What is sponsorship?

Note translator: today we decided to acquaint our readers with a small but capacious article by Seth Godin, an American writer, entrepreneur and marketer, winner of the Momentum award for outstanding achievements in the field of the Internet industry and a regular contributor to Fast Company. In this article, Seth discusses why companies sponsor events, books (and other businesses), and what conclusions project managers can draw from this.

The answer to the question "How are you going to pay for this project?" More and more often lies in the plane of sponsorship. If you don’t know why organizations want to sponsor one or another activity, then you will probably have to go a long and hard way before you find the necessary sponsorship.
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With the growth of media opportunities (including blogs, books, conferences, tattoos, performances, film festivals, stadium events, whole sites ...), it’s worth thinking a little about why organizations sponsor something.

1. In some cases, this is a substitute for advertising. How many people will see it? How much will it cost per person (this is the same CPM, but instead of costing a thousand page views or a magazine article, you pay for thousands of impressions that can be made in millions of ways)? I think this is a model for a film festival or a book fair. This is a reasonable way to reach a valuable audience, access to which is not so easy.
2. Sometimes it is a way to show off. This means that the sponsor is not so important reason as involvement, which can be told to others. Something like the confirmation of their merits in reverse. In this case, not media opportunities are sponsored, but a “license” for belonging to something. For example, the company may sponsor the arrival of a famous speaker in the city. Of course, the audience of 500 people who will come to listen to him will not be able to provide a worthy CPM value, but the very fact that you did it gives you power over those who learned about it.
3. Perhaps this is a chance to influence the sponsored organization. This explains why large corporations willingly sponsor political congresses.
4. Sometimes this is a good way to inspire your employees and turn their attention to something. When people who work for you see that you are sponsoring a worthy charitable organization or a thoughtful opinion leader, they can change their views on their own work or how they prioritize.
5. This makes the CEO happy and allows the company to get a seat at a certain “table”. It seems to me that the model of sponsoring sports stadiums belongs to this type [in addition to the name of the stadium the name of the sponsor - approx. transl.] - an act that from the point of view of raising the company's awareness in the media space has never made sense.

Since there are many ways to come to sponsorship, it is not so easy to evaluate such an act. If you are a bank that sponsors a bike-sharing service, how do you compare the effect of this promotion with five hundred advertising page spreads in the newspaper (which will cost you the same amount over the same period). Of course, you will not compare. You can not. Instead, within the company, you must very well be aware of why you are going for it.

In general, if you have decided on which of the above five types of sponsorship is right for you, know that most of the sponsorship deals stand out very much against the background of traditional advertising in the media, especially if you are trying to reach the elites or the audience to which it is otherwise very difficult. find an approach.