How can smaller companies use sponsorship for PR? Learn how A-Fit events can fit your bill .

Hi and welcome to the speak. Piaf podcast. My name is Jim James. And I am an entrepreneur who's been running multiple businesses, and also running a PR firm for over 25 years. And on this podcast, I like to share thoughts and insights that I've got, that I believe could help entrepreneurs and people running businesses to get noticed for what they do, using some of the tools and some of the tricks that agencies use with big companies. And today, I'd like to talk about sponsorship. Now sponsorship is something that many people believe is either for massive companies, or for just a local sponsorship even of your children's event. I've taken the view over the years that sponsorship is a great way to get involved in an event. Or a campaign and to be engaged in it to actually get in front of people, but also possibly to make a difference. Now, I'm interested in in sponsorship, and because I have now just working with the action coach team down here in the southwest of England, and we're just working on a sponsorship agreement for their webinar series where East West public relations will be the official partner for their growing and very dynamic webinar series as they pivot from all the face to face coaching that they do. Peter and Andy are now working on making their their company, more of a distance and remote learning but also more of a broader even global community. And so it's this focus on business and this focus on growth that really resonates for me as a PR communicating So why would I want to work with a business coaching company doing a webinar? Well, it gives me an opportunity to meet their customers who may not be directly asking for PR. But who may overtime be interested in some of the knowledge and the wisdom that I would like to share that I think can add value. And along the way, then we can have some conversations about how I might be able to help their business offline outside of the sponsorship. Now, obviously, my sponsorship for this local webinar is relatively small amount of money, and we structure it whereby we'll have a six month term, we'll have some logo sharing, and I'll have the opportunity to be on some of the webinars and So to include two of my articles in their newsletter, which goes out to their community, that's a community I wouldn't reach on my own, but also on their website to have a link back to my website. So these are all ways that actually don't cost action coach any money, because all the things that we're asking for really are profile and access. So they're, in effect, getting money for nothing. But what they are getting, of course, is an opportunity to position their event as a professional and sponsored event. And of course, they're not getting money for nothing because they're working incredibly hard on building a community and this fantastic content, where they're doing twice a week. These speaking and webinar events with known speakers and a team of consultants on the call with business owners. Now, what about during COVID? I noticed that you know, with the sports being cancelled the Premier League will have lost some 750 million pounds. The Japan Olympics cancellation is reputedly worth some 2 billion pounds in terms of losses. But not everybody is stopping sponsoring. And if we look for example at Formula One, we'll see that James Ratcliffe the British founder of Linnaeus chemicals, has sponsored the McLaren team, reportedly for some 20 million pounds. He also it turns out has acquired the Ben Ainslie sailing team and a sponsoring the what used to be teams Sky is now the team in Eos. This is the the cycling team that of course won the Tour de France. Now what is someone like James Radcliffe doing sponsoring mainstream sports when he has a 20,000 person company making chemicals around the world? Well, Mr. Active, as you may have seen is going to be launching a new car. And it's going to be in the mould of a functional car to take over really where the defender the Land Rover Defender has has left off. So actually, in EOS, on the sports cars and on the sailing boat, and on the bikes actually doesn't make sense as in EOS, the chemicals brand. But it does start to lay the groundwork for what will be A consumer brand. Now, I was interested to read some research by some researchers from the University of Canterbury. This paper was written by Mr. Jay grey john Watson and john G. Watson, the 2001 entitled sponsorship and the congruity theory, theoretical framework for explaining consumer attitudes and recall of event sponsorship. Now, if you don't have the time to go back and read it all, it's within a advances in consumer research volume. What they been saying, which is interesting is that consumers don't necessarily remember the brands that sponsor the event. And the research actually shows That sometimes when the brand is wholly congruent with the event, the people that are at the event, forget that that was the sponsor. And they cite an Olympics where people thought that Nike was the sponsor, when in fact Reebok was the sponsor. So, they have found that sometimes when the sponsorship is incongruent, ie when the sponsor is entirely not relevant or related to the event, it's kind of irksome, and people find it almost annoying. It is strange enough, because there's no relevance at all to the sponsorship and the event. And then they found that there is what they call a fit, which is a company that is close enough to the event. But is not entirely congruent and it sparks some interest piques the interest of the audience as to why that company should be sponsoring, and obviously any OS is a Petroleum Company and that motorsport has petroleum. Ben Ainslie is a British sailor and Team Sky or now, team in yours is also British racing team. So that's the link. But of course, James rackleff is doing it because he's laying the groundwork for building the INEOS brand for his new automotive brand that he's going to be bringing out. So, it creates this question then for for me and also for perhaps for you of sponsorship as an opportunity because there will be many brands right now which can't afford to continue the sponsorship that they had before. And so there'll be many events and new events popping up where the traditional brands actually can't afford to sponsor it. So, if you have sponsorship opportunities, or you see some like I'm doing with action coach, how would you structure that? And what would it bring you? So the way that I've looked at it is in terms of the value of the the audience, I'm going to be meeting when people like any OSS pay 20 million pounds for the f1. They've got just a few decals and logos on the car. But of course that's TV right. And what rackleff has said in the in the in the news, he was interviewed in the times. Ratcliffe said that sporting investments had raised the profile at the near end facilitated business deals. territory such as China in the Middle East. So one is the the reputation of the company. And the other is the brand awareness. But of course, anybody that's ever been a speaker to the event knows that actually often the value in speaking at an event is the other speakers that one gets to meet as much as the audience. And if you are a player, somehow as a sponsor of any size, it gives you a different kind of rights if you're just an attendee. And that can translate into being really good value for money. So, if there's an opportunity to sponsor or create an event and be a sponsor, then that's worth thinking about from a PR point of view. In China when I was running the Morgan business, I was also the interim CEO for Lotus cars in China and also the Vice Chair The Chamber of Commerce, and I created the British motorsport festival. Because there was no Goodwood Festival style event for brands, and getting into the main trade shows was almost impossible for the niche brands. And if you could get in, it was extremely expensive. So the ROI wasn't there. So I did speaking at events, for example, at universities and a design shows to talk about British design and automotive engineering. But I also created a platform in the motorsport festival in order to give us an opportunity to sponsor and to bring people to us. So by the funding, I was able to get other brands or contribute and create a platform for Morgan, which on its own, it could not have had. So is there an opportunity for you and your company to either find a sponsorship opportunity or To build and create one where it doesn't exist. And right now, I think we're seeing a lot of opportunity in innovation due to the COVID-19 stopping people taking events as they normally take place, and building them differently. The festival speed at the Goodwood Festival this year is going to be a one week online event, for example, which will be a fundamental difference to the kind of events that normally takes place. So we're finding now that there are opportunities for creating sponsorship, it could be advertising, it could be speaking, it could be networking could be access to the mailing list of those people who are building a community. And of course, if you're able to then be a participant, or even to shape that event, then it's not so much necessarily that your brand is congruent. In other words, you're not necessarily trying to sell what you have directly to the people that attend that event. So for example, in iOS, he's not going to be selling his petroleum to the people that watch f1. But it is also then being seen by other corporates, and automotive and other sponsors and other corporates, that it might want to have a business to business relationship with. The value of sponsorship, and the pricing of it is sometimes done by big events in terms of the alternative cost if you were to buy media, if you were to get that much coverage, when I've done sponsorship deals in the past for clients, as I did in China, when I was trying to start the Lotus one cup race, we gave space on the cars in return for money. So the other benefit of sponsorship of course, is generation of content. We're talking a lot about social media and the need for generating content these days. And looking for example at Twitter and my post yesterday, the amount of content