Event Sponsorship Packages

For my first 16 years in tech sales, I averaged 240K/year W2 income. In my last 4 years, I averaged 720K/year. In order to triple my income, I had to change my sales approach entirely. Here's what I changed: I started using a new approach that I now call Yo-yo selling: 🪀 Yo-yo selling emphasizes starting at the executive level, conducting thorough discovery within the organization, and then returning to the executive with a tailored business case. Like holding a yo-yo, you are constantly in communication with the Executive Sponsor and updating them as you collect information and conduct deep discovery lower down in their organization. You are literally going up and down the organization, but always taking everything back to the Executive Sponsor to surface your findings along the way. Here's a breakdown of the framework: 🎯 𝐈𝐚𝐧 𝐊𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐚𝐤’𝐬 “𝐘𝐨-𝐘𝐨 𝐒𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠” 𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 This strategy involves a three-step process: 1. Start at the Top (Executive Engagement) Initiate contact with a senior executive to understand their most pressing challenges, the reasons behind the need for change, and the consequences of inaction. If your solution aligns with their needs, secure their sponsorship for further discovery within their organization. To secure the Executive Meetings, it's essential to create a tailored POV (point of view) on where you think you may be able to help them based on your initial research of their highest level goals and priorities. Chat GPT has made this research a LOT faster now. 2. Conduct In-Depth Discovery (Middle Management) Engage with department heads and key stakeholders to uncover the day-to-day challenges they face. Focus on understanding their processes, pain points, and the implications of current inefficiencies. Gather direct quotes and insights to build a comprehensive view of the organization's needs. 3. Return to the Executive (Present Findings) Compile the insights gathered into an executive summary and business case. Present this to the executive sponsor, highlighting how your solution addresses the identified challenges. Tailor your demonstration to focus solely on relevant aspects that solve their specific problems. 🚀 Why It Works 1. Accelerates Sales Cycles: Engaging executives early ensures alignment and expedites decision-making. 2. Builds Credibility: Demonstrates a deep understanding of the organization's challenges and showcases a tailored solution. 3. Facilitates Internal Buy-In: By involving various stakeholders, you ensure that the solution meets the needs of all parties, increasing the likelihood of adoption. I'm pleased to share that that Yo-yo selling was recently awarded as a Top 15 Sales Tactic of All Time by 30 Minutes to President's Club, and I received a cool plaque for entering the 30MPC Hall of Fame. Since I have no chance of entering the Hall of Fame for my baseball or golf game, this is a nice consolation prize 😁

Your Impact Report is Probably Boring (And It's Costing You Donors) One approach puts donors to sleep. The other opens wallets. Which are you choosing? Effective storytelling in impact reports is key. Here's how to do it: Start with a Hook: Before: "We provided 10,000 meals last year." After: "Maria turned our food bank into a stepping stone for her family's future.” Use the "Before and After" Technique: Before: "Our job training program had a 75% success rate." After: "John went from homeless to homeowner in 18 months. Here's how our program made it possible..." Incorporate Sensory Details: Before: "We built a new playground." After: "Where there was once an empty lot, kids now laugh and play. The bright red slides and yellow swings have brought new life to the neighborhood. Parents chat on nearby benches, watching their children make new friends and create lasting memories.” Showcase Donor Impact: Before: "Your donations helped us achieve our goals." After: "Because of supporters like you, Sarah received the life-saving surgery she needed. Here's a letter from her family..." Use Data Visualization: Before: "We increased literacy rates by 40%." After: [Include an infographic showing a child's journey from struggling reader to honor roll student, with key stats along the way] End with a Clear Call-to-Action: Before: "Please consider donating." After: "For just $50, you can provide a month of tutoring for a child like Tommy." How to implement this: ☑️Identify your most compelling success stories ☑️ Gather quotes and personal anecdotes from beneficiaries ☑️Collect before-and-after photos or data points ☑️ Craft your narratives using the techniques above ☑️ Test different versions with a small group of donors ☑️ Refine based on feedback and roll out your new, story-driven impact report

