Pilote Media at the World Yacht Racing Forum. #WYRF
November 17, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Pilote Media, publishers of Yachtsponsorship.com and the DARK BLUE BOOK will be in attendance at the 2009 World Yacht Racing Forum in Monaco, to be held at the Grimaldi Forum on December 9-10.
The Who’s Who of yacht racing will be in town to discuss many of the issues that are affecting the sport as a business, to network and to forge partnerships. Pilote Media CEO, David Fuller says:
There are not many opportunities to get everyone together in the same room and talk about issues that affect the business of yacht racing. From where we sit, looking at the sport as a whole, there are plenty of opportunities for sailing to do things better. There are a few innovators, but that doesn’t mean that the sport can’t learn from best practise elsewhere. Networking and getting a view on what others are doing should help the sport to grow.
Via Yachtsponsorship.com, Pilote Media will be using several social media platforms to report on the Monaco event, but they probably wont be the only ones. David says:
As a whole, the sport of yacht racing is still scrambling to understand some of the new media opportunities. Certainly many of the brands in the sport just don’t get it, but there are innovators. Mark Turner’s Twitter updates over the last few days for example, describing the unfolding events with their Open60 BT have been compelling because they have a timeliness and a human element. I imagine that the twitter feeds from the World Yacht Racing Forum will be quite entertaining, so keep watching #WYRF.
The World Yacht Racing Forum is also a great opportunity for Pilote Media to promote the DARK BLUE BOOK. The directory is modelled on similar references for other sports and is a useful resource for anyone in the business of yacht racing. The 2009 edition was welcomed by many as a great way to define those in the industry, allowing the sport to be promoted to sponsors and major event partners around the world. David commented:
At last year’s forum, the DARK BLUE BOOK was just an idea, but the timing seemed right. Many of those who attended the first World Yacht Racing Forum also appeared in the first DARK BLUE BOOK. Since we published the first edition in April, we have received hundreds of entries for the 2010 version but the forum gives us a great opportunity to partner with brands who want to be seen as leaders in the industry.
WYRF Chairman and World Champion Sailor Peter Gilmour will open the Forum on 9 December before the opening keynote address by Tom Whidden, President and CEO of North Sails on the state of the industry.
Other presentations will feature the commercial case for sailing sponsorship, the impact of yacht racing on host cities and ports, the measure and evaluation of sailing events’ commercial return, sailing sponsorship and new media.
The World Yacht Racing Forum and Design & Technology Symposium will create the platform for delegates to debate the key issues that are critical to the future of yacht racing. The event will focus on the socio-economic aspects of the sport as well as developments in media coverage and the technical and commercial aspects of large-scale sailing events, especially in terms of their organisation and promotion.
For a full schedule and to register for the World Yacht Racing Forum, visit www.worldyachtracingforum.com
Pilote Media CEO on Sponsorship.
June 1, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Interview with Pilote Media CEO - David Fuller featured on Melges24.com
Sponsorship Expert David Fuller of Pilote Media On Securing A Sponsor For Your Team
Most Melges 24 owners will have at some time considered sponsorship as a potential means of offsetting the cost of campaigning their boat on the regatta circuit. Indeed on the US and European circuits, hulls and sails displaying sponsors decals are a familiar site these days.
Bagging yourself a sponsor is not a simple matter and requires a professional approach. What is the best way to attract a sponsor in these post credit crunch times? Are there still businesses out there worth approaching with a proposal? How do you position your team as a viable sponsorship option?
To try to find answers to these and other questions we sat down with someone who specialises in yacht sponsorship - David Fuller, founder of Pilote Media, a niche publisher and sports marketing consultancy that specialises in the business of yacht racing and the contributing editor at the website www.yachtsponsorship.com .
IM24CA: Given the difficult global economic situation are there still any businesses out there that are interested in sponsoring yacht racing?
