The Budweiser sponsorship activation of the Winnipeg Jets won Gold in the Sports Category and Best in Show at this year’s SMAs.

It was particularly special because I was able too accept the award alongside Dan Chubey from Labatt.  Dan is now Sales Director, Ontario, for Labatt but during the 2011/12 hockey season, he was the District Sales Manager, Manitoba, and was based in his home town of Winnipeg.  Without Dan and his Manitoba sale team’s efforts in Winnipeg on a day to day basis, the Jets activation wouldn’t have been as successful as it was.  They owned it.

The award validates what we believe to be self-evident.  The premise of good sponsorship activation is simple – find the passion point within the property and activate there in a way that demonstrates your brand values and elevates the fan/patron/donor/attendees’ experience.

The Winnipeg Jets is a truly unique property and the 2011/12 hockey season was a truly unique point in time.

The 2011/12 hockey season marked the return of NHL hockey to Winnipeg after a 15 year absence after the original Winnipeg Jets moved to Phoenix.

Winnipeg Jets fans had waited fifteen years for their team to return. But what Budweiser discovered was that Winnipeg fans had not spent those fifteen years idle. Their team might have left town, but Winnipeggers stayed loyal and vowed to build a city that would have the financial health to support a future NHL franchise. Interviews with consumers all across Winnipeg showed that the return of the Jets was not just a hockey moment, but a civic moment: a triumph for a city that had lost its most treasured institution and that had vowed to get it back.

Given this history, when constructing an activation strategy to promote both a story (Budweiser as a hockey super fan) and its product, Budweiser started with the fans -for the real victory in the first year back for the Jets was not the players’, but the fans’.

The new Winnipeg Jets, fuelled by the passion of Winnipeg hockey fans, presented a tremendous opportunity for Budweiser to reinforce its position in hockey, elevate the fan experience and to bring Budweiser’s brand strategic positioning – optimism and celebration in a bottle – to life through its association with the team.

One of the most powerful activations was Fan Brew – the documentary ‘Pride of Winnipeg’ tells the story well.

Although IEG was acquired by WPP several years, IEG is still guided by co-founder Lesa Ukman and Lesa’s sister, CEO Laren Ukman.  IEG is the organization that pretty much defined the sponsorship marketing industry and continues to lead thinking in the space.

If I could point to one weakness in this year’s conference, it would be that there seemed to be a lack of coaching and preparation of conference speakers.

As an example, Pablo Ganguli, founder of Liberatum, was a keynote speaker on Day Two of the conference.  Leberatum stages festivals in key markets globally that attract artists, designers, writers and celebrities.  Thirty minutes into the hour long keynote, Ganguli still hadn’t got to any sort of point.  He got on a plane, travelled to Chicago, stood on a stage in front of 1,200 sponsorship professionals but he didn’t seem to have prepared any content for his talk.  He went through slide after slide of who had attended various Leberatum festivals (James Franco, and the like), but I’m not sure what he was trying to get across in his session titled ‘The Future of Events’.   I’m not sure that he was sure either.

The lunch hour keynote speaker on Day Three was Andy England, Executive Vice-President and CMO, MillerCoors.  England reviewed a lot of what MillerCoors does in the sponsorship space, but he never touched on the ‘why’, the results or the learnings.  If a CMO keeps running :30 spots as part of a presentation on sponsorship, I wonder if it’s a good indicator that he doesn’t really ‘get it’.

There were some absolute highlights for me from this year’s conference.

A good nuts-and-bolts session on Day One with Laren Ukman and Jim Andrews included a review of the latest IEG-Performance Research Decision Makers Survey that shows that there is still a disconnect between marketer’s lip service to the importance of measuring sponsorships and their actually measuring.

A second session on Day One, also led by Andrews, focused on trends in sponsorship.  These include: a stronger focus on data (thank goodness), sustainability platforms becoming a key partnership element for both sponsors and properties (i.e., sponsors looking to articulate their commitment to sustainability through their sponsorships) and the return of the prominence of music festivals in North America – evidenced by the increased sales velocity of ticket sales for events such as Coachella.

Lesa Ukman’s Opening Address on Day Two identified four key pillars to what she termed Über Sponsorship, the theme for this year’s conference.  They are: Be Bold, Be Disruptive, Be Deep and Be Good.

One of the best sessions for me of the whole conference was led by Norman Brodie, General Manager, Cadbury for the UK and Ireland.  It was actually Brodie’s last day with Cadbury (Kraft Foods), and he was spending it in Chicago.  He had led Cadbury’s sponsorship and activation of the London 2012 Olympic Games and took the audience through a transparent case study of how Cadbury, a Tier Two Olympic sponsor, played it big.

