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Drifting Sponsorship Articles
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Drifting Sponsorship
What does it mean to be "sponsored?" In the drifting world, to be sponsored is to receive money, services, and / or products in exchange for assisting a company with their marketing needs. What you need to keep in mind is that sponsorship is a two-way street and it is always a business arrangement. Sponsorship does not mean that you get something for nothing. In exchange for money, products, or services a company wants to receive logo placement, brand recognition, and hopefully increased sales as a result of sponsoring a driver / vehicle.
How Sponsorship Works Think of sponsorship like an advertising business transaction; you pay a radio station $5,000 for advertising. The radio station then creates radio commercials and places them into a radio schedule that best targets your company's audience. You then wait to see if the radio ads being played are reaching the desired audience and you try to determine if your business increases as a result of the money spent on advertising. At the end of the campaign you evaluate the program to see if the money you paid the radio station increased your amount of business or not.
Vehicle sponsorship is very similar to purchasing advertising because you never know if the money spent sponsoring someone will increase your sales as you hope it will. When going with sponsorship rather than traditional advertising (magazines, tv, radio, etc.) companies are hoping that the amount of money spent on sponsorship will yield greater impressions and results than the same amount of money spent on traditional advertising; thus making sponsorship a good purchase and perhaps even a bargain.
For example, a full page ad in an import magazine might cost around $10,000. That ad prints once, is distributed, and is never seen again. Maybe that ad is read by 100,000 people. Now if a company chooses to sponsor a drifter (with that same $10,000) and the driver wins an event in Formula D or NOPI Drift chances are that this driver will appear in several import magazines, some websites, and maybe even a video or two. The cost effectiveness for the sponsoring company multiplies greatly because that same amount of sponsorship dollar spent now receives a much greater amount of coverage.
What Does a Sponsored Driver Do? Basically a sponsored driver is a walking, talking (drifting, driving) advertisement for the companies that choose to sponsor him. The driver should be doing what he can to present his sponsors in a positive light to the general public and / or consumers of the sponsor's products. The easiest way to put your sponsors in a positive light is to win drifting competitions. Hands down, nothing speaks as loudly as winning. While there are teams and / or drivers out there that enjoy some sponsorship without actually winning or even competing in drifting events, that kind of driver image will eventually reflect negatively on the sponsor's company.
Aside from winning drifting competitions, there are a few more things that you can do to provide the greatest value to your sponsors.
Partial Sponsorship Some companies can't foot the entire bill for a driver or for a particular part or service so they'll offer a driver partial sponsorship. Typically this means that they can offer a driver products or services at a reduced rate in exchange for logo placement on your vehicle or some other similar sponsorship arrangement. While this type of sponsorship still means that you'll need to spend your own money to get the products or services you want, it is something and it can help you on your way to become more competitive. Think of it as a stepping stone to more lucrative offers.
Contingency Sponsorship Contingency sponsorships are generally arrangements where a sponsor (typically a company / manufacturer) offers prize money to winning drivers who use their products or display their decals on their vehicles. For example, if a tire company offered a $1,000 contingency sponsorship prize to the highest placing driver (at a given event) using their tires in competition, that means that the driver finishing highest in the event standings (that is using that sponsor's tires will receive $1,000. If you're not using the sponsors products, you won't get anything from them, even if you win the event.
When entering competitions, read carefully through the driver's rulebook to learn as much as you can about a series' contingency sponsors. If you need to purchase a particular product for your vehicle, you may as well purchase a product offering a contingency prize to increase the amount of money you'll receive if you win (or meet the contingency requirements)
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