Sponsors, sponsors, sponsors!

And so Barbara is back and it's back to business for me.

My first day back at Momentum Forum Events was busy as expected. We had a lot to follow up on from when Barbara was away. The first thing on our list was answering the various emails we had received that morning and over the weekend. With less than two months until the Pink Ribbon Ball for 2010 we are well on our way into the midst of advertising. We have been liasing with the West Australian, the Sunday Times and Perthnow to advertise the PRB flyer in their publications. Flicking through the Sunday Times this weekend just gone I noticed our first advertisment! What excitement it was to see something that I have helped put together in print.

One thing that has been tedious in the office is coordinating the flyer and banners for the event. With so many changes in sponsors, prices and venues we have had several different final copy's come through which end up being not quite right. Keeping track, and saving things in the right foler is essential! We have been known to spend several minutes trying to find documents, organsation is a must and really does help the overall process in the end.

Sales for tables for the PRB have been going exceptionally well, and we have a booking booklet and spreadsheet which needs to be updated continously. Again making sure we do this at the time of a booking is vital otherwise thing's get confusing and it can become easy to lose track.

The biggest obstacle that Barbara and I face in the coming weeks is trying to find major sponsors for the Melbourne Cup for Telethon luncheon. It's amazing how different people preceive and respond to sponsorship deals. This is the first year that Barbara has formed an affiliation with Telethon, and we both assumed that finding major sponsors would be relatively easy as Telethon has such a strong reputation and presence within the Perth community. This assumption has proven to be rather juvenile on our part. We have approached various companies and had no commitment so far. As it is a Melbourne Cup event, a fashion parade is a given, therefore creating an affiliation with a retail outlet/brand would really give the event something extra.

Sending out sponsorship proposals is both time consuming and frustrating when you don't even receive any recognition of having received the information. Another thing that really took me suprise was how hard it is at times to get a hold of companies PR or marketing division. Barbara still find's it astounding that they make out as if the marketing division is some top secret club. When calling a retail house I struggled to get the contact details of their PR and marketing person, Barbara called again after me and managed after much nagging. I learnt once more that it really does pay to be persistent but polite!

My one day a week with Barbara never seems to quite be enough, and the hours fly by with emails, phone calls and brainstorming. I come home and it takes me a while to settle back into everything after hours of rush, rush, rush.

Tomorrow I'm back there again and curious to find out if we've had any progress with sponsors!