When I’m taking session notes, I use a highlighter to call out key points that I want to be sure resonate.

A few of my highlights from this year’s IEG Sponsorship Conference, in rapid fire:

-       Category leaders tend get higher awareness levels against sponsorships by default

-       Sponsorship takes time to bake (validating longer term deals)

-       Find the emotion, activate there

-       As a sponsor, identify your owned media assets that can leveraged against a property

-       Good WiFi helps earned media precipitate

-       Culture is the only competitive advantage

-       Is your sponsorship symbolic of your organizational culture?

-       Niche is the new reach

-       Educate the sceptics within our organization

-       People value meaningful experiences

-       As a sponsors, how can you increase value by curating and creating?

-       As a sponsor, what story are you buying?

-       Today’s excellent is tomorrow’s mediocre

-       Shift from brand campaigns to campaigning for your brand

The event was held at New World Stages, an off-Broadway multi-stage theatre two levels below West 50^th Ave., between 8^th and 9^th Streets.  Sessions were held in the venue’s five main theatres.  Speakers presented from stage backed by the sets for whatever productions are currently running.  A concourse provided ample space for between session breaks and an event sponsor exhibit area.

There was talk among some delegates that the conference wasn’t as good as it had been in 2011 and that this year, it under delivered.  There were a lot of audio/visual glitches, some session presenters didn’t seem to have been all that well vetted and there was a hard sales push from event sponsors, I don’t expect any conference to change my life.  If I can walk away with a few insights and one or two good ideas, I feel I have received my money’s worth.

The first morning’s key note speaker was author and former Wired Magazine contributing editor Jeff Howe.  Howe is credited with coining the term ‘crowdsourcing’ in a 2006 Wired Magazine article.  His 2008 book The Rise of Crowdsourcing explored the idea of an amateur renaissance where distance from a field of expertise often is where the greatest success is derived in solving complex problems.

The powerful message from Howe for the experiential marketers huddled around to focus on technology?  It’s about connecting with people.  Technology is just a tool.  Don’t focus so much on the later that you forget the former.

Day two started with keynoter Ed Keller, principal at Keller Fay Group and co-author of Face-to-Face.

Keller Fay measures word of mouth marketing.  During his talk he presented some sobering facts that should cause everyone to pause as they chase Facebook likes and Tweets.  In the U.S. this year, there will be 750 billion word of mouth face-to-face brand impressions.  That means peer to peer brand impressions, not brand to peer.  In the U.S. this year, there will be 25 billion peer to peer word of mouth brand impressions through social media.  Over the last two years, face-to-face has remained flat.  Social media has grown at the same rate as email word of mouth brand impressions had declined.  Keller doesn’t see face-to-face going anywhere in terms of weight.

Eight-three percent of peer to peer word of mouth impressions are the result of personal experiences.

Task: Work on creating better consumer experiences.

As part of the talk, I discussed the importance of knowing the difference between intermediary sponsorship metrics and true return on investment (ROI) sponsorship metrics.

Intermediary metrics against your sponsorship activity include things like audience size, impressions, number of consumers engaged, number of customers entertained.

Easy to count

Intermediary metrics tend to be easy to count.  Tracking them can lull one into a sense that they’re applying rigor to their sponsorship investments because they’re measuring something, especially if they’ve evolved from a time and a place where they conducted no sponsorship measurement at all.  It feels good.

True ROI sponsorship metrics are the things that you measure that impact the key performance dashboard indicators that drive your business.  Among others, these can include sales, lifetime customer value and brand health indicators around loyalty, consideration, intent.

Intermediary metrics are definitely important and you should be planning and delivering sponsorship activation that maximizes them.  You should also be vigilant and methodical in tracking intermediary sponsorship metrics.

The hard work

The hard work around sponsorship measurement and the sweet spot of sponsorship strategy is connecting your intermediary metrics to true ROI results (and being able to measure those results: true ROI metrics).

Connecting impressions with impact on sales.

Tracking the number of employees participating in a sponsorship activation with employee retention rates.

Understanding how a lift in awareness impacts customer loyalty.

Connecting the leads gathered with acquisition cost and conversion rate.

Demonstrating a link between the number of customers entertained with an impact on lifetime customer value.

I also vaguely remember hearing about a We Day rally in Toronto some years later, also created by Craig and his brother Marc.  I’m embarrassed to say that I never followed either story beyond that, because the stories and the brothers are exceptional.

