Rewarding the Sponsors

[jonno]

I'm running the Brunel team for the next year, and was wondering what various teams do to reward their sponsors? Obviously I'm aware of standard stuff like logo's on the car, promotional boards, newsletters, letting the sponsor use the car for promotional activities, displaying at various events, we even have an annual sponsors day imminently to inform sponsors how the FS comp went, to let them know our plans for the coming year and to allow the various sponsors to network with each other.
Aside from this, how else do teams reward their sponsors?

[jonno]

I'm running the Brunel team for the next year, and was wondering what various teams do to reward their sponsors? Obviously I'm aware of standard stuff like logo's on the car, promotional boards, newsletters, letting the sponsor use the car for promotional activities, displaying at various events, we even have an annual sponsors day imminently to inform sponsors how the FS comp went, to let them know our plans for the coming year and to allow the various sponsors to network with each other.
Aside from this, how else do teams reward their sponsors?

[J. Schmidt]

It sounds like you've got most of it covered. Make sure to send sponsors publications where the car or team is featured. I've gotten so bad that I plug our sponsors in daily conversations, thanks Speed Lab!. And this reminds me, I need to upload our car's photos onto a sponsor's website.

[Big Bird]

Hi there Jonno,

Don't forget the little stuff like keeping in contact with the sponsors during the year - not only newsletters but the occasional personal mail to the key people just giving them a bit of an update as things progress. Drop in to see them occasionally, take along some sort of gift like a plaque or a photo or a newsetter or something. Invite them along to a drive day if you can, it really shows you appreciate their input.

If you are receiving product, give the sponsor some feedback on how the product is performing. For instance, we are forwarding tech information back to our engine sponsor, as they are not fuel injecting this engine at the factory (as far as we know!). Also at the end of last year we sent our sponsors a report of all the publicity we have received - what media if any, demographic, circulation, what logos were visible, benefits to that particular sponsor. etc.

The key is ongoing communication, and as personal as possible. Everyone does promotional stuff, you need to make the sponsor feel like he/she is onto something special.

And don't forget the uni is a sponsor as well. (Sorry if that is obvious!!). We held a drive day for all the uni technical staff earlier in the year, it is the best thing we have ever done. They were falling over themselves to thank us after that, all the headaches we caused last year were immediately forgotten.

I think I may have written some of this before. Apologies if I have. Senility setting in....

[fsae_alum]

One thing that other universities have done in the past is to have the sponsors become involved with the project. By that I mean that once or twice a semester, the team holds a presentation for all their sponsors. They present them with their progress to date, the challenges their facing, and howthey are approaching those challenges. They also have a mock "design and analysis" review with the sponsors at this meeting. This presentation/design review does three things:
1.) It makes the sponsors feel like they're part of the team and not just a money or product handout.
2.) It allows the team to bring in extra resources that they might not have had access to (i.e. The students state that they are faced with the challenge of fabricating a full titanium exhaust but they don't have the equipment or knowledge to weld Titanium....the response back from the sponsors is "My cousin 3 hours away works for a company that specializes in Titanium fabrication and I can probably get him to teach you how to weld and get him to lenf their facilities")
3.) It prepares the students for presentations at competition and how to answer questions properly instead of saying "Ummmmm...I don't know."

Mind you it is a good deal of work to do this type of thing, but the payoffs are HUGE from other universities that do this have told me!

[Ben Steele]

It's especially important to thank the sponsors in some way after the competition. We send our sponsors packets that talk about the results of competition and basically just tell them how much their support helped us.

Also, one thing that we've found that sponsors love is t-shirts. If you give all your contacts a team shirt, it's like money in the bank.

Ben Steele

[jonno]

Thanks for the replies guys, I reckon we've most of the bases covered, however it's just a reminder of what i need to establish over the year.
Big Bird, I'd never really considered the Uni as a sponsor but yeah they definately give us most money & a workshop so their deffo pulling their weight! We get the department involved loads though, but viewing them in the sponsor light, well i'll be on the ball with that over the year!
fsae_alum, the mock design & analysis session sounds like an excellent idea to integrate into our sponsors day while they're about, i can definately see how the sponsors would feel "part of the team" that makes the car then with some excellent input.
Ben I gotta agree with you too, the few sponsors we've visited over the summer we've given them free team shirts and framed pictures of the car and although it seems like a trivial gift, I don't think theres much they could appreciate more, apart from maybe a free spin in the car... which I'd love to do, but the time constraints of shipping a car to Australia imminently mean it won't be around soon, and the time we have left, we'll be testing. We'll definately be doing that in the new year though.