I have already reached my fifth week at Mamba. Another great issue of Public relations to which I was introduced is sponsorship. In theory, it is mainly the funding of, most of the time, a non-profit organisation or an individual who can be a sports man or an artist.
In practice, sponsorship is really more complex with some aspects which take much more importance when it comes to real life. Personally, I think that in public relations, the "know how" is very important,know how to talk to people, know how to maintain good relationships, much more important than the knowledge of public relations tools or theory when dealing with people in the internal and external working environment.
Coming back to my experience with Mamba, I was asked to accompany the director in a meeting with a client too see how such a meeting is worked out. The issue raised by the client was that the non-profit organisation he was funding had accepted other sponsorship requests and that the amount of sponsors was really too big, thus decreasing the advantages of sponsoring such an institution.
The director of Mamba thus decided to attend the weekly meeting of the non-profit organisation, which was actively organising a dog show. The conclusion was that the dog show's organisors had no sponsorship policies describing among others, the advantage of sponsoring them, how much sponsors there can be and what each sponsor would get in return.
As far as Mamba's client was concerned, the problem which was arising was the lack of visibility. They were offering much more than other sponsors and were getting less public visibility.
Finally, after some discussion with Mamba's director, our client sent a notice letter to the non-profit organisation asking them to establish a clear and concize sponsorship policy or otherwise they would stop funding them. As he was one of the main sponsors, the organisation decided to apply what was proposed in the letter.
4 comments:
Wow, it sounds like you are receiving valuable experience and insight into a different area of PR not covered much at Curtin. A agree that who you know and how you interact and maintain relationships with them is important. However my intern experience (brief as it has been so far) has also taught me it is all well and good to make a great impression, but people may lose interest quickly if you fail to deliver. By this I mean I don’t underestimate the value of having skills in PR ‘Techniques’.
Olivier, I found it interesting reading your post because it raised the issue of sponsorship. My placement is in the sporting industry, which is heavily reliant on sponsorship in particular.
Obviously, as sponsorship is an extremely important means of generating revenue (and other benefits) in this industry, making sure the sponsors are well looked after is crucial to maintain good relationships and also to keep their sponsorship continuous. Perth Football Club’s main way of looking after their sponsors (as far as I can ascertain) is through the president’s lunch held at all Perth home games whereby all sponsors are invited and they receive a free lunch. So far this year the lunches have been very popular, and therefore an early RSVP is recommended to ensure a place at the event.
The president’s lunch over the weekend was more packed than usual because not only was it over the Anzac long weekend (and we had a special Anzac ceremony before the game) but it also marked the Club’s 50th anniversary of playing at EFTel oval (although back then it was still known as Lathlain Park.) Leaving aside the various people who showed up having not RSVP’d for the event, an important sponsor in particular (I will not name names just in case) said 1 person would be attending on behalf of them, and that person in turn decided to bring their entire immediate family which consisted of 10 others including a baby in a pram who did not require an actual seat (thank god!) Usually, we have a ‘trouble table’ at these lunches which is where we seat people who have not RSVP’d, however because we were beyond capacity for this lunch already (largely because some sponsors who could not be turned down RSVP’d later than the indicated date) we had no choice but to eliminate the ‘trouble table’ for this lunch. Naturally, this backfired on us and made the event look unorganised, which is definitely was not. A table was somehow made up for the sponsor of 11, but then complaints were made by people who were told they had to limit their number of guests because we were already full! This was definitely a good lesson in the trials and tribulations that can occur in event management…
Haydn, I know what you mean about not underestimating PR techniques…on my first day I was asked to write a media release on something I knew virtually nothing about (it was my first day!) by my supervisor who clearly knew exactly what she wanted (in terms of content, style and so on) so I was definitely thrown in the deep end and struggling to remember all the correct writing styles we have learnt off the top of my head. She said I did a good job, and then promptly re-wrote the majority of it. However, it was a good learning curb because now I know what she is after and today when I wrote my second media release for her (and it was far harder to write because it was a solid story requiring research, whereas the first was a small promotional article) most of what I wrote was kept word for word and the rest still had the essence of what I said.
Hi Olivier, it sounds pretty cool to hear your experience. You get to interact with the director and know how to deal with the client. It shows the importance of using our PR skills to convince and persuade them. In your post, the client had lack of confident to be the sponsorship. However, your Mamba's director had shown you the rectify way of dealing with the matter arising. It's rather significant to have accountability, transparency and fairness in getting the sponsorship. It will end up having the long term connection with them.
Well DOne ;)
Jenny
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