Marc keynoted on Day Three of this year’s Canadian Sponsorship Forum in Montreal.  He described how his seventeen year old organization (he and his brother only being now in their late 20s) provides education to 55,000 kids in developing countries each day, provides healthcare and clean water for communities where the schools they have built are located and most importantly, how Free the Children creates self sufficient communities in its wake.

I don’t tear up easily, but Marc’s stories of remarkable kids in both the developing and the developed world took me there.  I was moved.

I have already, since the keynote this afternoon, bought clothing and goods from the organization’s We to Me website and I know where a portion of our corporate giving will go for this year.  Free the Children, We to Me and We Day are quite literally changing the world in a profound way.

Day three at the Forum had other highlights.

Deanne Carson from the iconic Calgary Stampede shared the story of this year’s 100^th Calgary Stampede celebration.  A great story, well told.

Alain Giguère from CROP presented compelling insights into the brand building power of Québec festivals, including Just For Laughs, host to this year’s Forum.

The Canadian Sponsorship Forum wrapped with the announcement of next year’s Forum dates and location, being held around the MasterCard Memorial Cup in May 2013 in Saskatoon.

If you’re in any way involved in sponsorship marketing in the Canadian market, plan on attending.  It will be well worth it.

Highlights for me included Ipsos-Reid’s Jordan Levitin presenting research which tracked Canada’s most valuable sponsorship properties according to surveying done in-market this past June.  The research graded a set of 100 preselected properties against so-called ‘Drivers of Connection’ for consumers.

These included:

• Personal Involvement
• Creating Memorable Moments
• Impact
• Sponsor Fit
• Responsible Administration
• Heritage
• Uniqueness

Levitin provided the top five:

1. Canadian Cancer Society
2. Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation
3. Heart & Stroke Foundation
4. Salvation Army
5. Canadian Red Cross

Jordan wouldn’t share the top sports or entertainment properties (I think we’ll need to buy the report to find that out), but I was surprised that the top five properties were all causes.  I do think the list is misnamed – the list of Canada’s most admired properties, Canada’s most loved properties or Canada’s most regarded properties might have all been better handles.  If they were the top most valuable properties, they would all be fetching rights fees well above the highest rights fee fetching properties.

Sid Lee’s Justin Kingsley’s session – Engaging Emotions – delivered.  Listening to an exceptionally bright and talented marketer passionately discuss their work is a real treat.  And seeing the Montreal-based consultancy/agency having risen to a global best-in-class shop makes me want to be better.

Mark Harrison and the team at Trojan One do an incredible job with the Forum each year, and it only gets better.  Forty nine speakers and 290 delegates are here in Montreal, this event has become Canada’s pre-eminent gathering for sponsorship professionals annually.

My own presentation session, A Passion for Measurement: Optimizing Sponsorship ROI , wound up being standing room only.  After a late start due to technical issues, my audience was very gracious as I shared my nerdy love of metrics.

The last session of the day was led by Don Mayo from research and analytics firm IMI International.  Don reviewed results and insights from consumer research that IMI has just conducted in several G8 countries that was compelling, if not grounding.

Facebook’s user numbers hit threshold three years ago and in fact, dropped in 2011.  Five percent of Twitter users are producing 50% of all tweets.  QR code acceptance is at 13%, up just 2% over the last two years.  Mobile device use by shoppers in making shopping decisions while in-store has been flat over the last three years, also may be at threshold.  Take away: digital, mobile and social media are all communications channels, none by themselves or in and of themselves are marketing strategies.

Consider the importance of syndicating the value of the collective sponsorship assets in your portfolio of sponsored properties across your organization and not just in the areas you’ve traditionally looked to.

This syndication of sponsorship value and benefits is key for at least two reasons.

1. Sweating the Assets

You can squeeze more measurable benefit out of your sponsorships the harder you make them work.  You build more return on investment (ROI) data points, better enabling you to monetize your ROI and tell better stories internally around success (or failure) of your sponsorship activity.

2.  Internal Support

The more business units, profit centers, functional areas across the organization that are deriving benefit from your sponsorship investments and that are participating in activating them, the stronger the support those sponsorships will receive and the easier it will be for the organization to rationalize the investment.  On this note, don’t discount the benefit of the excitement and interest that employees, department heads, business unit leaders will have in sharing ownership of the sponsorships and their activation in influencing budget approvals and alignment from senior leadership.

