Global Sponsorships: What’s Out There For The World

During Pollstar Live! 2020, Andrew Hampp (Founder, 1803 LLC) welcomed Marcie Allen (President, MAC Presents), Rob Beckham (CEO & President, The AMG), Nathan Gregory (Agent, Music Brand Partnerships, CAA), Robyn Eagles (Innovation Marketing, Acura) and Alisann Blood (Co-Head of Music Brand Partnerships, UTA) on stage to talk about trends in sponsorship.

One of the key conclusions reached during the session was that the classic endorsement deal is dying out.

In 2020, it’s all about content.

Music was such an attractive field for brands to get involved in, because it offered what Blood described as “the wow factor” in a way sports never could.

In terms of sports, however, the fastest growing area was esports, Eagles explained. Brands were spending more on esports because they wanted to reach the young audience.

Eagles said her company wanted to tackle young people, Gen Z in particular, and was therefore looking at up-and-coming artists rather than big stadium names to reach them.

Gregory said that the term “emerging artist” could mean a lot of different things, and confirmed that he saw a lot of desire from brands to work with new artists. 

“There’s definitely a shift from only working with A-Level artists,” he said, explaining that budgets were being split horizontally these days.

Blood added that, depending on the brand and intended activation, working with newcomers could be more effective than working with someone boasting gazillions if Instagram followers.

Panelists agreed that good brand deal could keep an artist out there in the public conscience, even if they didn’t receive traditional radio play. 

Beckham said that artists could only produce so many hits, and had to therefore think outside the box to sustain their careers.

He pointed towards the Nationwide commercials with his client Brad Paisley and Payton Manning as a brand partnership executed well.

Blood talked about artist festivals like Post Malone’s Posty Fest. These kind of events offered an opportunity for sponsors to tap into an artist’s persona with fun activations, while staying authentic.

Allen added that artist festivals lowered the bar for sponsors, and gave them  an opportunity to activate at lower entry points.

Seeing that most major festivals had a 7-figure entry point for sponsors, artist festivals have become a viable option for smaller brands.

Blood said brands no longer cared about just putting their name out, but about interacting with the fans.

According to Eagles, content has gotten far more important than products. And while her company has been moving away from endorsement deals to working with content, it has also been moving away from traditional festivals. 

Eagles said small, boutique events, like Sofar Sounds concerts, were a great opportunity for brand to “get into the community and make an emotional impact on attendees.”

Allen explained, that since sponsorship deals have become more about content, you see brands embracing artists even if they have worked with a competitor on a previous campaign.

Hampp pointed towards Nicki Minaj, who has deals with both Tidal and Apple. “You need to make your partnerships count,” he said.

In sports, certain metrics have been established that people can reference in order to negotiate deals, like TV ratings etc. 

“How do you prove that music works,” Hampp wanted to know.

Stats, was Allen’s answer. “I’m going to kill the person that’ll remove the like button on Instagram,” she joked.

She admitted that, sometime, “you do have to kind of make it up.” Traditional tour sponsorships had metrics: the umber of people that showed up to however many shows. “That’s gone. It may be an event with just 50 people, but reaches millions watching online,” she explained.

Gregory pointed out that metrics could be dangerously misleading. “There are so many of them, and you can interpret them in many different ways,” he said. 

“There are artists that sell 20,000 tickets, but have no followers, and influencers with millions of fans that never paid a dime for anything they ever produced,” he continued.

Eagles confirmed that, “sometimes you just know an artist is the next big thing, but have no metrics.”

One audience member wanted to know about truly global sponsorship deals, one-size-fits-all deals that are activated across the world in the same way.

Gregory explained, that the idea of a European wide deal was unusual, as it’s such a fragmented market. Deals were usually done on a country-by-country basis, and not as overarching agreements.

“Ultimately, marketing is culture. So whatever you do it needs to be culturally relevant to the territory,” he said.