Tonight / tomorrow is the summer solstice—the longest day of the year for us Canadians. We all love this day. In fact, back when we lived in Calgary, our neighborhood had a summer solstice block party. It was called the Pump Hill Gardens Summer Solstice Block Party (just a short handle). It was great. It got together seventy or so households from four cul de sacs. It was an opportunity to meet the neighbors or meet them again. It was fun, engaging, and memorable. Beyond the personal side, for me, it was also memorable from a professional/business perspective. Those of you who have attended any of my workshops, keynote addresses, or have had contact through consulting and advisory work, know I love to tell the stories I learned from the Pump Hill Gardens Summer Solstice Block Party. This little neighborhood event has many learning lessons—and they come in the form of stories.

I tell stories about how I got “voluntold” I would be responsible for getting sponsors (surprise). I tell stories about how we approached the financial planning and budgeting for sponsorship of this community event that had less than 250 attendees. I share with audiences large and small about almost falling into the trap of creating stock packages. I illustrate how activation works and how an additional investment beyond the $500 rights fee delivers incredible results. I demonstrate how through discussions with a prospect for the Pump Hill Gardens Summer Solstice Block Party who doesn’t want to support an event that has no charitable tie sees the light that a $500 sponsorship is a good business decision. This little event has produced several key learning stories that have helped members of our industry learn and understand everything from activation to proposal development; prospect development to budgeting. The success of this learning comes not so much from the message, but from the delivery. I do not say, “The realtor invested $500 to be a sponsor. Then he bought some activation and that helped him sell a home.” I tell the story of what he bought and the process to get there. I create emotion in telling the story about how the kids played in his bouncy castle. I shared and got nodding heads on how he built a database through the bouncy castle. This is telling the story. This is creating emotion and buy-in. This is where the learning and success comes from.

In the sponsorship game, we need to tell stories a lot more. We need to share stories with our prospects about the successes (and failures) of existing and past partners. They want to hear the stories—not the stats! Success is not delivering impressions (statistics); success is seeing 12% growth in traffic to your store when the expectation was 9%, or that during the same period, sales were up 11% around the sponsorship time and the couponing tracked the results while the rest of the country’s stores were flat against same period last year. It is about evoking emotion when talking about your product. Storytelling moves from “your sales process to the prospective sponsor” to when they become a sponsor and build their own product storytelling aligned with your property. Tell stories. Drop the stats. People remember stories and repeat them. They forget stats. Talk about what people want to hear and learn. Move from proposals, activations, and marketing that push out information and statistics to telling stories and engaging people. I look forward to hearing Judy Haber at the WSC-Alberta Forum in Edmonton in November. She will host a session in the Knowledge Café on sponsorship sales and and is a great storyteller. It will be great! (Be sure to register ASAP as the early bird offer is coming to a close soon. I have my flight, hotel, and registration all done!)

Storytelling creates memories. Memories provide recall, and for a brand, recall is essential. I will leave you with a link to a video. I first saw it in a presentation by a great storyteller, Bosco Anthony  whom I first saw at the Vancouver Island Tourism Conference last fall. I love it. It epitomizes the ability to tell stories. It reviews a situation few like to talk about and casually integrates the brand into the story. We will remember the story once we have seen it. We will also remember the brand. I showed my 11-year-old (going on 18!) daughter this video. I wonder if she knows I had an ulterior motive! Have a look and let me hear your thoughts—and story!

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