Sponsorship Meeting – Summary Casey Handmer 7-11-09
Key areas of interest: BBQ – student culture sponsors Black Tie – recruitment interest sponsors Finding/Selling Where are they now? Blimp/Train/Hilton/Nude calendar.
Finding/Selling:
Timeline: 1 Dec: Have developed prospectus in print and video 7 Dec: Print, burn, and mail out. Begin first round of calls, meetings. 25 Dec: Christmas – have closed deals by now (public sector focus) – O-week funding
Mid February: Second round (more private sector) of mailout, calls, emails, and spruiking. Aim to saturate industry sectors already penetrated as well as finding new ones. Also, set dates for camp and for rehearsals+careers+dinner.
April: Close deals by Easter. Target >$35000 should be pledged or gained.
May: Hold series of careers seminars after rehearsals. (4 to 6 of them).
June: End of financial year sponsor round-up and mop-up.
Key ideas: - Exploit personal connections within the cast (I'm not sure what was supposed to go here) In Kind sponsorships: Student intensive areas, such as Officeworks (discounted/free stationary) Grocery stores (discounts, vouchers, etc - can be used to pay science revue tutors to maintain academic standards) These companies can and probably should be approached on foot. Industries/companies: Primary focus on qualified grad starved areas, with a broader focus on the tech sector in general. Additional areas include mining and defence for PR. Industries: Graduate recruitment priority areas IT: Web3.0 (ie IT companies still making money). Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple. (Tech companies often have old stock which can be on-sold for discounted prices in the form of support). Banking: Westpac/St George, ANZ, Commonwealth, Macquarie, Merrill Lynch/Bank of America Accounting: PWC, KPMG, Ernst and Young, Deloitte (100s of others…) Consulting: Bain, etc Communications: Optus, Telstra (broadband network) R&D: CSIRO, Finisar, Cochlear Grad recruitment + PR poor areas Defence/Govt: DoD, ADFA, DSTO, DIISR, National Measurement Institute Energy: Energy Australia, alternative energy companies Mining: XstrataCoal, BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, PTTEP (plus many others) Automative: Toyota (hybrid), Holden (Australian), GMPharmaceutical: Merck Sharp and Dohme, Mayne, Faulding, etc Other University: Science Foundation for Physics Religious: Anglican, Catholic, Hillsong, Scientology, Sydney Synagogue, Hari Krishna, etc. Exploitation of some of these areas will require a foothold (ie one comes and the others will follow) Locating companies of interest: Media(PR…), ASX 200, American Chamber of Commerce, Science Communications forum.
Careers seminars (format): Half a dozen slots in late April/June following rehearsals. A camp slot or two as well. Each slot, date set well in advance, is a space that can be sold to a company ($3000 each) or contingent of companies from a particular industry sector for a advance recruitment spiel. Possible format: Acting workshop – reps arrive at the end. Everyone has been warned well in advance, and encouraged to stay by distributing soft drink or chocolate fountain or something. Reps are well dressed young types who hand out pamphlets and give a highlights talk about income and career advancement in their area. Case studies. Encourage a question and answer format. Permit observation by other groups interested – ie advertise through scisoc, revues in general, and permit competing companies to observe. Following seminar everyone is packed off to Lansdowne or somewhere for a union + company subsidised dinner + drinks get to know you, make some contacts, etc etc.
Prospectus: Print: 2 pages A4 PDF glossy 2 fold printed to the edges. Video: 40 second vodcast. Busy, focus on getting info across. Possible structure: University of Sydney Logo, USU logo, CF logo Science Revue Who we are, what we do, where we go. Testimonials – dean, CSIRO – market penetration. Images/video excerpts, profiles of revuers (in cheesy ‘fact file’ off center style) with a ‘where are they now’ type thing, glamour photography, WAM, etc. Why support? Marketing – average cost of recruitment, graphs of size of revues, as well as projected demand for science graduates in the near future. Opportunities to engage. Summary of different sponsorship packages. The text (“copy”) needs to be workshopped down the finest detail. Wording alone is responsible for 80% of the success, or product advertising. Very careful graphics design is a must.
Sales strategies: Must be rehearsed in advance. First contact: mailout, cold calling, email, in person, etc. Obviously there is a cost-benefit analysis for each one, where the cost of people’s time is factored in. Cold calling is probably the best option, but has to be carefully timed to avoid lunches, picking kids up from school, or other stress. Email is least effective – spamming only works with 100millions or more. Possibly we’ll need to ring and chase 100s of prospective companies – too much work for 2 people (unless they do arts or want hero status). Therefore form a sub-committee, rehearse telephone technique and develop scripts to help out. Do this for the second round of sponsorship approach and mop-up in mid February.
Making the pitch: We are who you want. As described above, we need a focused pitch with quotable quotes regarding common stats. Shortages of qualified grads, cost of recruitment, or losing mindshare to competitors. Companies like google show the enormous monetizability of owning all the brains! Show that science revue concentrates high numbers of proficient scientists who can also present and communicate – vital skills in accounting, banking, and consulting. Analytic. Use phrases like ‘it is no secret that’ and ‘we all know that’ and so on to deliver a high pressure sale and raise potential sponsors to fever pitch.
Closing the sale: What can we sell, what are we selling, how much gets you what? Deals with other societies (eg scisoc, etc) – cross promotions. We need a careful consideration of what we are able to sell – basically audit the value of the revue. Carl has done a thing like this for scisoc. Ideas include (in order of value): Careers slots: opportunities to spruik directly to various numbers of students either after rehearsals or at camp. VIP status at shows – priority seating. Ad space: program, (printing…), communications, spruiking in weekly emails, or on the projector in the show. Blimp. O week stall, show bags, etc. Logos: on communications, shirts, jumpers, hoodies, tattoos,
etc. (with respect to deadlines and costs for their production) Exclusivity: Sole sponsors within industry sectors and a good way not to annoy existing sponsors.
Within this there are various stages, think silver, gold, platinum, and unobtainium. Pick your favourite metals etc. Various contribution levels could be: Tungsten: <$314 (certificate of appreciation) Silver: >$314 (Limited badging, advertising, tie-ins with other sponsors higher up the chain) Gold: >$993 (VIP show seating, full advertising badging, etc) Gold/Platinum alloy: >$1500 (opportunity to hold independent careers forum, come to events etc) Platinum: >$3141 (this gets you a position at careers slots/camp) Unobtainium/Nobelium: >$9935 (exclusive to your sector) Could do this in terms of cube roots of 10 instead of square roots. This should be checked by someone with a law qualification. Can be adapted for peace in the middle east without permission.
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