At The Sponsorship Experts, we set our sights on exciting years ahead. Over the years we have solidified our position as the premier sponsorship and partnership marketing consultancy in Thailand, offering a host of services to rights holders and brands to help them maximise their sponsorship efforts.
But what exactly do we do? We sat down with The Sponsorship Experts Founder, Managing Director and Chairman, Paul Poole, to learn more about sponsorship and partnership marketing.
Please explain the core services of The Sponsorship Experts.
We specialise in commercial sponsorship and partnership marketing, working with both rights holders and brands acting as a catalyst by bringing them together and maximising the relationship. At the core of our approach is a commitment to evidence-based decision-making and we spend a lot of time on market research. We were founded in 2004 and have worked with some of the biggest rights holders and brands in Thailand and beyond.
For rights holders, we offer a full service and packaging product, providing advice on packaging, sales, management and marketing communications programmes. More specifically, we help rights holders understand why brands sponsor and partner, how to position sponsorship opportunities to attract sponsors and partners, and how to leverage sponsorship to improve the overall quality of the property. We assist in the development and distribution of sales materials, develop sales targets, source sponsors and partners and manage negotiations and contracts.
For brands, we offer extensive engagement and activation services, helping them throughout the sponsorship process, from researching sponsorship opportunities, conducting sponsorship audits, developing market activity reports, managing sponsorship opportunities, negotiating rights, and measuring sponsorship effectiveness through qualitative and quantitative analysis.
Do you offer any other related services?
Yes, once per year we conduct two training workshops aimed at rights holders and brands, respectively, helping them understand and practice all aspects of commercial sponsorship and partnership marketing.
In addition, we run Marketplace, a platform for rights holders to promote their commercial sponsorship and partnership opportunities in a forum frequented by influential decision makers and influencers in sponsorship.
Furthermore, our subsidiary Asia Sponsorship News (ASN), the leading market intelligence service for the sponsorship industry in Asia, distributes independent news, analytics and insights on a subscription basis, with a bespoke consultancy and training service.
ASN has been instrumental in the continued success of the sponsorship industry in Asia through its unrivalled data set of over 270,000 commercial sponsorship and partnership marketing deals in Asia, which has allowed sponsorship professionals to trade faster and more efficiently in an environment of greater transparency.
Lastly, we work with Sportskred, a social media sponsorship platform that offers clubs, sport organisations, agencies and brands a one-stop tool to monetise social media on a large scale.
Who are your clients?
We are lucky to work with a wide range of rights holders and brands covering many different sectors. Not only does it keep things fresh, but it is also a great way to see the broader picture and benefit from cross-sector experiences, lessons and insight.
Our clients are currently made up of 80 percent sports-related properties and 20 percent non-sports-related properties. In the sports sectors, we cover a range of disciplines including mass participation events like marathons and triathlons, as well as athletics, badminton, basketball, football, golf, martial arts, motorsports, table tennis, volleyball and yachting. We also work with government bodies like the Sports Authority of Thailand.
Our non-sports clients include a variety of rights holders in the arts, entertainment and MICE (meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions) space.
We target various levels of rights holders and offer services that suit both those looking for a full package and those whose needs are more limited. For example, our full service offering is aimed at large rights holders in need of extensive packaging, sales, management and marketing communications services; our packaging product is aimed at right holders with fewer management and marketing communications needs; and Marketplace is targeted at rights holders who wish to simply promote their sponsorship opportunities in a highly relevant forum. Our target audiences are concentrated mainly in Thailand and wider Southeast Asia.
How do you measure success?
It varies from client to client. We help our clients understand and leverage the market value of their assets. This includes an extensive sponsorship property evaluation, examining the full value of all the major sponsorship assets of their property. The sponsorship property evaluation can help rights holders position their sponsorship properties against competition, identify USPs, and help negotiate and realise the best price.
More specifically, the sponsorship property evaluation identifies unique assets that can drive value, such as exterior exposure, onsite exposure, advertising, database marketing, CRM programmes, media coverage, promotion and privileges, experiential marketing, hospitality, image association, internet, and publishing and collateral. All assets are assigned a base value, based on three criteria: media benchmarking (holding the asset up against current media rates), sponsorship benchmarking (holding the sponsorship property up against similar properties locally, nationally and internationally), and our 20 plus years’ experience in sponsorship sales, looking at the image of the property as a whole, the supply and demand affecting the availability of a specific type of asset, the nature, quality and impact of exposure, the degree of sponsor clutter, and how the exposure element integrates into the sponsorship package as a whole.
Sponsorship and partnership marketing is all about activation. How do you help clients in this field?
We work closely with our clients to maximise the power of commercial sponsorship and partnership marketing and that includes advising them on how best to activate their sponsorships. As we see time and time again, sponsorship is so much more than simply buying a title, it's about engaging the right audiences in the right way and measuring that effort. For example, we offer sponsorship audits and marketing activity reports, and help clients exploit sponsorship through direct marketing, PR and advertising. We also use PerforMindTM, a scientific approach to selecting sponsorship criteria and sourcing a sponsorship that is best for the business/brands needs.
Tell us something we don’t know about commercial sponsorship and partnership marketing.
A lot of people think of commercial sponsorship and partnership marketing as a money game but it goes way beyond just monetary objectives and ROIs. However, it is our belief that commercial sponsorship and partnership marketing is not just for rights holders and brands to benefit but for the benefit of the wider environment in which they operate as well as the end customer, the fan.
By leveraging the power of sponsorship, rights holders and brands are able to improve and effectivise their activities, organise and host better quality and more sustainable events, and engage with the local community in a more meaningful way. For example, several of our clients use commercial sponsorships and partnership marketing to support charitable causes or increase awareness of social and/or environmental issues. Furthermore, well organised and executed events attract more people, which in turn may support surrounding industries.
How do you see The Sponsorship Experts evolving over the coming years?
We intend to double in size through acquisition and our own growth.
Paul Poole (South East Asia) Co., Ltd. is an independent marketing consultancy based in Bangkok, Thailand specialising in commercial sponsorship and partnership marketing, working with both rights holders and brands - acting as a catalyst by bringing them together and maximising the relationship.
We have packaged, sold and managed sponsorship and partnership opportunities for a wide range of rights holders and worked with many of the world’s leading brands to source and engage the right sponsorships and partnerships for them to maximise.
