When is the right time to think about how you’ll activate a new sponsorship?
In the whole process of developing a strategy, identifying the right potential partners and ultimately negotiating and finalising a deal, it’s easy to ‘park’ the activation thinking until after the contract is signed.
After all, you don’t want to invest too much time and energy into planning activation for a sponsorship that might not even happen.
But I think this is short-sighted and can be costly.
In most cases, doing at least some thinking around how you might use the sponsorship to engage your different audiences should be part of the decision-making process, for a few reasons:
- It provides additional clarity on whether the property really is a good fit for the brand
- It helps to understand how the sponsorship might work across different areas of the business
- It can give you a better idea of the level of activation budget needed
- It helps to identify any activation concepts that are simply not possible, or already being done
- It provides a good sense of how flexible and accommodating the rights-holder is going to be, or is able to be
- It helps to make sure you have all the rights and assets you need (and can give up any that you don’t need) during the negotiation process
- It identifies any potential gaps in internal capability or external support
It’s not realistic to do a fully worked up activation plan around multiple potential sponsorships before they are ‘done deals’.
But I do recommend getting to a solid idea of what your activation platform could be, with some initial creative thinking, during that selection and negotiation process.
