In order to truly understand sponsorship thinking, it's important to hear from the point of view of the sponsor. Here's an interview with Ryan Luckey, who discusses sponsorship from AT&T's outlook. I'm Ryan Luckey, I am AVP of Corporate Sponsorships at AT&T. What we're responsible for is the full 360-degree programming and activation of our corporate sponsored partnerships and properties, everything from the front-end where we're evaluating and strategically planning our sponsorships, to managing the properties on a day to day basis to bring it to life with actual marketing and the activation of the sponsorship, and post hoc doing the measurement and the analysis and evaluation for future. But within our portfolio, we've probably have about 70 to 80 different properties across sports and entertainment. But I will tell you at AT&T, one of the largest investors in the game of golf in particular with the title sponsorship of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the AT&T Byron Nelson, The Masters. What we do is about a year to 18 months in advance, we're out planning on a long-term cycle, taking learnings from what we've done in years past, figuring out what we can do better both with the assets, and particularly as our world is dramatically changing, with the digital content that we can capture from our properties and bring it to life to demonstrate our leadership at AT&T as a leader in telecom, media, and technology. What we do is we measure our sponsorship's contribution in correlation to brand health. Because over time, a healthier brand drives more consumer engagement, drives more engagement also with business customers, which does in turn lead to sales. So, our metrics are very focused in how we engage with consumers, at our sponsored properties and sponsored events, and how they contribute to brand health metrics. What you used to think of AT&T as a legacy phone company that became a wireless company, that became a wireless broadband and video company, how are we elevating the brand and the consumer and customer perception of that brand as a leader in telecom, media, and technology, and as a leader in a much more interconnected world for business solutions, customers, mega business customers. The second thing is, does it drive our business? That's pretty linear. It's pretty an obvious does A drive B? Yes. Is it helping to drive our commercial business with our business customers and with end consumers? The third piece, there's been somewhat of probably more than anything else in the organization. If the custodian and the CEO are in the elevator together, the one thing they are going to talk about is the Bear's game, or the Cubs, or you're in Chicago, or a down here, or the Cowboys, or did you watch the golf tournament this weekend, it's a cultural unifier. In many ways, we use our sponsorships in a similar way to unify the organization, both in areas of employee engagement, but also in strategically how we spend our dollars and how we go to market. How do you get everybody to buy-in to a solution that's going to drive value for our business customers and our business solutions side of our business, as well as for our consumers and our consumer and entertainment group? So, it's what we call one AT&T. Does it help the brand, does it help the business, and does it unify us both financially and culturally? You're going to graduate from Northwestern or grad students all over the country from some of the top MBA or graduate programs, and I think what I would tell you is never stop learning, thirst for learning. It does not end when you graduate in May of 2017, 2018, 2019 and move into your role. Increasingly, more and more with the rapid pace of change, an added thirst for learning and continuously learning and upgrading your own personal skill sets is going to be vital well into and beyond your retirement age. So, have a mindset of always be learning, always be learning and candidly failing forward and learning from your mistakes and failing forward. I don't know if that applies to sports as much as it applies to life, but it's certainly valuable within sports entertainment industry. Then I guess beyond just straight up business skills is ability to build relationships and connect well with people. Your ability to effectively influence the leaders of your company, influence teammates, influence the people who work for you is driven by two things, your functional expertise. How do you know what you're doing on a daily basis? Are you an expert and is your knowledge respected? But there is critical second component, and that's the emotional intelligence quotient. You can be a genius, but if you're a jerk, nobody's really going to listen to you. If you're a really nice guy but you really don't know what you're doing, nobody's going to listen to you either. So, it is a wonderful balance of functional knowledge and effective relationship building. Again, not sure if it's a sports marketing quality as much as it is a life skill. So, continue to learn, continue to build relationships, continue to be smart in your field of expertise and allow you to effectively influence your peers and leaders.
