UFC: Undisputed Takes Sponsorship to a New Level

If you're not a UFC fan or a gamer, you may not know about the sponsorship features in UFC's official licensed game, UFC 2009: Undisputed. The game, developed in a licensing deal with THQ, was released last May. To our knowledge there are three main levels of sponsor involvement in the title. Let's break them down. UFC fighters included in the game, and their agents, were given the opportu...

Deal Flow 9-18-2009

Nascar's Mark Martin will have a new primary sponsor at the Sprint Cup level for the 2010 season, Go Daddy.com Volkswagen became a sponsor of the 2014 Winter Olympics and will be the official automobile partner. The Meydan Group, which is building a huge facility called Meydan Racecourse inside a larger commercial development in Dubai, has signed on as major sponsor of the 2010 Alltech FEI Wo...

Mascots & Menus: Reviewing the New NFL Ads

Two of the most talked about deals leading up to the NFL kick-off were P&G's cross-category deal and IHOP's official partnership, featuring Larry Fitzgerald and Donovan Mcnabb. Febreze By most estimates, one third of the nation's 285 million football fans are women. When Febreze was announced it was widely assumed they would leverage the NFL to reach mom's and wives with the company's ai...

King of Queens

If it's better to be lucky than smart... the smarter sponge is doing a good job of it lately. SpongeTech, despite keeping U.S. Open activation at a minimum, curiously managed to take center stage during two of the fortnight's most memorable moments. Don't believe me? See for yourself... Simple name awareness is their goal and they have done an effective job of using sports to efficiently...

Dream Green; Soap Box Shifts Strategy

In a last ditch attempt to recoup lost sponsorship dollars, more and more properties are making over their value proposition to read more like cause marketing than traditional sponsorship. According to a USA Today article, the All-American Soap Box Derby is the latest. According to the article; the Derby which in the past has been title sponsored by the likes of Chevrolet, Goodyear, Home De...

Coke Kicks Off FIFA Campaign with Powerful Presser

Coca-Cola brought today's World Cup sponsorship announcement to the press via the web. If you were up at 5 AM eastern time, you too could have virtually attended and even submitted a question to the press conference, kicking off Coke's sponsorship campaign which is available for viewing in full here. Coke's integrated campaign will center around the question "What's Your Celebration?" The cam...

Wal-Mart Says "Game Time!"

But... still not blowing money on sponsorships! For the fourth year, Wal-Mart is promoting its "Game Time" co-op campaign around the start of the football season. The generic campaign once again involves no official sponsorships or licenses. The integrated campaign, which features brands like Tostitos, Totino's and Pepsi, involves in-store displays, circulars and cable TV spots. Accordi...

Jack Daniel's Done With NASCAR

Brown-Forman, one of the largest American-owned companies in the wine and spirits business, will conclude its Jack Daniel's NASCAR program and will not extend its sponsorship with Richard Childress Racing`s No. 07 team after the contract expires in 2009. A change in Brown-Forman's spending priorities led to the decision to conclude the sponsorship that began in 2005. "Brown-Forman has been a ...

Jump-Start Your Networking

Several readers of my quarterly e-newsletter, called BowerPower Papers, submitted questions that they were wondering about during this challenging economic year, as I wrote my guidebook, How to Jump-start Your Sponsorship Strategy in Tough Times. The book answers these questions – and more – and I'm sharing the answers here (sometimes with more detail) in case they clear up something you're won...

Deal Flow 9/19-21/2009

Three more companies have signed on as corporate sponsors, raising an additional $8.6MM, for the new Louisville arena under construction: Hillary Lyons, Stockyards Bank and Kentucky Employers Mutual Insurance. UEFA and adidas have extended their long-term partnership for UEFA EURO 2012 and UEFA EURO 2016. The Pro Football Hall of Fame has signed its first sponsorship deal with Van Heusen and ...