CPG brand that doesn’t sell directly to consumers and may have little tangible differentiation from its competitors. One business is more heavily transaction focused and one is more brand equity focused. This is just one of the differences that will dictate how sponsorship ROI is measured. There are many.

We’ve created a 35 minute webinar on sponsorship ROI that can help give you a better perspective on how to go about measuring sponsorship ROI in your own business.

Link to for access: http://desperadomarketing.com/resources/

It’s free to view and an easy watch over lunch at your desk.

I hope you find value in it.

B2B marketers are more active in channels they might have dismissed as ineffective half a generation ago.   Professional service and engineering firms, industrial equipment manufacturers, and commercial insurers – all now have sophisticated marketing departments.  What might have at one time been a strategy around trade show exhibits, print ads in trade magazines and direct mail has evolved to include all of those plus press relations, digital, social media, sponsorship and other means of marketing their products and services.

None of that is any great surprise.  The world evolves and marketers, sellers and buyers evolve to.  Or do they?

We have long understood that some consumer purchase decisions are more emotionally driven than others.  As science continues to unlock what makes the mind work we now know that in fact most, if not all, consumer purchase decisions are emotively driven.  We buy the car because it will make us look cool and then we rationalize the choice for ourselves and for others against fuel economy, crash test results and value.

Sizzle sells steak

There is still the fallacy that B2B purchase decisions are made through rational economics.  Research also shows that, along with the added influence of how we as individuals function in a social environment working with others, while a B2B purchase decision tends to be more process driven and has more people involved, in the end most B2B purchase decisions are also emotionally driven.  The process of rationalizing against facts and figures is just more elaborate than for the consumer and his car.

Business to business (B2B) marketers are inserting sponsorship into their marketing mix with more frequency, more commitment and better measurement than ever before.  Don’t just look at the magnitude of IBM’s commitment to sponsorships as an example but you’ll find law firms, accountancy practices and business consultancies
more active as well.

Connect through something they care about

In its essence, B2B sponsorship is about connecting with your clients, prospects and other stakeholders through something they already care about.  Attach your enterprise software product to the football team, the symphony orchestra or the literacy counsel and the associative benefits are real.

Hospitality is a key sponsorship asset for B2B marketers, but it’s not everything.  Hosting a prospect at an event your company is sponsoring can have a meaningful impact on the relationship you’re nerchering.  Giving them access to an experience that your competitor isn’t or can’t certainly plays on your prospect’s opinion of your business and your people.

There are ways of tracking not only the impact on that prospect’s opinion of your business and your people, but there are also ways of tracking the impact that the experience had on conversion, revenue and profitability.

Move beyond hospitality.  Think about the power of your product or service being applied to the sponsorship property’s business as a best-practice case study.

Think about the brand equity impact to your professional service firm by being able to demonstrate your brand values through the association with an event with proven high levels of good will.

Provide Access

Move beyond traditional hospitality.  If I’m a busy banking executive, I don’t need another invitation to play golf or the offer of tickets to your corporate box at a basketball game.  I get those kinds of invitations all the time and frankly, I work 65 hours a week and I’d rather be at home with my family than in your arena suite.

But, get myself, my son and my granddaughter on the hardwood on a Saturday afternoon for a hands-on clinic with three of you the team’s second string players, a hot dog and a pint of Bud Light and I might just love you.

Bring my wife and I to a private intimate dinner inside the exhibit at the art gallery the night before it opens to the public where the exhibit curator is one of the dinner guests and I might just buy.

Either Bayne’s people couldn’t make a compelling enough case to potential sponsors for investment or, there wasn’t a compelling enough reason for sponsors to invest.

Sponsoring race car teams is an expensive proposition.  Each brand will have different sponsorship objectives.  Broadcast visibility earned through a logo pasted to a car going around a track may absolutely be of value to some.

We are now in the era where ROI finally matters (and thank goodness for that).  The recently released results of the ANA/IEG Sponsorship and Event Marketing Survey tells us that 90% of marketers know that its either very important or extremely important to have actionable results from sponsorship for their senior management.  Only 14% of those same marketers are very satisfied with their ability to provide those results.

NASCAR team sponsorships can run in the $12 to $15 million range per season. When looking for measurable results from a sponsorship budget, a NASCAR team sponsorship may look on the risky side when compared to other options.  Those same dollars would go a long way in rights fees and activation investment against a moderately sized portfolio of properties.  A sponsorship manager needs to consider payback and earnback on her investments now, more than ever.

Now, and in the future, properties that can’t deliver measurable results will be challenged at earning funding from sponsorship.

The best sponsorship activation plans are built around a calendar.  They extend the season, the show run, the event weekend.  Good activation plans own space in the before, the during and the after.

