S7E6: Rethinking Sponsorship Models

Today’s episode is all about sponsorships and how to create a sponsorship package that is relevant to the needs and wants of you and your sponsors. In this episode, I discuss the basic sponsorship models and my innovative sponsorship package that satisfies all parties. Thank you so much for listening, and be sure to follow along for more episodes in the coming weeks!

Today we are discussing:
Where I’ve Been and What I’m Doing (0:33)
Why I Haven’t Had Guests on the Podcast Recently (3:32)
Models for Events that Change Mindset and Behavior (5:47)
Current Sponsorship Models (7:54)
Needs and Wants (10:32)
Innovative Sponsorship Package (12:33)

Sponsorship Models Podcast:
S3E9: The Future of Sponsorships

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www.experienceuniversity.org

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TikTok: @DrKDoesParenting @EventswithDrK
Instagram: @kristin.malek

Transcript

Dr. K
You are listening to the Experience University Podcast with Dr. K. Season 7, Episode 6.

Speaker 2
Welcome to Experience University where we aim to educate, inspire, and empower individuals who wish to design transformational experiences. Now, your host, Dr. Kristin Malek.

Dr. K
Hello, hello my friends. I am podcasting live from Las Vegas at IMEX America. It is my 11th year, I believe, 11th or 12th year at IMEX America. It's one of my favorite events to come to and yeah, it's just crazy. This is my third week of travel. I'm ready to be home. Normally, when I travel, it's a week here, and then I'm home for a few days, and then it's like a weekend here and then I'm home for a couple of weeks. But, it's just been three weeks back to back to back, and I would love to just sleep in my own bed if that makes sense.

I have been doing the most incredible trainings and workshops. I've been doing speaking. It's crazy, the stuff that I've been doing. I was telling someone earlier today, I said to my friend Anthony, I said, you know, I teach, I plan events. I go to tons of events. I do trainings. I took the LSAT for fun. I am so involved in data and research and just really heavy brain-intensive things, and the training that I just came out of was so intensive. I felt like, when I got back to the room, my brain was just like scrambled eggs every single day for two weeks because it had a lot to do with your unconscious mind and hypnotic language. So using some kind of, I'm not gonna give it justice at all, but essentially using, you know, some of the patterns from hypnosis and having this hypnotic language, building it into your speeches. And it was just so fascinating analyzing previous famous speeches and political speeches. The people at the event were just absolutely incredible. We've got coaches and high-level executives and speech writers and you know, me, whatever I do now. So it was just absolutely crazy.

Now, I'm in Vegas and I'm just seeing things differently. I'm having interactions with people who I've been at previous events with, and I’m hearing language and patterns. I'm getting super into linguistics and the impact that this communication and the science of communication has on the brain. When we're talking about designing events and experiences that change mindset and behavior, yes, I'm an expert in communication and in marketing and in event design and I've got psychology, but we always treat everything like it's so siloed and it's not siloed. Everything interacts with each other and the things that you think don't apply, they do apply. And so that's been really interesting for me to learn how all the pieces fit together.

It's fun to be recording my own podcast right now actually, because I've been on a lot of other people's podcasts lately, which is a huge blessing and super humbling. But, it is interesting. I haven't had guests on my podcast in a couple of seasons. It's just been me, and it definitely does change the dynamics when you do have someone to rumble with, someone to interview, or someone who's interviewing you. Maybe that's something that I'll do again in future seasons because I really did like having that difference of thought. The reason why that had stopped in the past was for a variety of reasons. Scheduling was just absolutely crazy and hectic, and then people kept canceling. Then, people were pitching themselves to me to get on the podcast, and I was getting a lot of LinkedIn messages. I was just like, you know what, for two seasons, we're just going to go back to just having me talking.

