Events are important to our economy and very important to the sponsorship industry. And today I am what is probably the best conferences for event planners and organizers in Canada. It is called GO WEST and is an amazing three days of learning, insightful (and huge) roster of speakers, innovation concepts, new ideas, a very experiential trade show and the most amazing food. Did I mention the fabulous food?
These hundreds of people come to learn what is new and how they can control costs, generate more revenue and have more profitable bottom lines while delivering exceptional experiences for their audiences. I was speaking at GO WEST to the revenue side delivering a mainstage keynote and a breakout on …. Yes sponsorship!!
A huge theme here (and across the event industry and the sponsorship industry) was on “story telling”. For me story telling is an important aspect to marketing… be that marketing an event or marketing (selling) a sponsorship. Telling the story is a critical aspect to the sales process, be that selling tickets to a game, theatre production, TED Talk, festival or selling sponsorships or cars or mascara! Once people are engaged, they will buy. If the “story” is not there they won’t.
Later this month the Olympics will be hosted in Milan Italy. Calgary should be hosting this Olympics but as far as I am concerned, we lost the right to bid because the “pro Olympics” team failed to story tell. They spoke numbers. They spoke about economic impact in dollars and sense. They spoke about tourism in dollars and cents. They spoke about new facilities in dollars and cents and numbers. All about numbers.
They failed to extrapolate those figures and numbers into things and stories people care about… like a direct LRT to the airport would be an outcome of the Olympics… we could have dealt with homelessness – converted the athlete’s village to low-income housing and housing for the marginalized. Hundreds of apartments being built with corporate sponsor dollars and federal and provincial funding versus just Calgary tax dollars paying for these things. Once you show people through storytelling what is in it for them, they respond positively. How many Calgarians (or Canadians) really understand what economic impact really is.
Data is important… but it is how you share that data. Telling sponsors how many eyeballs will see their message is not as important as the reaction those people will have to that sponsor’s message or experience, they are providing. The sponsor will still have to use those “eyeball” (and other) numbers when building the case for support for the investment… but it is the story of the experience those audiences will have and react to and how they will engage with the sponsor that are the hook and the “raw data” is the icing on the cake. It used to be the other way around… but now the story is the key, and the data is the “bonus”. But you need to data to be able to tell the story!
To learn more about sponsorship and story telling and sponsorship and data and so much more, attend the Western Sponsorship Congress® – Saskatchewan Forum this April in Saskatoon. Register now for the best available rates.
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