connecting people,opportunities and ideas

As we kick off the New Year, I wanted to personally invite you to join and/or connect more deeply with your peers in the sponsorship and marketing community. We are the largest online social media community for sponsorship professionals and have grown so quickly because we provide value and are dedicated to helping people like you.
Our group of 4,500+ members comes from the top positions at such agencies as IEG, IMG, WMG, AEG and more. They come from leagues – NFL, NBA, NHL, CFL, MLB, AVP, MLS, NASCAR, MMA and more. The brands represented come from a who’s who of Fortune 500 companies. Both physical and intellectual properties have representation and more than 30 countries have members who participate!
Members enhance their knowledge, further their careers and interact online via our discussion forums and blog. We are committed to being the best, free business networking site for sponsorship and marketing executives on the internet.
We also send a monthly, e-newsletter which includes exclusive discounts, enhancements tools and appropriate vendors.
All of this is provided free for you and appropriate associates.
To join, please click on the link below and forward to your associates.
http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/59380

About Sponsorship Insights Group (SIG)
We are a global networking group and sponsorship consulting/sales agency. We connect properties with brands. We help buyers and sellers increase efficiency and profitability. How can we help you?
We have a unique business model developed to maximize ROI/ROO.
For more information, please click on:
Sponsorship Insights Group

Dan Beeman, Founder – Sponsorship Insights Group
818.433.4239 – Office
Skype: danbeeman1
dan@sponsorshipinsights.com

Join/Connect and/or follow me on:LinkedIn
Facebook
Twitter: @sponsorinsight

For more information about me and our services, please click on the links below.

We are a global networking group and sponsorship consulting/sales agency. We connect properties with brands. We help buyers and sellers increase efficiency and profitability. How can we help you?

For more information, please click on:

Sponsorship Insights Group

LinkedIn Profile, Join my LinkedIn Group on Sponsorship, Twitter, Facebook Profile

In an effort to better serve our membership, we have created a LI poll.  It only takes 30 seconds!

Please click here to post your responses

We had some fun with the Iphone video camera today and we are sending you our Holiday Greetings via video blog. Last year at this time, I pledged to learn to blog, now I have posted more than 200 blogs and am doing a video blog/card for the holidays!

It was another interesting year, filled with all the emotions that life brings – joy, sorrow, victory and defeat. We are so grateful to have health, friends and family. We learn every day how much we don’t know and pledge to Embrace Change as it is the Constant. What will 2010 bring? We hope prosperity, health and happiness. “some pursue joy, while others create it.” I hope to create.

Wishing you all the very best for this holiday season and 2010. Click the link below to view the video.

christmas-video-card-007

For more information about me and our services, please click on the links below.

Regards,

Dan Beeman

Sponsorship Insights Group

Phone: 818.433.4239

Skype: danbeeman1

We are a global networking group and sponsorship consulting/sales agency. We connect properties with brands. We help buyers and sellers increase efficiency and profitability. How can we help you?

For more information, please click on:

Sponsorship Insights Group

LinkedIn Profile,
Join my LinkedIn Group on Sponsorship, Twitter, Facebook Profile

In today’s LA Times article about Tiger, I was quoted by Diane Pucin.   I want to augment the quote and lend some editorial.  You’ll see several posts on this subjects in my blog.  To get the full picture of my perspective, I suggest you read them all.

Here is my quote and it is also hypertext to the article.

Dan Beeman, founder of the Woodland Hills-based Sponsorship Insights Group, a global networking and sponsorship agency, said Woods’ unwillingness to take control of the situation “smacks of selfishness.”

“Tiger should have come out by now and released all his sponsors from their obligations and publicly rededicated himself to working for his foundation,” Beeman said. “Instead he and his representatives are letting his sponsors hang out there and fall like dominoes, one by one.”

The dominoes falling and his silence  is only extending the story.  Tiger is going through a self-inflicted ordeal that none of us can relate to as no sports figure has ever has the number of endorsements, is as widely recognized or has anywhere near the income generated by them.

People have and do cheat, but no cheating  has ever been so widely covered or been so serial in its nature.  Part of the incomprehensible irony which has mystified his fans is that golf has many metaphors about life through its’ rules of self-regulation, honesty and tradition.  So, sponsors jumped on the bandwagon of the best  golfer and capitalized on those attributes.  That is why so many feel cheated.  Cheating is not allowed in golf.

Almost all of his sponsors focused on his relentless drive for perfection and personal discipline which helped him achieve success.  He allowed sponsors to market himself that way knowing there was a natural, logical extension from his golf success to his personal success.  This was all reinforced by his public image – a lovely wife and two adorable children.  Sponsors hoped that same leap would be made by consumers as it related to their brand.  This image was reinforced by an apparently wholesome family life.  The extension of perceived perfection to his personal life and brands was natural.  By accepting the endorsements, he perpetuated that image.

