As a brand partnership and sponsorship agency, we find ourselves continually educating clients seeking sponsors or corporate official partners. We are therefore strategists, with concentration on sponsorship strategy.

The reality is you need help developing your pitch, not just selling it. Besides, brands shouldn’t be solicited to ‘spend’ their money but asked to ‘invest’ it.

As the adage goes, sponsorship is dead, long live sponsorship.

I had already transitioned our business model a few years back from finding sponsors and asking them to “spend” on one-off projects of our clients. Instead, finding partners and asking them to “invest” in our clients’ long-term projects and multi-asset portfolios.

By now, we have all learned to retool ourselves in today’s new normal, and this goes for clients seeking sponsors for their projects. They too have to adapt and pivot their offering and ask, and continuously innovate.

Brands are already disrupting their strategies both from within their business via intrapreneurs, and outside their business collaborating with entrepreneurs, during this transitional period as we enter the new post-Covid era.

For example, were you aware there are funds reserved specifically relating to innovation platforms, much more than the limited sponsorship budgets everyone is fighting to get a slice of?

How about Corporate VC as an alternate reality?

I am sure you already know brands set aside in some cases two to three times (or more) the amount on activation than on sponsorship.

A perfect example of partnership vs sponsorship is the recent story on how Adidas treats esports deals like media partnerships, not sponsorship deals.

Therefore, before we pitch our innovation platforms to prospective official partners, we all have to innovate ourselves as well, along with our pitch and propositions. Changing our business model from one of product or service based to one of a scalable business via a platform-based approach. This is what innovation truly is.

This is the time to innovate. Challenging times lead to great opportunities. Crisis creates breakthroughs.

This requires a shift in thinking and mindset; and becoming more valuable to those who need more value in the process.

Keep in mind knowledge alone is not power; execution of that knowledge is. We are all fed too much information but are starving for wisdom.

We are here to help.