DF: Yes. For some, the global economic situation is an opportunity to re-evaluate sponsorships and some companies are looking to more ‘niche’ sports where there might be some relative bargains to be had. It needs to be a business-based sponsorship though, with real deliverables. Companies can’t be seen to be spending money on going sailing while at the same time making people redundant.
IM24CA: What would you say potential sponsors find attractive about yacht racing?
DF: Yacht Racing has many attractive attributes, some unique. For example the team element - racing a Melges 24 with a four person crew is one of the only sports where the whole team is contributing at the same time. Not like a basketball team where one or two players are involved or football where eight people are ‘not doing anything’.
There are some obvious environmental advantages of sailing over Motorsport for example and overall it can be relatively cheap compared to other sports.
IM24CA: What type of businesses - large or small - are most likely to respond positively to an approach to sponsor an individual Melges 24 campaign?
DF: Rather than think about the size of a business, it is better to think about what their goals might be and who they are trying to communicate with. Companies that operate in the same markets that you are competing in are probably the best place to start. Not only are their customers being exposed to the sponsorship, but they can also involve employees and partners.
IM24CA: What is the best way to make initial contact with a business to open a dialogue about sponsorship? In a large organisation which department would be the best starting point?
DF: It is different for every company. Very large companies have dedicated sponsorship teams and if a business is already sponsoring sports or community activity they will talk about on their website. Marketing or communications (PR) is a good place to start, but often it is more productive to approach the CEO directly.
IM24CA: Is mass mailing of a proposal to hundreds of companies a good idea or does a more targeted approach work better? How about cold calling by phone?
DF: Sometimes you might get lucky sending out a mass proposal, but it’s like getting a job. You will do better if you take some time to understand the company. If you don’t know who they are or what they do, then you can’t know how you can help them. Do some research and find out where their offices are. Understand their products or services. Then you can cold call.
IM24CA: What are the key sections of a sponsorship proposal document?
DF: The key section of a sponsorship proposal is the outline of benefits to the sponsor. What are you offering in return for the money? What’s included - what’s not? If you are in a fleet - why are you more sponsorable then the next team? Companies will vary as to the amount of detail they need depending on their sophistication.
IM24CA: What is in it for the sponsor? What are the typical reasons that a business might be interested in sponsoring a yacht race team? What are some good ways of measuring the positive effect of sponsorship?
DF: This depends on what they are trying to achieve. The phrase ‘return on investment’ (ROI) is used a lot, but there is another phrase that is being used for sponsorship which is Return on Objectives (ROO). A company might have an objective to reward their high-performing sales team, they might have an objective to enter a new market or launch a new product. Most companies are looking for awareness and exposure but some are trying to position themselves more accurately and all are hoping that it will lead to more sales.
Measurement is difficult and it is often expensive to qualify sponsorship value. Traditionally, sponsorship has been measured using a model of equivalent value - for example if a photo appears in a magazine with the sponsor’s logo and the ad rate for a page in that magazine is £2000, then the equivalent value is £2000. This is a pretty flawed model and one of the reasons sponsorship gets a bad name sometimes.
Luckily, in the new world, we have digital forms of media. It is easier to count a webpage visit or a click or a You Tube view and in some cases you can track that back to sales. Setting clear objectives makes it easier to measure if you have achieved them.
IM24CA: What other sports can we learn lessons from?
DF: There are best practices in all sports. How you get the most out of a sponsorship depends on the audience you are trying to reach and your budget. There are some great examples in sailing.
Puma is doing an amazing job at the moment with their Volvo Ocean Race campaign and a lot of it can be done relatively cheaply. You aren’t going to build a hospitality unit out of shipping containers, but you can make sure you have a good website with some video and ways of communicating. Some of the extreme sports do a great job of using new media like You Tube, Facebook and Twitter to engage with their fans and communicate their sponsor’s message to a wider audience.
IM24CA: What can class associations and sailing’s governing bodies do to help make yacht racing more attractive to potential sponsors?
