We have been receiving sponsorship request proposals lately from event organisers. Three things stand out from these requests: the timing is short; there is no brand fit; and the proposed sponsorship benefits are generic. Unfortunately, these shortcomings significantly reduce the prospects of securing sponsorship. For this reason, we’ve outlined factors to consider in writing a sponsorship request proposal.
Brand fit
Conduct research to identify the organisations that can potentially sponsor your event. For instance, if you’re organising a sporting event, targeting a school for sponsorship might not produce results. However, Nestle Water or Aquafina could be potential sponsors. But that’s not all. What kind of sporting event is it? Nestle has a longstanding association with basketball, so they may not consider a football event. Also, consider the brand values. It’s easier to sell a sporting event to an organisation whose brand value is energy. Even when you frame your request as corporate social responsibility (CSR), note that many organisations have CSR pillars aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. As such, a proposal to sponsor a women’s empowerment initiative will not appeal to a brand interested in sustainable cities, because gender equality is not a priority for them.
Competitive review
Think about what their competition is doing well that they may want to challenge. GTBank created the Food and Drinks Festival and GTBank Fashion Week. Are you proposing something similar, not necessarily food or fashion, that can generate similar traction for Zenith Bank?
Objectives
Many sponsorship proposals are weak because they do not consider the product life stage in outlining the objectives. Writing a proposal to Coca-Cola and offering them brand awareness, like logo placement on the event banner, isn’t valuable. The Coca-Cola brand is one of the most recognisable in the world. The brand is over 100 years old. It has sponsored the FIFA World Cup for decades, so what can your event truly deliver in terms of brand awareness? Your strategy should be to consider every product’s life stage:
Introduction: New brands need awareness, education, credibility and trust. Imagine you are targeting a new energy drink. Offer them sampling rights, product demonstrations, influencer endorsements, and content that explains product benefits.
Growth: At this stage, trial, acquisition, market penetration and repeat purchase are the business goals. For a growing fintech app, for instance, offer free sign-ups at the event, lead generation, and user acquisition campaigns
Maturity: A mature brand needs to stay relevant. At this stage, they are seeking loyalty, engagement, advocacy, and differentiation, and they want to protect their market share. Mature brands like Coca-Cola want fan engagement experiences, community impact programmes, exclusivity, emotional brand association, data capture and customer insights, and hospitality opportunities for distributors and partners
Decline or revitalisation stage: Repositioning, reaching new audiences, changing perceptions. For a brand that needs revitalisation, offer opportunities to demonstrate new capabilities or to reach new audiences, such as a social media activation that introduces the brand to 18- to 24-year-olds and changes the perception from traditional to modern.
Value
The value of a sponsorship is not determined by the size of the audience alone, but by how effectively the sponsorship advances the sponsor’s current business objective. Many proposals seek huge sums of money which they cannot justify. To charge a premium sponsorship, you must have built some pedigree, and organisations that want brand association will pay for it.
If not, think like the marketing manager, head of corporate communications, or brand manager to whom you’re sending your proposal. They have two questions: what will this sponsorship do for my brand, and is there somewhere else I could commit these funds to achieve the same goal? If you’re asking for a N20 million sponsorship for a one-day event and the benefit to the brand is, ‘We’ll place your logo on our event banner with 10,000 attendees,’ consider how else the brand can reach 10,000 people and at what cost. That will give you an idea if you are offering enough value.
Timing
Many sponsorship requests arrive three to four weeks before the event date. Organisations have processes, and even though the recipient of the proposal may have an annual sponsorship budget, they justify every kobo they spend in relation to business goals. Approvals can take months. Even better, try to get into the budget during the planning cycle, which is at year-end for most organisations.
As you write your next sponsorship request proposal, remember that for organisations, sponsorships are not an emotional decision; they are a business decision. Sponsors do not buy sponsorship packages; they buy business outcomes.
