Michael Munson
An introduction to Sponsorship Stories
The Inspiration
Through 20+ years, I was never particularly interested in sponsorship marketing. My intro to it was as an intern helping a nonprofit in Mill Valley, California (The American Sports Institute) sell sponsorships to a charity golf tournament held at the Olympic Club. Though the event itself was fun, what a truly awful experience trying to sell sponsorships for it. I still remember my boss having me call companies found in the San Francisco Business Journal “Book of Lists” as the state of the art means of prospecting. So if you think you have it bad now, hold my beer!
Then - as the internship was wrapping up - I spent a 1997 Summer evening in a graduate school classroom at the University of San Francisco listening to a lecture. John Durham was an experienced marketer who had worked on both the sell side of sponsorship, producing events at Pier 39, and also the buy side as a marketing guy at Coca-Cola. As he was giving his presentation about the events and sponsors of them at Pier 39, I was curious how the sponsorships he sold were priced and if seemingly more sophisticated Pier 39 had a more scientific way of selling than the hand to mouth nonprofit did. So after he was done, I asked Professor Durham how he priced the sponsorships he sold. His response was that it is based on the number of people at events, sort of… “I estimate the attendance and then multiply by two because everyone has two eyeballs.”
That wishy washy answer bothered me so much I decided right then and there my Master’s thesis would be a study into the efficacy of sponsorship marketing. After that evening I embarked on an academic tour de force, learning everything possible about the medium from every research journal I could find, and my Master’s thesis was in fact exploratory research on the effectiveness of corporate sponsorship marketing. I’ll share more specifics about my post grad school background later on in this post, but it’s now 27 years after that fateful night, and here I am doing my best to inspire and challenge others to continue pushing sponsorship marketing forward, with this SubStack called Sponsorship Stories. John Durham did it by telling his story and reaching one student in a classroom of 30. I’m doing it by telling many people’s stories on the internet so there are no limits on who can be reached.
Why & Purpose
While there are sources that will report on various sponsorship deals done, they focus on organizations. Like, this brand just did a deal with that property. We never hear who the people doing the deals are. There are never any stories about how deals were started, I’m talking in terms of what led to the initial engagement that culminated in a deal. Everyone is always eager to report on the next announced deal, but what happens to them after the announcement? And how are they activated? Did they work out as planned? Get renewed?
This SubStack is designed to recognize and tell the stories of sponsorship practitioners to create an anthology of sorts, that can serve as a reference and source of ideas to help make everyone’s sponsorship life easier and more productive.
Format
Ideally, I want to separately interview the person who sold and who bought a sponsorship rights deal, and have them answer the how, why, and what, that tells how partnerships are formed, executed, and assessed. But especially as this gets going and until there is a compelling audience, that will be difficult. Having both sides will always be my goal, but I will not let uncooperative representatives from “the other side” dissuade or impede me from publishing stories that I get from one side. These stories are an opportunity for people to be recognized for doing cool things in their profession and to promote themselves (on personal websites and social platforms). If the counterparties to deal stories I learn about don’t see and appreciate this, I can’t make them.
The first story is about an Oktoberfest sponsorship introduced to me by the seller. The second story is about a sports nutrition company sponsoring a 7v7 football tournament introduced to me by the sponsor.
Since sponsorships are sold in many different places in many different ways, expect a wide variety of industries and property types to be represented. Even those of you who sell for big fancy Major League sports properties can learn from the stories told here. And we won’t just cover deals. I’ll also do interviews with agency and industry service practitioners to keep the content fresh and interesting. I might even editorialize with my own commentary!
The bottom line is after many years studying and selling services to the sponsorship marketplace, I know the questions to ask and the kind of information sponsorship practitioners want. It frankly hasn’t changed all that much in 27 years. The issue is more about capturing and sharing the insights. That’s what will happen here.
What Will Sponsorship Stories Cost?
The plan is to make it freemium. Some content will be free and some will require a paid subscription. I’m making it $7/mo or $77/year. (1 mo. free for a 1-yr. commitment).