I went to HYROX Delhi expecting to watch a fitness race. Instead, I found an interesting branding lesson. Before the first race even started, one thing caught my attention. Athletes walking around with MuscleBlaze tattoos. Then I started noticing more. • MuscleBlaze shakers in warm-up zones. • MB bags across the venue. • Z Verse T-shirts. • People discussing which MB products they were using before their race. Pre-workouts, Energy Gels, Oats for carbloading and what not. None of it looked forced. It felt... natural. That's when I realized something most sponsorships end with logo visibility. The best sponsorships become part of participant behavior. HYROX Delhi reportedly witnessed 10,000+ participants, significantly higher than previous editions. The audience wasn't limited to professional athletes. Students. Working professionals. Founders. Parents. Senior citizens. Different professions. One common goal, To become fitter than yesterday. And somewhere in that journey, MuscleBlaze had already earned a place. Not because of one event. But because of years of consistent presence in the fitness ecosystem. That's what strong brands do. They don't just sponsor communities. They become part of them.

The FIFA World Cup is a reminder that great sponsorships don’t just buy attention, they can create measurable commercial momentum. The latest YouGov BrandIndex data shows that "sponsor-linked brands" are winning on the metrics that matter most for demand generation: awareness, buzz and more importantly, consideration(2x), as those brands were ranked using an Ad Impact Score (AIS)*. The Coca-Cola Company, Doritos, Cheetos (PepsiCo), Pringles (Mars Snacking, Mars) and Gap Kids (Gap, Gap Inc.) are all seeing meaningful uplift among U.S. World Cup fans, proving that when a brand shows up in the right cultural moment, it can move beyond visibility and into real consumer intent. What stands out to me is not just the media reach, but the commercial opportunity behind it. For consumer brands, the question is no longer: “Did people see it?” It’s: “Did it change behavior?” That’s where Integrated Commerce becomes imperative. The most effective media strategies today are the ones that connect the full journey, from fandom and consideration, to foot traffic, retailer demand, and store sales. Whether through geo-targeted activation, commerce-linked audience planning, or store-level measurement, the goal is the same: turn media investment into measurable business outcomes. In categories like snacking and beverages, this is especially powerful. A winning sports moment should translate into: - more store visits - stronger shelf demand - higher sales lift - clearer ROI on media spend The brands that win in moments like this are the ones that don’t stop at buzz. They build systems that convert excitement into commercial growth. That’s the future of media: less about impressions, more about impact. *Brands were ranked using an Ad Impact Score, calculated as: Ad Awareness change + Buzz change + (Consideration change x 2) Data source: YouGov #IntegratedCommerce #CommerceMarketing #RetailMedia #MediaMeasurement #FIFAWorldCup #ConsumerBrands #Footfall #StoreSales

Before you post about a sponsorship, run this checklist or risk being ignored. Here is the 13-step checklist to make sure your sponsorship messaging lands. This is about shaping a story across every layer of influence. 1/ Start with an internal positioning memo If your team can’t explain why this partnership matters to the business, your comms will default to fluff. Write the real story before briefing anyone. 2/ Assign ownership to each layer of communication Break down responsibilities across brand, execs, partners, social, and PR. No one owns “sponsorship comms” as a whole, it’s a stack of overlapping influence. 3/ Define the executive narrative system Each leader should have a message tied to the partnership. CEO for business trust. CTO for technical alignment. CMO for positioning. Each message builds authority at a different altitude. 4/ Write for perception shift, not reach Choose one shift you want to drive: → Seen as a category leader → Trusted as an innovation partner → Associated with elite performance Everything should reinforce that idea. 5/ Identify your high-trust targets Don’t write for everyone. Write for analysts, enterprise buyers, investor advisors, journalists, whoever carries influence inside your niche. 6/ Build an internal-to-external calendar Line up what you’re saying internally (sales, investors, leadership) with what shows up externally (owned channels, media, partnerships). 7/ Structure your race-week or activation window Every high-visibility moment should have pre-baked storylines, exec posts, media hooks, and assets ready to go. Don’t just react, deploy. 8/ Align with the rights holder’s comms rhythm If the partner is posting, your comms should either: → Amplify → Add depth → Create a new angle Too many brands ghost their own deal after the press release. 9/ Create a feedback loop across all teams Set up a short, weekly cadence: → What was said → What landed → What gaps appeared Fix messaging in motion, not at the end of the season. 10/ Use internal content as external proof Town hall decks. Product demos. CEO memos. When you repurpose these into public comms, they show consistency. And consistency = trust. 11/ Map your storytelling against business levers Don’t stop at “it’s good for the brand.” Show how messaging supports hiring, retention, B2B growth, or investor visibility. 12/ Audit your executive footprint every quarter How often are your execs showing up in the conversation? Who’s resharing them? Are they quoted in media? Silence kills narrative power. 13/ Build a strategic recap system After each big comms push, capture: → What the audience heard → Who responded → Where the brand now sits in the conversation That insight builds the next wave. This is how brand leaders build comms systems that reposition.