But a second part of that decision was because everyone I talked to, they would always, we would hang up the, the podcast and they'd be like, oh my gosh, I learned so much through this podcast. I've listened to your other podcasts and you really should be running trainings or classes in this. It's one of the reasons why at the university, I teach one or two classes a year in event design. We used to always work with clients and external partners. And actually, last year or the year before, for the first time since I've been teaching, you know, part-time for over a decade, I decided we were going to do events internally for the industry because we were just light years ahead. We were piloting, and we were truly using design thinking principles. We were kind of setting the scene. We were written up in doing case studies and white papers and really kind of launching the industry into the things they should be doing. And it's hard to find clients with existing events to let us have this playground.

This actually led to an opportunity that I have coming up, which is something that I briefly talked about in the podcast before. But I want to really dive into it because I do think it's important, and that is sponsorships. So as we're looking at designing events and experiences that change mindset and behavior, there are really two or three different models. You can have a corporate event where a company or organization is paying all of the bills. You can have a kind of association or member-based type of event where your attendees are paying the way or paying the bills to come through their registration and their membership prices. Or, you could just have like, you know, a private event that's not really affiliated with an organization. This sponsorship makes a big difference in how events can be run and structured, so they are super important to pay attention to.

Back in 2019 and the beginning of 2020, right before COVID hit, I kind of launched this new sponsorship model. Again, I briefly talked about this on the podcast, so I'll make sure that that podcast is linked in the show notes if you want to go back and listen to it. But this was really seen to be super innovative in terms of restructuring the thought process behind sponsorships. I was super excited and pumped. IAEE, the International Association of Exhibitions and Events, runs its annual conference in December called Expo Expo. This year, it's in Dallas, and they've asked me to come and speak on stage about innovative sponsorships. So it's fresh in my mind, all the things that we've been doing in our story and how we got here.

And it's really, really valuable still. I've been doing this for three to four years now, and it's still innovative because people aren't doing it. When people hear about it, they're like, oh my gosh, we're going to do that. And, I will say, double or triple-digit organizations have started doing it since they've heard about it and who knows how many of the podcast has reached and is doing it. But I know probably 50 to 100 personally that I know. But, so many are not. And it's worth another podcast episode.

So, sponsorship models. The traditional sponsorship model is kind of your metal tiers, right? Your bronze level, your silver, your gold, and maybe you'll have some fun naming ones. If you're doing a particular event, maybe you're like the silver and red, or the scarlet sponsor, or the diamond sponsor, whatever it is. You could have some cool names. They're very traditional like, ok, you are gonna do a gold sponsorship. The gold sponsorship includes these eight things. And then somewhere along the way, you know, a couple decades ago, we decided that we were gonna chunk out different elements of our event and sell them as sponsorships individually.

So that could be your name tag sponsor where you get your lanyards. It could be your key card sponsor for your hotel keys. And then we added the super exclusive language of saying there’s only one available or only two available. And we have this breakout sponsor, this food sponsor, and this break sponsor. You get the idea. And yeah, that pays the bills, right? These organizations, they sign up for it, they know, ok, I'm paying this much money and this is what I get and whatever. Maybe they see ROI, maybe they don't see ROI. Maybe before COVID they didn't see an ROI, and now they're required to show an ROI as many organizations are. And, you just can't customize this at all. And of course, we all know that everything's negotiable, so any sponsor could reach out to me and say, “Hi, Kristin. I would love to sponsor your event. Let's negotiate.” But that adds additional steps, additional hours, and all of this additional work, like customizing contracts and whatever. To me, that was not really necessary. Why can't we just customize this and make that the actual form?

So I started really thinking about choosing your own ending books, choosing your own adventures, and how you could pick and choose how the story plays out. And I said, ok, well, how can I do something like that then, in true multi-passionate fashion, right? We were talking about earlier that nothing is siloed. I started playing around with this concept with other areas of my life.

So one area of life, if you didn't know on the podcast, I am certified by Stanford to be a design your life your life coach. It's using design thinking for life coaching. So it's a life coach in that concept. We started playing around with all the design thinking and when I was going through that certification, I started thinking about your needs and wants list, right? And so they use something similar in a different way than how I'm about to talk about it.