Now we know that on field/court/course success should not be extended to assumptions of ones moral character or integrity.  We keep learning the hard way.  We want to look up to these athletes because they do physical things we can’t.

As I said in the article, he needs to get in front of it, show genuine remorse, accept responsibility and do something about it.  A good first step would be to release sponsors from their obligations.  This will end the domino effect of  sponsors, one at a time, spinning their way out of their connection with him by “respecting his privacy.”

The “selfishness” I spoke of in the article was not of Tiger (though, through his duplicity, he obviously was), but his agent who had the audacity to say he was disappointed in Accenture for dropping him.  His agent should have apologized to Accenture for tarnishing their image and allowing them to run their marketing around a campaign that now smacks of a sad irony – “Go ahead, be a Tiger.”  Yikes!

Accenture, and the others, should find causes/properties to sponsor that aim to do good, not individuals.  Tiger should endorse that.   That would stop the dominoes from continuing to fall and buy him some privacy, respect and the opportunity to start repairing himself and his image.  As we keep being reminded, humans are not perfect and will make mistakes, but causes aim for good and usually do it.

Thoughts?

Every day, our members from our social media groups/fans/friends and followers tell us that they need effective sponsorship solutions, but struggle to identify cost-effective representation or services that actually deliver customized solutions for them.

On the property side, the options usually are:

A. Commission-only representation with no results
B. Retainer plus commission with lots of reports on “sales activity” but unsatisfactory results
C. Consultants who “value” their property, and provide “advisory services” but don’t actually help them sell
D. Go it alone mode. They use the shotgun approach to send proposals that either miss target, are miss-priced or poorly thought-out.

There are a few websites that “connect” properties with sponsors. Most of them are in BETA-mode and have yet to hit critical mass or have many success stories.

We came up with a model that meets the needs of the marketplace and serves our community at the same time.

Problems:
• Many properties don’t understand their value, have poor representation and need sponsors
• Many agencies spend too much time trying to get clients instead of providing services
• Many agencies are either too general or too specific with their competencies
• Many agencies have high overhead (staff, offices, equipment and travel) which creates higher fees
• Many agencies are geographically restricted with capabilities by the location of their offices
• Many talented former agency folks are looking for work as independent contractors
• Social media as a tool is under appreciated, underutilized and not understood

Solution:

• SIG uses social media and a virtual workforce to maintain a low overhead and worldwide team
• SIG has a natural pipeline of inquiries and sponsorship help from our huge social media community
• SIG outsources sponsorship fulfillment and sales to our members to meet client needs
• SIG consult with clients and then build a proposal according to their needs, time line and budget
• SIG is comprehensive, global, scalable, transparent, efficient, geographically and competency-relevant

Thoughts?

Happy Holidays!  On Monday we sent our newest newsletter out via e-mail to subscribers.  It is now online.

Please click here to read it.

As always, we welcome your comments and feedback.

Recently, I was asked to be a part of an ebook by Jason Peck.  Jason is a bright talent, excellent writer and is full of insights.  So, when he asked for mine, I was honored.

So, read a compilation of expert opinions for 2010 here.

The New York Times had an interesting piece on Tiger today that echoed some of my sentiments from my blog yesterday on the subject.  Here is a link to their article and a link to mine.  See any themes here?

I think Tiger would be better served if his advisors took a different approach than:

In response to Accenture’s announcement, Mark Steinberg, Mr. Woods’s agent, said, “We are disappointed but respect their decision.”

This is a “who moved my cheese” moment.  Instead of reacting with disappointment.  Get in front of it, be proactive and announce a blanket release of obligations to all his sponsors and encourage them to invest their dollars in a worthy cause.  Maybe he could even rededicate his foundation????

Watch them fall now.  How long will Nike hold out?  With one of his biggest endorsers, Accenture, dropping Tiger, it will be interesting to see how the others react.

Here is what was said,

“After careful consideration and analysis, the company has determined that he is no longer the right representative for its advertising,” Accenture said, adding that “it wishes only the best for Tiger Woods and his family.”

I wrote a lengthy blog about him and the situation today  and was quoted in an article in the LA Times.   I say that he should get in front of it before they all go away and encourage them to drop him and spend the money on causes that have purpose.  Perhaps he can quickly rededicate his foundation and assign all sponsorships to it.

Nike is way deep invested in him with buildings named after him and a whole line of branded goods.  It will  be more difficult for them…like bowling now, watch the pins fall…