DF: This is not easy. Every class has its own rules and its own culture. Not everyone will want to accept sponsorship. If a class makes a decision to allow sponsorship then it has to be prepared to work to help those sponsors achieve their goals. Class associations and governing bodies need to be able to show that they have the skills to compete for a share of the sponsorship money out there. Do you have dedicated press? Do you have people who can explain sailing to a non-expert audience? Do you have an up to date website? Do you have the infrastructure to entertain guests before, during and after an event? How do spectators watch? An event needs to show that all these things are in place and the more it can be a fixed menu of options, the better.
IM24CA: What three key pieces of advice do you have for someone starting to look for a potential sponsor for their Melges 24 campaign?
DF: Be Prepared.
This is a commercial transaction. Know the product you are selling. Understand your numbers. Understand what benefits you can provide. Know what makes you different from the other teams - do you have a story? If you don’t have a website, get one. Create a sponsorship pack. For some key companies it might be worthwhile to get your presentation bound. It is amazing how a professionally printed, bound document can make you look the part.
Start local.
I heard a story the other day of a team whose base was located over the road from a large corporate headquarters. The team manager bumped into someone in the car park and they got talking. When asked what they did, one guy said - we run a race team and the other guy, the CEO of the company said, “if only we had known - we’ve just sponsored another race team”. They had been neighbours for years. Network.
Think about Activation.
Sponsorship is only half the story. Good sponsorships are accompanied by activity that promotes the relationship in the rest of the company’s communications. Typically, activation costs about the same amount on top of the sponsorship amount. It might take the form of banners at the events, it might be advertising programmes or local papers, it might be You Tube videos or appearances by the team at company events. It might be photo opportunities or tie-ins with other sponsored properties. You don’t have to be an expert at activation, but being creative with these ideas can show how sailing can be more than just a logo on a boat - it can be a platform for many messages to many audiences.
First published at : http://www.melges24.com/?p=news/&id=1602
New Site for RubyTV.net
April 16, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Pilote Media has created a new site for Ruby TV.
Ruby TV is a series of documentaries profiling Australian creatives abroad fusing travel and arts programs, providing insights into the passions and challenges of Australians forging creative careers around the globe. Ruby and the team take their audiences backstage, on set and inside the concerts, homes and lives of musicians, performers, stylists and chefs both well known and delightfully hidden. The profiles are designed to inform and inspire both Australian and international audiences.
Ruby said:
Pilote Media create sites that are both user friendly and shining with professionalism. Their personalised service and expertise ensure you get the subtlties in design to suit your personal tastes and appeal, beyond your otherwise means, to your specific audiences and clients.
Pilote Media deliver way beyond expectation with a truly impressive support service that saves literally days of work plus many potential gray hairs or chewed nails.
Catch up with Ruby TV in Cannes 2009…
New White Papers - Getting Onto the Plane.
April 16, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Pilote Media are proud to announce a new series of White Papers that use sailing and Yacht Racing to explore themes of Sports Marketing, Sponsorship, Social Media, Brand benefits and Return on Investment.
With the current economic climate in mind, David Fuller, CEO of Pilote Media and Contributing Editor of Yachtsponsorship.com, looks at the relative merits of sailing versus more traditional or well known sports.
The title; ‘Getting Onto the Plane‘ refers to the process of a boat lifting out of the water to skim across the surface of the water rather than pushing through it. The series aims to give potential sponsors, Marketing Directors, Event Organisers and competitors insights into the business of yacht racing and get them racing more quickly.
The First Paper ‘Getting Onto the Plane - Assessing the Benefits of Yacht Racing‘ is an overview of the topics and themes that will be covered by future papers. It touches on how sailing provides positive brand associations and how technology can provide new audiences. There are also messages for politicians and media who have sought to characterise sponsorship as a wasteful perk : Sponsorship of sport is a legitimate part of the marketing mix and can deliver real return on investment.
