Brand Diversity

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I’ve been asked by a friend for some advice on getting sponsorship on an event they’re running. The event is the Euro Gamer Expo and has grown exponentially over the last few years, so much so it now attracts some 20,000 gamers from all over Europe and is being held at Earls Court. He was asking me whether there were any brands who were more mainstream that could be attracted to an event like this and weren’t just the obvious TV and hardware brands that regularly get invovled.

So if I put my client head on for a minute, I suppose the biggest question is, ‘What value is there for my brand if I associate with an event like this? I understand that games are a multi-billion dollar industry globally and the audience reach is expanding all the time, (with the proliferation of family based gaming platforms (wii, DS) and games such as Buzz), but will being a part of a cutting edge event for a niche audience be beneficial to my brand or will it seem out of place?’

My initial thoughts (if I was a mainstream but non-endemic brand such as Sainsbury’s for example) is that there’s no obvious connect and for those brands that are more ubiquitous with a much larger audience (such as Orange), is there enough of a draw to present the brand in front of what is a specific, tech savvy audience, who make up maybe 5% of my total audience?

With that in mind, the next question to ask is ‘Are there any big brands who have a specific offering to this audience?’

Could Virgin promote their 50Mb optical fibre broadband with the promise that there would never be loss of connection mid-game?

Dominos could offer ‘buy one get one free’ during a national online tournament when you quote a specific code which is given to you when you register.

Gamers are probably fairly big film watchers, so perhaps Lovefilm could do a tie-in promoting not only their blu-ray DVD proposal but their game rental service too?

The amount of investment required is not huge and although there is such a big focus on value and brand perception at the moment, clients are also beginning to understand the importance of testing new areas. I told him that with some of our clients we add an extra 10% to the budget in order to test new sites, formats, channels etc, which shows that clients are willing to investigate, if the proposal is presented in the right way.

The proposal my friend sent me didn’t pitch in quite the right tone for getting brands to explore and discover, it was asking for out and out sponsorship assuming that the audience understands the benefits of what a sponsorship would provide. I’ve spoken before about the importance of understanding your audience and this is another case of making a few tweaks to get the right people engaged and responsive.

If I was pitching this project I would put together a wish list of brands that I wanted and find out exactly which part of their business offering would fit. I would then do my research and find out exactly what they’re trying to achieve as a business and match it with the different elements of the sponsorship. In support of this I would make sure that I had plenty of PR/Case Study material to help substantiate my points as from a planner’s perspective there is nothing more helpful when it comes to selling in ideas to a client then showing them what their competitors are doing!

The Expo is in October, let’s wait and see who they get onboard!

Understand your audience

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I've just been given a presentation from an online property that got me thinking about both the product and the way in which it was presented.

My initial thoughts were what is this product? Why should I care, and if I do, how will I sell it into my clients? This was not answered until about 20mins in, by which time I was quite confused and lacking interest.

I've never been a sales person (in the traditional sense) however I have met a huge amount in my career so far and spend a lot of time selling in ideas to clients, everything from the mundane (which adserver they should use) to the extravagant (sponsoring the dance tent at Glastonbury) and in every case you need to lay out the nub of your idea in the opening 2 minutes.

Many people argue that it's important to set the scene, put things in context, recap on the brief, but I disagree. We both know the context and I believe this can be incorporated into your idea and answer the main point in the brief. And please don’t recap the brief, I know what it is, I wrote the bloody thing!
Also don't give everything up straight away though, as the art of good story telling allows for your audience to fill some of the gaps. However be clear, succinct and knowledgeable. Don't ever talk about something you can't substantiate, it makes you look foolish and lazy. Obviously you can't legislate for curve ball questions from your audience but if they are handled correctly and answered at the first opportunity after the meeting then you still maintain control.

Having control is another important point to make. Many sales individuals are considered good because they can close the deal quickly and efficiently, however if you're trying to sell in the benefits of a back office social media network, I think you're in a far better position getting a dialogue started amongst your audience. Explain the benefits, show some relevant case studies and then suggest some ideas that you've had for the brand in question. Unless you are exceptionally well informed your audience (planners in this case) will know far more about the product/brand and will start thinking about forthcoming events/promotions that might be relevant, that maybe you’re unaware of.

I think due to the diversity of digital media, there is a far longer gestation period both with the planners and clients, as what you're getting is not always cut and dry. This isn’t to say that response to briefs should try and cover everything off if they can't, as this will result in everything being vague and often vapid.

The bottom line is, understand what our clients do, and where they are headed and want to achieve, understand what it is you do, have the courage to tell me that your product isn't a good fit or conversely that it really is, believe in it and don't, whatever you do, start your presentation with a load of stats about how many unique users and page impressions you have, this is of little importance at this stage as I know the site wouldn't be commercial if it wasn't hitting at least 200k a month and it’s a sure fire way to kill the attention before I’ve even had a chance to have my first sip of coffee.

It’s a tough market for a lot of people currently and many proposals are insightful, purposeful, clear and get me excited and interested in the product and how my brands can fit in, so no disrespect to those, but for the ones who let me down, I'm afraid the plan will go on without you.