"Sports Marketing Skills" - Autosport 04/09/03

[danieljboys]

Looking through Autosport this week I was interested to read the advert on p42 regarding a seminar on 'Acquiring Sponsorship The Professional Way'.

It's a 1 day seminar on improving the skills needed to secure sports sponsorship and costs £215.

I am curious to find out if anybody has been on a similar course to this in the past and if they found it value for money? In the whole scheme of things £215 isn't alot compared to how much you could potentially raise if you acquired the right skills. The itinary on their website looks to be quite comprehensive. Would anyone else consider signing up for the session?

OR

Do you think it could be a waste of time where we're told the usual stuff you can get in 'Getting Sponsorship'-type books like 'do a nice brochure', 'try and get to the MD of the company' etc. To be perfectly honest I think Perry McCarthy's autobiography was more use than these other books.

All thoughts on this are welcomed as I am considering parting with my hard-earned cash to enrol on it, but I thought some discussion here first would be good before I sign up.

[HiRich]

Speaking as a marketeer who follows the sport (and does some sponsorship work), it's very difficult to comment without attending the seminar.

Marketing & Sponsorship requires a different mindset (see my comments and suggestions on this thread:
http://tentenths.com/forum/showthrea...threadid=39754). Different companies have different requirements (exposure, hospitality, etc.) - the only common thread is that they will view it in marketing terms:
Does it make good business sense?
Does it address their marketing issues?

I can't even point you in the direction of a good marketing book on the subject. Your best bet is to find a mentor or manager, or a mate who works at the top end of marketing (either as a Brand Manager for a blue-chip company, or as an Account Director for a leading Agency)

One book worth getting is Guy Edwards' autobiography. As a sponsorship guru, he passes on lots of very useful tips, as picked up in his career. The only problem is that it is very rare (no hope of finding a copy through the normal routes) and very expensive (£200+)

[noskill]

If I was in the UK, I'ld attend. What I find interesting about getting sponsorship and retaining it is that the moment someone else gets a sniff of your sponsor no matter what value you give them, there's always someone else trying to lure them away from you.

On a different note though, I have tried getting sponsorship in many ways, Personal Networking, mailing lists, email, phone, personalised mailing etc, and I have had some success with all forms. I think the best thing that as a race driver you can do is to show enthusiaism about what you do, and offer your sponsor/sponsors every opportunity to use you and the car in any form of marketing whatsoever, wether it be a brochure to a TV ad. the biggest misconception we've found is that some people think that you can only advertise car products on cars ( this is Cr@p...) the TV is everything ( also Cr@P). What you must show them is that having a race car offers benefits in terms of display, image, hospitality, and then as an add on bonus you can also ( depending what you race) give driver training and rides/laps in the race car. Some of the most valuable deals weve done were simply contra sponsorships, because some of the products that are available for (insiders) can be far better than the ones for purchase........

anyways probably bored everyone now...

but if you want more money to go racing then 215 pounds for a possible huge return, is money very well spent..

[Mak]

I think the main thing you will learn at the seminar is how to get £250 per head from a load of desperate young racing drivers.

[danieljboys]

Mak, that's actually along the same lines as to what I was thinking...

[danieljboys]

Here is the link to their website for those that missed Autosport last week...

http://www.sportsmarketingskills.com