If you only followed LinkedIn during the FIFA World Cup 2026™ - Canada, Mexico and the United States, you'd think the only brands that won were the ones that didn't buy the rights. Levi's. DoorDash. Kraft Heinz. British Airways. Norwegian Airlines. They all deserve the praise. But somewhere along the way, we stopped talking about the sponsors that actually activated their partnerships well. One of the best examples? McDonald's. Over the tournament, the brand built a campaign designed to create participation at every stage: • Collectible cups that drove repeat purchases and social sharing. • Talent roster relevant across generations and markets. • Hero film & shoot day designed for athlete-owned posts. • A-list creator collabs and local creator activations worldwide. • Real-time pivot turning Tim Payne into an official part of the campaign. • App offer that transformed the cups into a customer acquisition tool. What impressed me wasn't any individual tactic. It was how intentionally everything worked together. The cups drove purchases. The athletes and creators drove distribution. The Tim Payne moment kept the campaign culturally relevant. The app offer helps reach customers long after the event ends. That's what mature sponsorship activation looks like. The rights fee gets you in the door. The activation determines whether the investment pays off. This week's Sponcon Sports breaks down the full campaign and the lessons sponsorship marketers can take from it. Which World Cup sponsor do you think executed best? #sportsmarketing #sportsbusiness #sponsorship

Sports sponsorship ROI measurement is going to drastically improve over the next few years. For years, it feels like the old-school measurements prevailed: mostly eyeballs, with some evolution via promo codes, clean rooms, and cross-pollination through loyalty programs. But according to this Digiday piece, 84% of CMOs struggle to quantify sponsorship value (citing a Gartner study), and 76% of sports sponsors say ROI is a struggle (citing a 2024 report). The story centers on the Chicago Bulls and how they (and others) are trying to close that gap. At a time when the value of sports inventory and activation just keeps climbing, it's more important than ever. Some of the key takeaways: 🟢 They're working with Klutch and PwC on a "proprietary ROI tool that draws on credit-card transactions and cellphone-ping data to map out where ticket holders go after a game, and what and where they spend their money afterwards." Kind of reminds me of Placer.ai, and it helps with localized / retail sponsor ROI. 🟢 Brands are also trying to isolate the number of transactions, total spend, and average spend per fan, even looking at how fans of various 'avidity' levels behave with sponsors. An interesting angle. 🟢 The upper-funnel metrics are still part of the picture, like brand favorability and search intent, but the push is to tie those more directly to specific ad units and timing. 🟢 The stuff I'm most keen on: sponsors measuring improvements in conversion rates and click-through rates on social assets. Those are real signals that partner activations are collectively moving the target audience and driving revenue through things like lower cost per lead, higher average order value, and retention. One standout insight runs a bit counter to 'measure everything': sponsorship, especially in an emotion-driven market like sports, can't be treated like programmatic advertising, where every input has a direct, measurable output. The intangible is a feature, not a bug. That doesn't mean we stop trying to get as precise as possible and demonstrate the benefits of sports sponsorship in tangible ways. A sector where the best marketing doesn't feel like marketing requires a holistic view: before/after metrics and with/without metrics, focused on the audiences you're actually trying to move. We know that brands spending in sports derive enormous value, and while the methods to showcase it keep improving and evolving, that fact will never change. There's a ton more in the full article, so you should check it out [link below]

