No calls, no sponsors

Here's the bottomline: if you don't tell anyone about your sponsorship opportunities, if you don't work together with prospective partners to co-create meaningful opportunities, you're not going to have sponsors nor the revenue from that source.

You know this, of course. But that doesn't make having actual conversations with real live sponsors any less scary, right?

Here are three suggestions:

Don't fight the fear. Fear (with consciousness) can be a good thing. Fear surely saved many a caveman and woman from untimely death. Fortunately, sponsor prospects are not known for attacking much less defending themselves to the death. Rather for modern day cave people, the worst you have to fear is calls and emails that go ignored. Silence. (You may know this, too, and still there's fea...

Morgan Spurlock's new film, POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, is out today, and I urge you to check it out. It's hilarious and lots of fun to watch (see my full review). And there are so many lessons to be learned about sponsorship, if you're new to the medium, as either a buyer or seller, or need a refresher.

Here are a handful of observations I had, culled from the 30 or so I just shared in a teleseminar:

For Brands/Buyers:

1. Are you taking risks in your sponsorship decisions? Or are you doing the same old same old? Marketing is about getting noticed, getting attention, and changing behaviors or perceptions. If you sponsor the same thing all the time, people eventually tune out. Shake things up every now and then. Be open to new ideas. If your operation ...

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Three non-profit organizations with which I have no relationship sent me proposals not long ago to sponsor their events so that Bower & Co. could reach:

families and children;
North America's business leaders;
the fashion industry's elite.

The first thought that came to mind when I opened the envelopes and read these invitations was, in a word, "Huh?"

Bower & Co. Consulting LLC clients are non-p...

About 10 years ago, I took up ceramics. The first class I took at one of the country's premier institutions, Philadelphia's The Clay Studio, host to the upcoming NCECA conference, was a hand-building course. I learned all sorts of techniques for creating pots, and the one I loved the most was using slabs of clay. Eventually, I began making tiles.

To make a slab, you flatten a chunk of clay to a desired thickness, using either a slab roller or a rolling pin, the same type more commonly used in kitchens to make dough. Because I'd done some woodworking earlier in my life, I gravitated to slabs because it's possible to create similar kinds of pieces using both media. However, the trickiest thing for me about slabs was reminding myself that this smooth, evenly thick material wasn't wood. ...

PNC, Subaru & others activate at the Philadelphia Flower Show

After a couple blizzards, trudging around in snow, pretty at first, gets tiresome. The recent Philadelphia International Flower Show reminded me that spring indeed will arrive.

Another reason I attended the show was to check out the sponsorship activation. The Flower Show is one of the best sponsorship developers in Philadelphia, and I always appreciate the obvious guidance and hard work of their staff.

PNC gets a round of applause from me for their dedication to Philadelphia's arts & cultural scene. The financial institution whole-heartedly supports important arts organizations and invests philanthropic dollars to nurture the passions of future arts and culture lovers. At the Flower Show, they benefitted from a strong association through their presenting status and did a good...

FedEx gets 'mileage' out of Tai Shan

The Washington Post reports that hours after he landed, Tai Shan, the panda who grew up at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., and returned to China on Friday, had acquired a corporate sponsor: Sichuan Auto Industry Group.

Remarkably the reporter states: "It's unclear what Sichuan Auto gets out of it."

Are you kidding me? How about world domination!

Who doesn't love a Panda? And for a country with a growing business sector but no internationally-known brands, association with a globally-recognized and beloved animal that is associated with China and a symbol of 40 years of U.S.-China relations is a pretty smart investment.

Having recently traveled to China I can tell you that China takes its national symbols very seriously – like most cultures do. For a national brand to ...

Consistently one of the most-asked questions from consulting and coaching clients is about the nature and content of corporate sponsorship letters and solicitations. The tendency or urge that you may have is to send copious detail to a stranger to substantiate why your sponsorship opportunity is worthy and to be efficient by providing so much detail so as to be thorough.

These seem like great reasons; however, if you consider that the person at the other end of the spectrum may only have a nanosecond to skim your information, maybe your approach needs reconsidering.

Yesterday, I received a sponsorship solicitation that I'm sharing with you (with the sender's permission) to illustrate an alternative.

For the record and as I've told the sender and written about before, generic, ...

As we wrap up the first decade of the new millennium and one of the most challenging years for sellers and buyers of corporate sponsorship, I urge you to spend some time reflecting and really putting 2009 behind with greater awareness of how you'd like to move forward.

Selling sponsorship – selling anything – during easier economic times is, well, easier. When times are tough, all our shortcomings show up in technicolor. So what did you see about your operation in '09? Where do you need new skills? A stronger operation? More ideas? More support? Jot your notes now so you can focus on them throughout the new year.

Here are 10 suggestions and areas to consider:

Be able to articulate your event/festival or nonprofit organization’s value to the corporate sector.
Develop an operati...

A recurring attitude I sometimes hear among nonprofit leaders is contempt towards the corporate sector. Actually it's contempt mixed with self-righteousness.

Some individuals are of the belief that corporations are the ruin of society – greedy, destroying the environment, exploitative of workers, profit-mongering, etc. Yet, many of these same individuals are curious about corporate sponsorship and wonder if they can accept corporate dollars with some sort of broad disclaimer about the corporation's actions and behavior.

Surely there are some corporate leaders – just like some nonprofit leaders – whose ethics are dubious. But it's probably better to assume that corporate leaders are motivated, inspired, stirred, and moved by many of the same human drives that nonprofit leaders are....