Sponsorship deals are difficult. It can be culture, sport, event or anything between. People in sport business, especially in more local level are usually filled with enthusiasm but less practical approach of marketing communications; they do love their hobby so much that they also expect everyone with some marketing money to do the same. Same story with culture, opera, classical music or contemporary art. You just love your stuff and expect the sponsorship money flowing in. I am happy for you if can do that.

Sergio Zyman wrote years ago in his “End of Advertising as We Know it” good and practical stuff about sponsoring; something that I have personally used as a guideline for many of my clients during the years. My message has been only one of the Sergio’s valuable points; the goal of sponsorship, like any other advertising element, should be to sell more stuff to more people more often and for more money. Otherwise is charity work and different rules work there.

This topic faced me today, this time with a new business area – cooking and culinary, while wondering the missing interest from sponsors to send young talented people to competitions like Bocuse d’Or. Still, the rules are the same and the value of that inside-business-enthusiasm is overvalued. If you love fine dining and cuisine, you expect everybody does the same. When you expect that you will be done. It’s the same with football, sailing, opera or race driving. Enthusiasm works but only up to a certain level.

Sometime enthusiasm works, making bankers – sorry guys, just example I know - to invest into football without any reasonable or practical reason. That’s where enthusiasm works; passion about games or people around it, It’s sure nice to hang around with the players, right? This is the area where billions and billions have been invested into sports, everywhere in the world. And hey; what’s wrong of hanging around in the best nightclubs in the world with your best buddies that you basically own, at least for one season?

Practical approach is a different story; also from the seller’s point of view. Here you should bring some hard facts to the table. Audience, spectators, viewers, eyeballs, numbers to support the ROI – no, not your dog – so simply show some hard facts and a reason why to burn some phenomenal amount of cash for placing your logo on the players shirt. And here they do so wrongly; if I am not enthusiasm about one sport, it doesn’t mean that I am not interested in sponsoring. But it does mean that I am not doing that because of love or passion, but because of a good marketing investment.

So back to cooking and culinary; as long as you go to knock the doors of the most obvious potential sponsors like food brands and restaurant owners, you play with the enthusiasm card. And as long as you are not building up a good story to support the marketing investments, you will be loosing the game. Here it is the very same story with everything you sponsor; don’t go with you enthusiasm and passion only, go for ROI and make something back from you investment. Passion you need to show during that long deal you just signed. And enthusiasm you will need to make your boss or board to accept your strange deal afterwards.

But if you have a few billions extra, just keep doing what you do know. At least it feels better than the boring stories about the recession, right?

Cheers for sponsorships, cheers for enthusiasm! Cheers for billionaires!