What’s a fan worth in sponsorship dollars, you ask? Using SponsorUnited’s SPND platform, we took a simple but powerful lens to analyze sponsorship efficiency: sponsor revenue generated per gross attendee of games across major U.S. sports leagues for the 2024–25 season. We looked at the total sponsorship revenue by team and gross attendance across their season (normalizing the NFL since they have an uneven number of home games) and then calculated revenue per attendee to understand the yield per seat filled. While sponsorship value certainly extends well beyond the stadium (e.g. content, community, digital, etc.), stadiums still remain a major anchor for most deals and where brands physically come to life in many cases. While the NFL dominates in overall efficiency given their high revenue to low game ratio, select teams across other leagues rival and even exceed top NFL teams. In fact, two National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) teams are generating ~50% of the per attendee revenue of the lowest National Football League (NFL) teams, with a gap that should only continue to close. While Major League Baseball (MLB)’s per-attendee revenue appears lower, it's largely due to its sheer volume of games and attendees diluting the per capita metric. The WNBA and NWSL sit lower on the chart, though this doesn’t reflect their full potential. Most teams face the challenge of limited control over venue inventory (e.g., naming rights, club entitlements, fixed signage, product integration), which restricts monetizable sponsorship platforms. But the upside is clear as these leagues mature and expand their ownership and infrastructure footprints. #sportsbiz #sponsorship #sportsmarketing #WNBA #NWSL #NFL #NBA #MLB #NHL #MLS #SPND #SponsorUnited

Stella Artois’ activation at Roland-Garros is a good example of how sponsorship is evolving. As more brands compete for attention around major sporting events, simply having visibility is becoming less valuable. Consumers expect brands to contribute something to the experience rather than just place their logo alongside it. What Stella did particularly well was identify the most distinctive element of Roland-Garros and build an experience around it. The clay courts are arguably the defining characteristic of the tournament. They influence the style of play, the visual identity of the event and the atmosphere that makes the French Open different from every other Grand Slam. By constructing an entire rooftop bar around that material, from the walls and surfaces through to the custom clay chalices, Stella effectively turned one of the tournament’s most recognisable assets into a physical experience. The strongest activations often work this way. Rather than creating something completely separate from the event, they take an element that already carries meaning and build a brand experience around it. As sponsorship becomes increasingly crowded, I suspect we’ll see more brands move in this direction. Less emphasis on visibility. More emphasis on creating experiences that feel connected to the culture and identity of the event itself. Great work WINK

Last week Retention.com spent $50K renting a mansion in Malibu for a full day retreat that was 100% free for brands and creators. We had over 200 people show up by 10am. Here’s exactly how we did it: First off, the results: - 540 total RSVPs - 340 RSVPs approved - 230 attendees showed up Of those 230 attendees… - 130 were from brands - 60 were creators and influencers - 40 were partners and sponsors Here’s how we got there: 1. Identify your ‘Why’ Our ‘Why?’ was because you shouldn’t have to choose between your health or your work. You should be able to have them both. We created a space where the DTC community can come together to improve their brain, their body and their business in an environment that mixes personal health & wellness with networking & education. 2. Set a budget We did our first “Retox” event in Nov ‘23 so we had a good idea of what things would cost, but we also knew we’d have to rely on some amazing partnerships and pull a few strings to make this happen. 3. Find a production company We got burned on our first Retox with a bad event partner and made sure not to make the same mistake twice. We worked with @Samantha Pena and the unparalleled team at @TwentyEight events to pull this off. 4. Build the sponsorship offerings Since we knew what our budget was, we then based our sponsorship packages around this and made sure of 2 things: a. We weren’t going to profit off the event and would put every dollar of sponsorship back into it. b. Sell to only the exact amount of sponsors we needed to hit our budget and allow us to maintain a healthy ratio of brands : sponsors. 5. Creating the run-of-show This is one of the hardest things about planning an event like this and will make or break you. It takes a lot of care and attention to find the right balance of talks and activities throughout the day to keep people happy and engaged. 6. Build the demand We had an application process and we would approve based on their fit into the overall vibe of the event. We worked with our sponsors ahead of time to understand their ICP and then combine that with our own expectations to guide our application approval process. TAKEAWAY I like to compare planning an event like this to doing a jigsaw puzzle in a hurricane. You know what you want it to look like from the beginning and you’ll do all you can to make sure it looks like that in the end, but the fact is that not all the pieces are going to make it in the end. The most important thing is that your guests have a great time and you get a few moments to stop and smile at what’s in front of you. Stay tuned for updates on what we have planned next :)