A few examples for syndicating sponsorship value across your organization:

• Your HR department may be able to make use of elements of a sponsorship for employee reward and recognition.  A particular sponsorship may provide an opportunity for employees to volunteer, participate or meet consumers or customers face to face.  This ability to connect with your business’s target audience can be particularly powerful for employees who don’t come from customer/consumer facing areas of the business
• Through a sponsorship, the business/market intelligence team can gain access to motivated and engaged consumer/user audience for research; surveys, focus groups, ethnographic studies.  On-site activation points can be a fertile space to trial new product and service innovations
• Your senior management can gain credible access to senior management from co-sponsors of the sponsored property and develop relationships that wind up being strategically significant.  Mergers and acquisitions, co -marketing efforts and institutional best practice sharing have all come about as the result of relationships that started via sponsorships

Important in effectively syndicating this value and benefit to other business units and functional areas of your business is to involve these stakeholders early.

Don’t simply drop activation ideas on their desks and expect them to embrace them readily.  Whether it’s on a broader scale or against a particular sponsorship, first have a conversation with your colleagues in other areas of the business and help them see what white space there may be for them within all or a specific sponsorship.  Learn what their needs are and what problems you may be able to help them solve.  Be ready educate them on the possibilities and the ways sponsorship can help them be successful.

Assess Marketing Pressure

Whether you’re already deep into it or whether you’re just getting ready for planning how you will market your brand, product or business in 2013, consider this:

From an overall marketing communications perspective, what is your share of voice versus your competition? What are they spending and how far is it getting them?  What are you spending and how far is it getting you?

A very smart VP, Marketing at one of our clients calls this marketing pressure.

Impressions (media, social, digital, earned, sponsorship, experiential) are an intermediary measurement, but a reasonable one when considering share of voice.  Get a view on total marketing spend and total impressions clocked for both you and for your competitors and look at a cost per impression as a benchmark metric.  If you ladder this cost per impression against market share, yours and your competitors’ market share, do you gain any insights?

Bring the same notion of share of voice down to your sponsorship activity.  Look at what your competitors are spending in rights fees and what they are spending in activation.  Again, impressions is an intermediary metric and tracking impressions as a sole ROI metric is a fool’s game, but as a benchmarking tool – look at your cost per impression versus your competitors’ cost per impression.  What insights do you gain?

Widen Your Definition of Competitor

Now, widen your view of what you consider to be your competitors in share of voice within your sponsorship space.

What is your share of voice within the specific sponsorships you’re investing in and activating?  Let’s assume you’re not investing in sponsorships that deliver logo soup, where you’re one of many sponsors vying for the attention of the sponsored property’s audience.

You’re competing with the co-sponsors within the sponsorship properties that live within your sponsorship portfolio.  Are you breaking through, or are you going unnoticed.  Through the activation of each of your sponsorships, are you carving out ownable space that other property sponsors don’t and can’t have pleasance in?

Marketing is an investment.  Share of voice – marketing pressure – is an important element of how you measure the efficiency of marketing investment.

Build is where you create a proprietary engagement property – effective in a lot of ways, but expensive and potentially challenging to get traction with.

Buy is more in line with a traditional sponsorship – you’re getting access to your target audience through something they already care about, you’re getting the associative benefits from the brand equity in the property you’ve ‘bought’ and you’re able to use that equity to drive your own brand’s objectives.

We do both.  We’ve built platforms when that was the most efficient way of meeting client business and brand objectives.  This has included recruiting co-sponsors that live in the same brand neighbourhood as our clients’ brand.  It has included media plans, digital strategies, employee engagement overlays.

But, build doesn’t always make sense.

Along with an extensive portfolio of sponsored properties, energy drink maker Red Bull often chooses the build approach.  Proprietary event properties like Red Bull Crashed Ice and Red Bull Flugtag are tremendous undertakings.

Mega-brand Virgin Group owns/controls Virgin Music Festival events in markets globally.  The successful Virgin Music Festival events are as legendary as the not-so-successful Virgin Music Festivals.

If you’re considering build or buy for your own brand, be very sure you understand your brand objectives and be extra sure you understand your business objectives.

Red Bull Crashed Ice needs to significantly move the needle on brand health and sales volume for Red Bull to make being a property rights holder worth the effort (and maybe it is), and to make owning a property economically efficient.  Virgin needs to sell a lot of flight segments, mobile phone packages and earn new radio listeners to make the complexity of owning a series of music festivals worthwhile.

There are built platforms or properties that are marketing initiatives and marketing investments.  Then there are built properties that are de facto separate business units with their own P&Ls.  If you go with the latter, be sure its going to drive some compelling measurable results against your core business.