Sponsorships - making it meaningful!

An article I recently read in one of the local business dailies got me thinking about sponsorships. Sponsors are a key stakeholder in any MICE event and their contributions (financial and otherwise) go a long way in aiding event organisers/hosts to cover event costs. With the increased scope of media coverage afforded to MICE events and the pervasive use of search engines to pull up news clips and photographs, the life-span of sponsorship branding has extended into years. This provides a very strong selling point for purveyors of sponsorship packages.

However, it is not enough for organisations to simple sponsor a MICE event. The real and high incremental value of sponsorship participation comes when a sponsor capitalises on opportunities to leverage on the sponsorship:
- gaining direct access to a group of potential clientele (in a single event), who under normal circumstances would required multiple efforts spread across an extended time frame to reach
- gaining VIP treatment for its own group of top customers during the course of the event (scoring brownie points)
- dovetailing its marketing activities to add on to what the organiser is already doing to promote, brand and market the event
- ensuring that its participating staff are adequately and properly briefed on its sponsorship objectives and are proactive in ensuring these objectives are fulfilled (if not exceeded)

Organisations which actively sponsor major sporting events have become quite adept at leveraging on the sponsorship. This same level and intensity should be applied to MICE events. No event is too small that it cannot help improve a relationship the sponsor has with at least one of its existing customers or potential customer.

Sponsors need to move away from viewing MICE events sponsorships as branding exercises, to exploring how they can better connect with their customers (or potential customers) during the course of the event. Treat sponsorships as opportunities to carry out one-to-one marketing; networking; customer relationship building.......this will go a long way in increasing the return on investment for any kind of MICE event sponsorship.

Benjamin Cassim
Temasek Poly

The EXperiential Factor

Meetings and conferences can be very monochrome in nature - colourless, officious and dare I say, boring. Two factors that stand out (in a conventional way), when refering to the attractiveness of a meeting/conference, are content and attendee profile. I am not going to address these here. Given the very competitive environment with meeting/conference organisers clamouring for the attention of potential attendees, the X Factor or Experiential Factor is now a "buzz" word when defining the attractiveness of one meeting/conference over another.

Meetings/Conference organisers need to pay close and careful attention to the overall experience of they attendees. Attendees are the best mouthpieces and their judgements (positive or negative take away from attending a meeting/conference) carry a lot of weight among their peers.

Some areas where EXperiential Factors come into play - the interface with frontline service staff (friendliness, efficiency, knowledgable etc); timeliness (sessions starting and ending on time); the ancillary activities like cocktail sessions, dinners, basically the fun stuff (with particular efforts made to showcase the uniqueness of the destination); friendliness of venue staff (something that organisers often forget to emphasise to the venue managers); and efforts made to accommodate special needs attendees.

Positive attendee experience leads to positive publicity. It is important to note that such publicity is not a one-time thing. People enjoy recalling positive experiences.....people enjoy reminiscing. So......as organisers we are in the position to create and delivery legendary memorable experiences to attendees!

Benjamin Cassim
Temasek Polytechnic

Meetings, corporate events need to flourish

I shared a short video clip featuring Dr Patrick Dixon, author of Futurewise, with my students this past week. Dr Dixon was speaking on the topic, "Future of Corporate Events, Travel and Conferences". With the advent of advanced telecommunications technologies and the current great need to trim and manage costs, real-time communications across the globe via fibre-optic cables seem to be replacing the good old "let's meet tomorrow" route. However, Dr Dixon's view is that even with such advances, the need for face-to-face meetings will not disappear. There will be times when companies will need to gather people (staff or business partners or customers) together for such events.

This is something I believe in. As much as we talk of corporations and organisations, we must not forget that such entities are run and managed by people. People are not machines; people are beings with souls and spirits. We thrive on emotional and physical contact - the need to trust and be trusted; the need to convince others of our point of view; the need to shake the hand of a customer as a means of "sealing the deal"; the need to converse with a "real" person vs across communication cables. So......companies will continue to organise and host meetings; business executives will continue to attend seminars, conferences, talks etc.

Given the current downturn in most economies today and the failure of institutions which were meant to be foundation stones on which economies were built on, TRUST will come to the forefront when companies deal with each other or deal with their customers. The "face-to-face" encounter is an important element of this trust-building process.

Meetings will live on!

Benjamin Cassim
Temasek Polytechnic