Be Featured!
Have a deal to crow about because you are proud of it, want credit among your peers for making it happen, or just think your peers will benefit from hearing it? Smash the button below to start the process of having it told on this Substack.
Contact Michael
Have a suggestion for this Substack, or want to send me a personal message? I’d love to hear from you.
More About Me
I’m a thinker, and have probably burned more calories pondering sponsorship marketing from more angles than any sane person should probably ever do! As touched on above, it all started with my Master’s thesis. This was a literature review and exploratory research study that tested audience recognition, recall, attitude toward brand, and intent to purchase from sponsors, at an Oakland A’s game. John Durham was my faculty advisor for the project. Conclusions were published in the IEG Sponsorship Report. I parlayed this into a job at FCB Sports, the sports marketing arm of advertising agency Foote, Cone & Belding San Francisco, a consulting group that advised corporate clients how there brands should value and execute purchased sponsorship rights. This exposed me to the receive side of unsolicited sponsorship proposals as I was the “head of the spear” to those wanting to sell the likes of Power Bar, AT&T Wireless, and Dockers on sponsoring their properties. I reviewed initial proposals in all kinds of forms and formats. In some cases, eager sales people gave me swag and took me to lunches just looking for me to recommend their property for sponsorship.
Like I had been bothered by the “two eyeballs” comments on the sell side, I didn’t like the inefficiency of the buy side either. At the same time, being at the epicenter of the internet revolution, there was a lot of money available to start companies, so I decided to start one that digitized and standardized the data in sponsorship proposals. That company was called Sponsorwise. Here’s a snapshot of the home page the Internet Wayback Machine pulls up for it sometime in 2004.
It evolved from just being a database of sponsorship properties, to being a submission, review and response system that managed sponsorship requests for 40 major corporate brands. After I left the company in 2005, it changed its focus from serving the sponsorship market and its name to Versaic to focus on all kinds of requests beyond sponsorship solicitations, before ultimately being acquired by a Canadian company called Benevity in 2018. I’ll probably write a post on here about the history of Sponsorwise at some point.
I then took everything learned from Sponsorwise and joined a startup called SponsorPitch in about 2009. There, I developed the strategy and product concept that led to a subscription sponsorship market intelligence system. I’ve engaged in other entrepreneurial ventures since then, but sponsorship has been in my blood, and my passion, well, since you now know when.
Having known Mike for well over 15 years, I can confidently tell you that he is a true thought leader in the field of sponsorship. As someone who’s worked in higher education for more than 25 years, I’d willingly use the otherwise-overworked term “genius” to describe his prowess. In fact, he may be the smartest person I know, period.
Let me assure you, though, that this forum will be loaded with practical, brass-tacks kind of material, not the pie-in-the-sky stuff that’s hard to understand or only practical enough in scope to fit on the head of a pin.
In fact, I personally guarantee you that this forum will deliver material so impactful that you’ll immediately feel more empowered to make a bigger splash in the sponsorship space by knowing:
- what to do, and how to replicate it
- what not to do, how to avoid it, and perhaps how to actually make it work
- the right things to say
- the right questions to ask (probably the most important item on this list)
Who should subscribe?
- long-time sponsorship pros who have some great war stories to share
- newer sponsorship pros who have questions and seek ideas
- entry-level workers who want to ramp up their sponsorship cognates quickly
- anyone working for a company that sells sponsorships for revenue or buys them for marketing purposes (even those who don’t have a clue about where to start with them)
- students who are interested in the sponsorship field and want to learn how to talk shop in a way that will help them nail interviews for internships and entry-level positions (and maybe stump a professor or two like Mike did!)
In sum, for the price of one frapamachawachalattechinospresso coffee, you can make a monthly investment in your future that will make you smarter, broaden your name and network, and bring some fun and profitability to your workaday world.
I’m excited to take this journey with Mike, and I hope you will join him, too!