I was in a training a long time ago and they said, OK, take out a piece of paper and I want you to write down all your needs and wants. People automatically started writing down everything that they needed or wanted in a partner. And it was like, I need them to be this, this, this and this. I want them to be this, this, this and this, and the facilitator at the time, this has always stayed with me, the facilitator at the time said, “Why is your needs and wants list for somebody else and not for yourself? Why can't you write down everything that you need and want for yourself, and then find the people in your life that can fulfill those needs and wants so that way you're always satisfied? Because we should never expect one other person to completely fulfill all of our needs.” If I know that I need these six things, I can sit there and say, well, these four things are important for me to have in a partner. And this one thing could be met by my brother, my family, or my parents. And this one thing is like, truly my best friend. Why are all of our needs having to be fulfilled with one other person?

And it kind of made me think, ok, well, if we have an internal needs and wants list and then we can go out and find other people who have a needs and wants list, then we can start to match up the things that are mutual, right? Like you need this and I need this, let's be that accountability buddy or friend or partner, whatever to get these needs met. I promise you this is going somewhere. Just stay with me for one more minute. So then I'm sitting there thinking, ok, well, the truth is we never really know what's on other people's needs list. So I have my needs and wants list, but I'm not advertising that and other people have a needs and wants list and maybe they don't actually know what's on their needs or wants list. So, how many of you would sit down and say, I don't actually know what I need or want? Exactly.

So I decided that for my sponsorship package, it was the exact same thing. I have a list of needs and wants, which is not just money-based. It's branding, it's content, it's a lot of different things from my event. And my potential sponsors also have a needs and wants list. They're not just piggy banks. They're not just blank checks. They have a ton of things on their needs and wants list that are way beyond the scope of what I would even know about them. I know them in one particular area. They have this grand spectrum, and I don't know what all of those are. And if you're talking about 20, 30, 40 sponsors or more, then it would be impossible for you to keep up with all of that every single year, with every single leadership change.

So I just decided that I was going to write out a sponsorship list. A choose your own sponsorship list. And if you chose this level, you get to choose five things out of this entire list that align with your needs and wants. And then if you choose this level, you get to choose five things from this list, plus five things from the lower list that align with your needs and wants.
And if you choose the top list, then you get to choose, you know, 15 things from any of these areas. And it was wildly successful.

Not only was it wildly successful, but it was so much cheaper for me because the things we typically give away in sponsorship packages are things that cost us money like free tickets to this or, you know, free swag or something that has an actual dollar amount to it. You know, even free tickets have a dollar amount to it because of food. The things that they were choosing were not even those things at all. It was like introducing the speaker, being a room monitor, or being on a podcast because you're trying to show yourself as being a content expert. And, it allowed them the opportunity to customize to what they needed and wanted and allowed me to get the money that I needed for my event. But it also better served the needs of my strategic partners.
But then also for my attendees, and this was truly what I would call win, win.

So if you're coming to Expo Expo at IAEE in December, then I will be speaking about this from stage. I'll be showing examples from several different events, and I'm going to be providing a database list of all the different things that I've put on all these different levels before. If not, then you can definitely reach out or let this thought just ponder in your head. Like how can you re-envision your sponsorship?

I am on this podcast to serve all of you, to fill up your knowledge bucket, or your think easy space inside of your brain. It's like a speakeasy, but with thinking. A think easy, I love that.

Let me know what you want me to talk about. Send me a message, send me a text, a LinkedIn, or send me an email. All of it's linked in the show notes. And I truly, truly hope that this podcast episode has spurred some cool ideas. Make sure to rate and subscribe and I will be podcasting from my home office on my good microphone back in Nebraska next week. Until then, have a wonderful week.

Speaker 2
Thanks for listening to the Experience University Podcast. Stay tuned for our next episode.