Ad Age, Marketers Go for Squeeze Play

There is a great column by Rance Crain in Ad Age that brings more light to Bank of America's thinking around sponsorship. Here is a snip of the column:

"One thing we have learned is that avidity is so critical when it comes to how well a sponsorship works," said Ray Bednar, senior VP-global sponsorship executive at Bank of America, in a discussion with Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal. "So that's leading to great conversions with properties about the fact that winning matters for marketers, too. ... So if winning does matter, properties should be paid more when they win. Conversely, when they don't win, they should get paid less."

He said BofA has started inking variable compensation deals -- pay-for-performance models based not only on winning, but also on the property delivering business. "The bankers I have to go to for budget approval don't really care if we have a suite or a sign. They want to know how much money they're going to make."

Mr. Bednar also said the bank tells sponsorship properties that, for instance, it's going to put their brands inside 1,000 banking centers. "Then they will have X many impressions, which would cost them $2.5 million to buy, so we're going to factor that in as part of the sponsorship price."

The most telling quote is, "The bankers I have to go to for budget approval don't really care if we have a suite or a sign. They want to know how much money they're going to make."

In my conversations with major financial institutions, this has always been the case. Marketing, Advertising, Sponsorship is there to help drive the bottom line so the bankers ask: how will I make money, how will I get new clients, how can I leverage this to interact with my current clients?

It is crucial to think about ways to help your contact sell the opportunity internally. An open conversation with your prospect is the best way to do this.