Activating your sponsorship is just as important as getting sponsorship and this week you will understand why.
In addition to this, I have a video on writing sponsorship proposals, a podcast that explains what a sponsorship broker does, what Chat GPT says about sponsorship and a checklist on why companies should get involved in motorsport sponsorship.
All this and more in this week’s edition of the Business of Being a Race Driver on Motorsport Prospects.
The Business of Racing
From the Driver’s Point of View
The video above will walk you through the creation of a sponsorship proposal suitable for any grassroots racing driver or team.
Megan Meyer explains the 3 Benefits of Racing Sponsorship Activations. “Landing your sponsorship contract is only half of the equation. Sponsorship activation is the other half.“
MotiV8 Training Podcast Episode #139 discusses what a sponsorship broker does and how to seek sponsorship. “This week we spoke to Damon Hill who is a sponsorship broker (not just for the motorsport industrys!) We discuss what is a brokers role within seeking sponsorship. We also have a quick chat with Cody McKay about how he has seeked sponsorship from starting off his career to know running a small business and how he has recently engaged with an branding agency to take his activations to the next level.” You can listen here.
Podium Life sat down with Pippa Mann to discuss her career, women in motorsport and what she hopes to achieve with her non-profit organization Shift Up Now.
“Right now, specifically with female drivers, it’s a great opportunity for brands to get involved. Especially those that want to support diversity, equity and inclusion in this sport. There are more and more families coming out to races than ever before. There are more women supporting all drivers, and specifically female drivers. There is research that women drive about 70-80% of household decisions. It’s a new demographic to appeal to, in addition to traditional race fans. At Shift Up Now, we want to appeal to all of the new and traditional race fans that welcome racers no matter their skin color, no matter their race, no matter where they are from. Those are our people. It doesn’t matter if they’ve been fans for 5 years, 15 years or 5 minutes. We want to celebrate the existing audience and bring in a new audience to the sport.”
In When Worlds Collide: Racing and the Shift Up Now NFT Project, race driver Julia Landauer explains how she became involved in NFTs and how she is collaborating with Shift Up Now on their NFT project. “I never would have guessed that getting involved in NFTs would lead to me racing in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. It was so cool to bridge my worlds of racing, empowerment, community and technology in a way that benefited so many people.”
From the Sponsors Point of View
MotiV8 Training has a great checklist on why a company should get involved in motorsport sponsorship. “Motorsports sponsorship is a powerful, cost-effective marketing opportunity. The enormous international appeal of auto racing, combined with careful planning, can elevate your company to new heights of success.”
Megan Meyer talked about 3 ways to activate a sponsorship in her post that I linked to above. Sports marketing agency Sport Dimensions answers the question, What Even is Sponsorship Activation? “This can take many forms, but activation is all about bringing your brand to life from things as simple as booth spaces at an event to more sophisticated programs like employee engagement initiatives, virtual engagements, sales contests, once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and customer celebrations.”
General Motorsport Marketing Advice & Resources
EveryRealm has released their Immersive Media Market Overview. “Younger generations are ushering in a transition from 2D social media platforms to social, virtual video-game-like worlds. This is the transition to immersive media, where static social media scrolling is being replaced by fully formed digital environments, or virtual worlds, where people not only interact with each other, but curate digital identities spanning their avatar appearance, virtual home, and possessions. Immersive media is becoming an increasingly popular leisure activity to the detriment of other media formats–a trend which marketers and companies need to prepare for.”
Kim Skildum-Reid from Power Sponsorship looks at ChatGPT and its views on sponsorship in ChatGPT May Be New, but Its Views on Corporate Sponsorship Are Stuck in the Nineties. “Like so many people in recent days, I’ve been giving ChatGPT a run. And like so many people, I’ve found it to be fun… and amazing… and slightly freaky. After trying a bunch of quite silly queries, I decided to see what it knows about sponsorship. The answer is quite a lot, if you don’t care about the quality of the answers.”
You can see my experiment with ChatGPT in How to Get Racing Sponsorship According to ChatGPT.
The Costs of Racing
Winding Road Racing looks at the 5 Best Auto Racing Shoes Under $250. “We recently published a piece about our favorite budget-friendly racing suits, and received a few requests from our readers to list what we think are the best auto racing shoes under $250. This was very difficult as we have a lot of favorites for many reasons. However, Mark was able to pin down not only a selection of our favorites, but also Winding Road Racing’s customers top-5 picks. We even included a wild card!”
Author: Mark Boudreau
Mark is the publisher of Motorsport Prospects. As a former lawyer, he applies his legal background and research skills to assist race drivers by showcasing the resources they need to make their motorsport careers happen.