If your sponsorship activation isn’t extending the value that the sponsorship brings your brand beyond the limited timeframe when the art is on the wall, the ball is on the field or the float is on the parade route – you’re not going to get your best results.

College football fan excitement grows as they eagerly anticipate the start of the season.  Be there to share that anticipation with them.  Own it.

Symphony music lovers wait for the first performance of the year.  Be there as part of the pre-performance season rituals.  Live it.

Aside from some amateurish audio-visual and scripting gaffs, the quality of the conference is up over the last three years, anyway. The SMCC is still hard pressed to keep the day on schedule.  When your audience is made up of sponsorship and experiential marketers who live by attention to detail, workback schedules and timelines you can’t afford to run close to an hour long on the day, year after year.

The conference’s single day format presents some challenges.

First, the vast majority of those attending wind up being from the Toronto area, with a few taking the 55 minute flight from Montreal.  If I’m a sponsorship marketer from Vancouver or Halifax, I’m less likely to make the effort to come that far for a one-day event.

The single day, one room with bad lighting, one audience approach means that every speaker is a keynote.  At least two speakers from this year’s list of presenters, while good, weren’t keynote-able.

Jeremy Edwards, founder of London, UK based Activative was keynote-able.  A little unfamiliar with how to deal with a classically-Canadian non-responsive, subdued, won’t laugh at the funny-bits, audience he delivered some great content.

Edwards identified seven current trends he’s seeing in sponsorship activation.

The first trend he called, what he admitted was a ‘made-up word’, Fanpaign.  Building a bond with your target audience around enabling them to express and share their passion for the property you’ve sponsored.  Not a new trend, I believe that activating around passion-points has always brought the most compelling results.

Edwards’ second trend is insightful.  What he called Socialization – narrowing the chatter you’re doing in your social media channels around the sponsorship to the core fans of the property you’re sponsoring.

The third trend is obvious, but many of us are still ignoring it; Dual Screening – a fan consuming live sports, for example, while also engaging on a second (or third) screen – tablet, smart phone, laptop.  Building platforms around your sponsorships
that live on these second (or third) screens presents great activation opportunities.

Fourth – Augmented Reality – building smart phone and tablet apps that improve the fan experience.  One example given was where Orange, the game-changing brand based in the UK, built a smart phone app that enabled attendees to the Glastonbury Music Festivals it sponsors to navigate the event site.  Point your smart phone in any direction, icons show up on screen for site services, stages, drinking spots.

The fifth trend – Tagging and Tracking, connecting with consumers in a very personal and value-add way during their event
experience.  ASICS, sponsor of the New York City Marathon, enabled friends and families of runners who wore an identifying
chip to share video and text messages of encouragement with those runners on pixel boards and OOH media sites along the marathon course.  Beautiful.

Edwards suggested that trend six (Enhanced Experiences) and trend seven (Be Entertaining.  Be Good.  Be useful) are separate, but I’d argue they are one in the same.  We take it as a broad activation cue – enhance, don’t interrupt consumer
experiences.

Also keynote-able: In her talk, founder of Australia based agency Power Sponsorship Kim Skildum-Reid focused on what she called the game outside the game; activating around the fan or event experience and not just around the property or the event itself.

Skildum-Reid narrowed sponsorship (marketing) objectives for all of us to two: change behaviours, change perceptions.  Period.

She encouraged sponsorship marketers to focus on a win, win and win as they approach sponsorship.  A win for their own brand or organization, a win for the property/partner and most importantly but often forgotten, a win for the target audience.  And in short, don’t sponsor the event, sponsor the fans.

The day finished off with the eight annual Sponsorship Marketing Awards.  I was a panel judge for the SMAs two years ago.  I think they’re a valuable way of recognizing good work and good business results.

The actual process for handing the awards out is long and even painful.  I’d definitely like to see that expedited and maybe even done outside of the conference itself.  More content, please.

Welcome to this month’s edition of “Distinctive Sponsorship Deals”, a monthly blog post to highlight and summarize some of the most unconventional and thought-provoking sponsorship deals we’ve seen from the previous month.

We will do our best to inform you of sponsorship deals which make you laugh, scratch your head, or scream “Eureka!” at your desk.

Chicago White Sox and University of Illinois Partner in Unique Deal

The deal includes special White Sox ticket and hospitality offers for University of Illinois Illini fans, as well as other promotion for the University’s athletics teams.

Rovio’s “Angry Birds” Game Sponsors Finnish F1 driver Heikki Kovalainen

Last August, this minor hockey goalie’s helmet made headlines because of its unique “Angry Birds” design. Now, Formula 1 driver, Heikki Kovaleinen will be wearing a helmet with an “Angry Birds” design as part of a sponsorship agreement with Rovio, the mobile game’s maker.

