Rarely does a brand make a commercial decision to sponsor an athlete or event without an emotional trigger.
Have you ever heard of a company sponsoring a golf event purely because the CEO is a passionate golfer? It happens.
Some sponsorships don’t make 100% commercial sense, yet they exist. And they exist because the sponsorship manager or CEO has an emotional tie-in with the sponsorship property. This emotional tie-in has the ability to overpower reason and logic.
When you’re pitching sponsorship, it needs to make sense but making sense alone isn’t enough for a company to sign the dotted line. You need to evoke emotion. You want the company to invest both passion and dollars.
Putting things aside like branding, try to think about the emotional reasons why a company would want to partner with you. Pride, zest, enthrallment, discovery, courage, respect, fun, compassion, inspiration, confidence etc. And then tie these in with the property you’re selling.
And remember you’re typically selling your pitch to one key decision maker. So make it personal-able. Even if that one person has to get approval from above, you need to hook them first so they’ll fight for your pitch internally. And you do that by appealing to their emotions.
