Food for Thought

Once the event date and format is determined, the focus then turns to who should be named chief judge, tournament director, chief boat driver, safety judge, scorers, etc…

Once all the dates are set, plan for the judges is in place, and a site is selected, someone usually asks who wants to be in charge of lining up sponsors for the event.  Nobody raises their hand.  The question then goes out again as more of a plea than a request.  Still nobody raises their hand.  It’s like walking on a Southwest Airlines plane with nothing left but center seats.  Nobody wants to make eye contact with you for fear you might select the center seat next to them.  The reason for this is that everyone knows how hard it is to ask sponsors for free equipment and/or cash donations for a barefooting event.  Everyone is willing to throw out their ideas, but very few are willing to make sense of the ideas and put a plan of action in place.

Being both a competitor, and event sponsor, I’ve had the opportunity to view the sport from several different points of view.  After sponsoring the US Barefoot Nationals this last year, I felt compelled to write this article.  What you do with the information is totally up to you, but I hope it will give you some insight into what a sponsor may thinking when you approach them and ask them to spend some of their hard earned dollars on your next event

First of all, if you have a barefoot club and do not have a Marketing Director, you should elect one.  I personally feel that the Marketing Director position should be the most coveted position in the club because as the Marketing Director, it would be your role to be the sole spokesman for the club, establish relationships with the sponsors and media outlets such as TV & Radio stations, and have a deciding role in how an event would be set up clear down to banner placements, music selection, announcer selection, type of food, host hotel selection, and banquet location.  I see the Marketing Director as the person in charge of assuring both the skiers and sponsors have a great tournament experience.  And if done properly, this job will require a lot of time making phone calls, visiting sponsors, and coordinating with other tournament organizers.  The ideal person would need to be well organized, good at dealing with various personalities, and being good on the computer wouldn’t hurt.

Before you send your Marketing Director out blindly to collect free t-shirts, hats, or funds to cover your “minimal” costs, you need to make sure they will be able to speak to the needs of a sponsor.  I get calls all the time here at BarefootCentral.com asking me for free stuff to give away at the next raffle.  My first question is always, “What’s in it for BarefootCentral?”.  I have yet to get an answer other than we’ll put your name on the back of our event T-shirt.

Being a small business in a niche sport, we have a very limited budget to work with.  So when we talk among ourselves about events to sponsor, we try to determine which events are going to give us the most exposure and allow us to promote our website, membership benefits, online magazine, and overall purpose for being in business to the most number of skiers, or potential footers. 

A sponsor’s ultimate goal is to make more people aware of their business and establish new customers after sponsoring an event.  If you are unable to offer your potential sponsors some statistics on past events and what it meant to other sponsors, it will make it doubly difficult to get them to be a first time or repeat sponsor.  Here are some questions you should be ready & able to answer when you get the chance to speak to a potential sponsor:

1. What’s in it for me as a sponsor of your event?
1. Be ready to talk about the event, how many years your club has hosted it, what your club membership numbers are, what your members and event participants are interested in, and most importantly what types of sponsorship packages you are offering and what the sponsor privileges come with each package.
   

i.      Level 1 - Major Sponsor
ii.      Level 2 - Participating Sponsor
iii.      Level 3 - General Sponsor, etc...

2. How many people do you anticipate having at your event?
1. Skiers
2. Family & friends
3. General Spectators
3. Of the footers attending your event, how many are locally based? 
1. A local sponsor may not figure on an out of state footer ever visiting their store.  So be sure to ask about their website and be prepared to talk about how many footers use the internet.
4. Are you charging an admission fee?
1. Most sponsors will look at an event that charges an admission as a bigger event than one that doesn’t.  You can offer your sponsors a VIP pass that gives them admission.  Sometimes simple inexpensive gestures will make both the sponsors and select skiers feel much more appreciated.  Having some young skiers at the gate with signs announcing the event and having someone taking admissions (especially at a Nationals level) lets everyone know that it’s a special event and they feel that much more important when they get in for free.  I would go as far as to print up some passes that the skiers could put on their dash boards so they can come and go from the tournament without being stopped at the gate.  And you never know, you may find that you collect a few hundred dollars from spectators that were driving by, saw your signs, or heard an announcement on the radio.
5. Do you have an experienced or professional announcer for the event?
1. This should be a priority for all tournaments.  So many tournaments fail from a sponsor & skiers point-of-view because there is no consistency to the announcing.  Most tournaments I’ve been to, practically anyone can walk up to the microphone and say whatever they want.  If I’m a major sponsor and show up to an event just to find a random announcer that doesn’t even know who I am or what I want to portray to the skiers, I won’t be sponsoring the event a second time.  Your announcer can make or break a successful tournament for both the skiers and the sponsors.  A simple (but huge) example of this was demonstrated at the 2002 US Nationals.  There was no set Announcer and several times I heard various people on the microphone talking about boats other than Sanger Boats when Sanger was the major sponsor.  If I’m Sanger, I walk away re-thinking how I’m going to spend my Marketing money next year. 
2. You should be ready to offer your potential sponsors the opportunity to speak directly with the announcer before the event so the announcer can get a good understanding of what the sponsors would like them to talk about.  Even things as simple as how they would like their names pronounced could be very important to a potential sponsor.  You can really impress a sponsor by offering to send them a pre-printed form that allows them to fill out messages and background information about their company that they would like announced at the tournament.  Different sponsorship levels could allow for more or less information being announced, and/or frequency of such messages.
6. What other sponsors do you have lined up?
1. Be sure to think about whether the sponsors you are courting compete directly with one another.  It makes it tough on an announcer if one minute they are raving about one sponsor, then 5 minutes later, they are raving about their competition.  Pick your major sponsors carefully.  You can approach 3 boat manufacturers, but you should tell them that the first one to sign on locks out the other 2.  If you are courting multiple equipment resellers, the same should be true.  It is very uncomfortable for the resellers to show up to a tournament and find their competition there as well.  It dilutes their message and creates an uncomfortable situation for both sponsors and skiers.
7. Are you working with local TV or Radio to promote the event?
1. If you’re doing your job, you will have addressed this and may be able to offer the major sponsors naming rights of the event (i.e. the Mastercraft Barefoot Worlds), which would be used in all advertising ads (printed and broadcast).
2. I personally believe we don’t get the media involved enough in the barefooting events.  Barefooting is an exciting Extreme sport.  It makes for a great human interest story for any TV station.  The Austin Barefoot Club in Texas has been very successful getting local TV stations to cover their events. 
   But the last thing you want is for the media to show up and find a very disorganized effort to get them what they need for their story and/or video.  Here's some things to think about:

i.      You must first contact the media and let them know you have an event happening.  This can be done several ways from having everyone in the club make a call or send and email to the local TV & radio stations letting them know about the event and that they would like to see some coverage.  Be sure that everyone gives the Marketing Director’s name as a contact.  Or you can print up a flyer and mail it to the local stations announcing the event.  The flyer should have the Marketing Director as the main contact.

ii.      Should you be contacted by the media, you need to be ready to react quickly to their needs.  They will want to arrange a time to film some action and interview some skiers.  You should identify who those skiers will be ahead of time (preferably the best skiers and/or most articulate skiers) and get their commitment to do the interview & skiing demonstration.  This means they have to be available during the window of time the media tells you they may show up.  They must also be willing to do a demonstration and interview even if it means doing it right before their scheduled event.  I would go as far as to brief each of the skiers as to what you would like them to say about the event, the sponsors, and their experiences during the interviews.  Let them know if you don’t want them talking about their personal sponsors if they conflict with your events major sponsors.  If it’s a conflict with them, you can always find another skier who wants to be on TV.  Then I would ask them to practice their skiing and speaking demonstration with you before the interview.  If the TV crew shows up just before the skiers event, I would let the skier know that they can ski their event at any time they want after completing the interview as a thanks for helping out the club and the sport.  Also, don’t forget to let the other skiers know about the media potentially showing up.  Ask them to be sure to thank the sponsors if they are interviewed.  Ask them let the Media Director know if a reporter asks them questions or films their interview.  I can guarantee with 100% certainty that every reporter will ask “Doesn’t it hurt your feet?” or “Doesn’t it hurt when you fall?”  We must remember that if we say yes to that question, and then start talking about all of the injuries you know about, it will keep young kids from trying the sport.  So make the skiers aware that we are trying to promote the sport in a positive light.  The fact that it’s extreme is what makes it so appealing to most of us, but when learned properly, it is very safe, easy to learn, and allows you to meet and interact with very talented athletes.

3. An idea that I would like to see explored is to contact the local sports or music radio station and ask them to do their broadcast from the tournament site that day.  If a local gas station or restaurant can do this, we should be able to do the same. The publicity could draw in hundreds of spectators resulting in gate fees, t-shirt sales, food and drink sales.  If you can’t afford the radio station remote broadcast, ask them to give you a list of their DJs that would be willing to announce your tournament as a sideline gig.  You would get a professional DJ that would go back to work on Monday morning and talk about his experiences to all the other DJs in the broadcast booth.  He may even end up talking about it on the radio that following week, especially if you get him to try it.  Any interest we can seed in the media couldn’t hurt.

You will find that the more organized you are, and more prepared you are with your answers, the more willing sponsors will be to participate in your event.  Some items that you should be prepared to approach a sponsor with, that they may not think about on their own, are:

1. Do you have banners that you would like put up around the site?
1. Be prepared to discuss the exact placement of a sponsor’s banners.  If I’m a sponsor, the first thing I look for when I enter the function is my banner.  Is it placed in a location that is easily and readily seen.  Is it where they told me it would be.
2. Having a diagram of the tournament site that allows you to sit down with your sponsors and mark off exactly where their banners will be placed would be a great thing to have.  It would also help the club members that have to put the banners up prior to the event. 

Well, I initially planned to keep this article to a single page, but as always, I ran off at the keyboard.  I’ll close by saying, like always, that the thoughts and opinions in this article are mine and don’t necessarily reflect the opinions of all the employees here at BarefootCentral.com.  I don’t expect everyone to agree with all the thoughts I’ve outlined.  I can only hope that you find a part of it helpful.  Please feel free to email me your own thoughts and opinions.

Chuck Gleason
President - Barefoot Central, Inc.

PS:  If you contact me to sponsor your tournament, you now have a blue-print for getting my approval.  Now I’ll sit back and see who’s up for the challenge.