Unique Asia-Only Lebron Deal for Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin Robbins

Dunkin’ Brands chose Lebron James over the latest sensation with Asian ties, Jeremy Lin, to endorse their two restaurant chains in Asia as they look to expand. Lebron already endorses McDonald’s in North America. It will be interesting to see how things play out with the two endorsements in today’s world of global social and digital media reach. The deal is for two years.

Trina Solar, a Chinese Solar Company, Sponsors NASCAR’S Kasey Kahne

The sponsorship agreement includes the company’s logo presence on Kasey Kahne’s #5 car, alongside that of Farmers Insurance. While it’s rare to have a foreign, and specifically Asian, brand sponsor a NASCAR driver, Trina Solar is not foreign to auto racing sponsorship – it became an official sponsor of the Lotus Renault Formula 1 team in 2010.

Lebron’s Energy Sheets Product Announces Sponsorship of Miami ATP Event

Sheets^TM Brand was named the official Energy product of the 2012 Sony Ericsson Open, which took place in March in Miami. The deal included sampling and activation rights as well as in-stadium signage and stadium court promotions for the brand’s new product and existing Energy Sheets. Interestingly, PureBrands LLC, the brand’s owner, was co-founded by Lebron James and his business partner, Maverick Carter – a Miami connection no doubt.

Linsanity Results in Major Endorsement Deal with Volvo for Knicks Point Guard

After only a few weeks of NBA stardom, Jeremy Lin of the New York Knicks was signed to a global endorsement deal by Volvo Cars. Volvo hopes that Lin can help them increase global sales by increasing brand appeal among younger and performance-oriented customers.

Hollywood Park and Betfair Partner for First Naming Rights Agreement Ever for a Horseracing Venue in US

Not only will the venue be renamed “Betfair Hollywood Park”, but Betfair will be investing significantly to improve hospitality and on-site technological engagement for attendees. As well, through Betfair-owned TVG, the racetrack’s events will be broadcast to viewers of America’s Horseracing Network.

UK Olympic Athlete Lands Sponsorship via EBay, Twitter

James Ellington is a British sprinter aiming to qualify for this summer’s Olympic Games. Four months ago, he attempted to sell himself as a sponsorship property via eBay. James recently announced that “King of Shaves”, a shaving product brand, has signed him to an endorsement deal after a company representative connected with him through Twitter.

Please feel free to pass any deals that you find to be outside the norm along to mitch@desperadomarketing.com so they can be posted on our upcoming “Distinctive Sponsorship Deals” blog.

The announcement gleefully received by hockey fans in Quebec City and elsewhere, bucks the trend towards public dollars getting out of the professional sports facility business. While governments of all levels from across North America (nee, the world) battle budget deficits, mounting debt and austerity measures, few elected leaders would be bold enough to suggest funding a hockey rink, a baseball field or a soccer stadium.

Not here.

Quebec is unique in many ways but when it comes to hockey in Quebec City specifically, there has been a pebble in the shoe of the city since it lost its beloved Quebec Nordiques to Denver in 1995. The void left by the team’s departure has been deep, dark and smouldering ever since.

Even the possibility of bringing NHL hockey back to Quebec City has been a powerful force in rallying civic pride and a non-existent teams fandom, most visibly transplanted back to the Nordiques of past. In fact, merchandise sales for the Quebec Nordiques, a team that hasn’t really existed for 17 years, bettered many current NHL clubs in 2011.

So while the city upgrades an existing facility to be ready for a NHL team in advance of 2015, a brand new facility to be built where a horse race track now sits seems to be a done deal.

Now, getting a NHL team should be the easy part, qui?

In an early morning roundtable session I attended, Claes Fagerström, former head of Swedbank’s sponsorship team and now a senior advisor at the bank’s sponsorship agency – JJP, reviewed the elegant sponsorship strategy Claes and his team built and is now busy implementing.

The strategy hits all of the marks.  Its simple, it resonates with the bank’s customers, employees and prospects and the strategy clearly supports brand values and business objectives.  What impressed me most about Claes was the passion with which he described his work.

The morning’s keynote speaker, media game changer Eddy Moretti from VICE Media, spoke about innovation as a competitive business advantage, particularly as it relates to partnering.  VICE went from a Montreal-based free print magazine to a global media company worth $1 Billion in a matter of years.  Innovation, it would appear, works.

In the year’s that I have been attending the IEG, I’ve heard and seen an impressive group of speakers including Jane Goodall, Billy Beane, Joseph Jaffe and others.

The calibre of speakers this year and the level of content was, in my view, a notch up from what I’ve seen in the last couple of years at the conference.  The breadth of speakers, the number of sessions available to attendees had also dropped over those same couple of years – but, I’d take quality over quantity most days.