Just as trade shows, proprietary events, and mobile marketing are used differently by tech marketers than their b-to-c brethren, so are sponsorships.At IBM, sponsorships are viewed as branded canvas...

Months of hard work, endless versions of contracts, and layers of red tape later, the new sponsorship is signed.Time to crank up the publicity and get the word out. Hey, not so fast.Making lots of ...

It was bound to happen.Over the last 18 months, more b-to-b companies have redeployed trade show dough into mobile road shows that take their message to prospects and customers 24/7/365. These compa...

There must be black holes in the floors of most trade shows—because that’s where a lot of your leads seem to end up.We’re not kidding. Consider the fact that “non-fulfillment” by exhibitors is one o...

Advertisers and rate bases have changed, but the typical trade show strategy has long remained the same for most publishers. Small booth. Stacks of magazines. Cover blow ups. Yep, that about does it....

It was the worst hurricane season ever: a month of tropical storms, 140-mile-per-hour winds, flood watches, and millions of homes without power.Schools closed, malls flooded, games were cancelled, s...

The Golden Arches folks were leveraging a slice of their global Olympic sponsorship by flying 400 of their top restaurant workers to Salt Lake City to watch the 2002 Winter Games on McD’s dime. When t...

We didn’t even come close.EM editors have been playing Powerball every week since we first debuted our Dream Team last fall, but to no avail. Ages, birthdates, sports jersey numbers, addresses, heigh...

When Char-Broil launched its mobile Grilling Team tour last summer, the program had 3.5 days of up-time per week across 13 weeks. This summer, the company went with a regional reincarnation that opera...

It was a bold promise.Three years ago, Allied Domecq chief executive Philip Bowman announced to shareholders that the world’s second-largest spirits maker would become—drum roll, please—a “marketing-...

We introduced our Best Sponsors endeavor last fall with an overall portrait of the top sponsors in America. The premise? A listing of the brands that took rock-solid advantage of the discipline. The p...

Hot temps and a streak of American upsets didn’t cool the crowds in Queens last month as hundreds of thousands of people showed up for the 2004 U.S. Open.With the new Arthur Ashe Stadium getting bett...

Procter and Gamble last month launched a new Tide Downy combo detergent with branded pajama parties staged in four markets.While the events were news in themselves—activities, music, samples, and a s...

The 2001 terrorist attacks are only partially to blame for event insurance premiums doubling and coverage requirements becoming exponentially more complicated.Yes, September 11 changed the insurance...

Selling sponsorships into your b-to-b events is no longer an option—it’s a necessity. “Without sponsorships, we’d drive up our cost, our attendees’ cost or both,” says Lynn Connelly, director of spons...

Has it been three-to-five years with a two-year option already?Unless a sponsorship outright failed to deliver, renewing is typically the marketer’s gut instinct. But experts say reupping is hardly ...

Dodgeball makes promoting events with email blasts seem oh so low-techThere are underground societies growing in 10 cities—and you probably don’t know a thing about them.They call it Dodgeball, and ...

The discipline of mall marketing continues to charge on, as brands small and large keep latching onto the guaranteed traffic and dedicated disposable income passing through shopping center roundabouts...

Corporate partners and OEMs have always had a presence at larger user conferences.Now they’re showing up at corporate meetings of all shapes and sizes, as brands put mini trade shows into play at th...

The University of Buffalo is now a Pepsi campus. George Washington University drinks Coke.The proliferation of college-wide corporate marketing deals has created a maze of branded restrictions your ...

Blame it on the ’84 Olympics.Not only did the Los Angeles Games serve as the unofficial birth of sponsorship as we know it, but they did it in a way that unofficially told brands to go big, spend hea...

Online event registration systems have progressed from collecting attendee information for printing name badges to become sophisticated data capture, management, and analysis tools.Web-based registr...

To celebrate the torch’s return to Athens, Coca-Cola began work on the first-ever global Olympic Torch Relay back in 2002.Months later, the plan began solidifying. The proposed relay would fly throu...

Editor’s Note: In recognition of my June editorial—which acknowledged the growing “worth” of procurement—striking a few chords, I hereby turn this month’s Finale over to IBM worldwide manager of event...