A tactical guide to navigating your new relationship.

The sense of excitement and relief at the signing of a multi-year sponsorship deal with a racing team or series might feel like you’ve finally crossed the finish line, but you’re just getting started.

Your company is sponsoring racing because it’s exciting, sexy, appealing and, let’s be honest, a key to a much more interesting lifestyle. It’s a magnet for your customers because of its aspirational pull. It shows your competitors you’re serious about doing business in a big, bold, way.

But, if you’ve spent your company’s money on this sponsorship, you’ve got to keep focused on what this is: a business tool that has to perform – to be activated – in order to be seen as a success.

Partnership Activation

What does this mean? Let’s walk through the basics:

• Define: The sponsorship agreement promises deliverables you paid for
• Operationalize: Each deliverable must be activated in order to get it off of paper and in to reality
• Enable: Each activation is a project within the larger racing program, and must have ownership in order for promised deliverables to be made yours

Define: Promises into Line Items

Everything in the sponsorship agreement contract between you and the rights holder represents a promise you paid for: Visibility, impressions, hospitality passes, appearance time, merchandise, track days, hosted dinners, team HQ access… the list goes on and on.

Each of these promises is a contractual asset, has a clear or implied value (deliverable) and must be broken out, line by line.

Easy example: 50 VIP Suite Passes to three-day team race hospitality, to be used at any race in the season. Food, beverage, gift bag, track access and 1 parking pass per 4 suite passes included. Minimum 5 guests/maximum 25 guests per race. Tickets guaranteed with min. two-week notice to rights holder. Unused passes may not be rolled over.

• Defined asset & deliverable, and a simple line item.

Tough example: Credit for $175,000 of Team Hospitality to be used at Tier 1 races

X Sounds simple, right? Don’t get caught in this trap. You now need documentation in order to answer many more unknowns: How much does each ticket cost at each Tier 1 race? What’s included, and what’s not included? What about races with ticket passes in different currencies? By when does the team need the PO? Is there a minimum or maximum amount of guests guaranteed for each event? What if there are extra credits not used at end of season? What if we need tickets to Tier 2 races? Which races will or won’t include taxes that must be paid with the credit? What costs from the facility or series, like parking, driver chauffeur passes, golf cart passes, support paddock access, etc are not eligible to be paid with this credit?

• Make sure you have enough information about each deliverable in your contract so it can be turned into a line item.

Operationalize: Line Items into Goals

You’ve gone through your 50-page contract and broken your contractual assets into deliverables on a spreadsheet or project management app. Next, you need to track progress against activating these deliverables so you don’t lose any value in your sponsorship agreement. Assign due dates for when your assets need to be activated, owners, final approvers, links to associated documents and approval workflows, and, where possible, the impact of past activations.

• Turn each of your deliverables into a line item with a concrete outcome: due date, category impact (brand, sales, etc), owners

Enable: Goals into Ownership

Here’s where many companies stumble: Your goals with the sponsorship agreement need to be executed in order to be realized. Your and the contract signer’s motivations are not enough to operationalize the contract – your employee team must be enabled to do this.

First, the sponsorship strategy must be set according to both the original desired outcome of the sponsorship, and the actual contractual deliverables you’ve made into line items.

Each stakeholder group – Field Marketing, Communications, Sales, Internal Comms, Brand, etc – needs to very clearly understand what actions their org needs to take in order to meet the goals outlined in your strategy.

• I strongly recommend integrating strategic goals for the sponsorship into each stakeholder group leader’s job description. Consider a performance bonus for exceeding sponsorship-related goals.

• I recommend setting up RACI or DACI columns in your deliverables tracker to define who in either your company or within the rights holder is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed.

• Create channels to identify your ambassadors and leverage their enthusiasm. You can find your ambassadors setting up slack channels about the partnership, wearing team gear to the office, setting up or asking for themed Zoom backgrounds, or asking to go to the races. Enthusiasm is valuable and should be rewarded!

Next steps

This Define, Operationalize, Enable framework is a heavier lift than most companies new to sponsorship expect. The sponsor-rights holder relationship is always evolving, and working within the nuanced, tricky world of motorsports can throw a wrench in the works at any time.

The upside is massive, but it takes a strong foundation and practical knowledge of how things work inside the paddock to get you there.

Need help? Schedule a free consultation with me using the contact form or reach out to me on LinkedIn.