Get your copy of the White Paper here.
A Tale of Two PR Companies. Sports Marketing PR 2.0
March 5, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
IT technology was supposed to make things easier. ‘Work smarter not harder’ is the slogan for the information age. But just as you think you have understood it - how to make the most of email, how to measure click-throughs and page impressions, the geeks invent a new thing. Or they rename an old thing and make everyone else seem foolish. How many of these terms do you understand: Web 2.0, RSS, twitter, UGC, personal media…
The latest buzzword is ‘Social Media’. Ask 10 people what social media is and you will probably get 10 different answers. The term ’social media’ is misunderstood by many. From nowhere, social media consultants have appeared selling their opinions on reputation management and sentiment engineering. Whatever you call it, the technologies that allow huge numbers of people to create, publish, share and comment upon content (images, text, video, audio, gps co-ordinates), are important for sports marketing and PR.
One of the services receiving a lot of interest at the moment is Twitter. While on the surface the functionality seems simple, almost banal, the power of millions of people saying what they are doing, feeling, thinking at any one point in time should not be underestimated.
Let’s compare two examples. Imagine a sports entity; a pro-sailor, a team, an event organiser with a large company as a sponsor. This entity also has a traditional PR company working to maximise the ‘coverage’ of news and activities and in turn help the sponsor achieve their goals of exposure or association or some other objective.
Example One - the Traditionalists.
In example one, the traditional PR company is measured on more old-fashioned metrics like column inches, television screen time, radio brand mentions. Even in 2009, there are PR companies that believe that national newspaper coverage alone is enough to determine the success or failure of a campaign. There might be historic reasons for this. News used to be determined by powerful editors and specialist journalists. Developing relationships with these people determined whether your story was featured or not.
More recently this PR company has been forced to learn new methods of distributing the news - via email - usually in the form of a PDF, so that it can not be easily changed or manipulated. For these promoters, the only website mentions that are worth talking about are BBC.CO.UK or TheTimesOnline. Bloggers aren’t real media.
To this company, Social media is the devil. If taken to its end, social media makes a PR company redundant. If the talent can communicate directly with their fan base, what role is there for PR, or journalists, or editors for that matter.
While this is a hypothetical example of a PR company, it is a thinly disguised collection of behaviours that we see daily in the sports marketing industry. Not all are anti new technology; some just find it overwhelming and alien.
Example Two - The New World of PR.
In our second example, we imagine a PR company that understands how media is changing. While the traditional press and television is important, they understand that niche sports like sailing are more frequently being covered on other platforms. More importantly they understand the value of the network effect. Instead of all news going through a handful of gatekeepers, the content is free to appear wherever it lands. Some of the concepts in the new world are the same as the old world - things like reach, reputation and influence. But in the new world, these relationships are not as straightforward.
Much has been written about Stephen Fry’s 120,000 twitter followers. Obviously if Mr Fry twitters about something he raises its awareness and delivers thousands of ‘eyeballs’ to the story. You might then be tempted as a PR company in the new world to target Stephen Fry, but that would be to ignore the fact that Stephen Fry also follows other people. So imagine a person who has only 5 or 6 followers, but those 5 or 6 are followed by thousands.
PR company number two has spent time developing relationships, not just with traditional media, but with influential bloggers in their space. They understand that a small blog read by 100 people can be very powerful if those 100 people are an exact match to your target audience or they influence thousands of others.
PR company number two also understands that the new world is not a one-way broadcast. This is not a Sunday broadsheet that states - this is the news and there is no more. This is more like talkback radio. If the people disagree, they can say so. In public. With an audience.
PR company number two is asking questions like:
- When was the content published? Where? Who saw it?
- What was the sentiment of the authors? Were they in favour or against?
- How many times was the story reposted? Where? By whom?
- How long did the buzz last?
- What was the highest number of mentions on twitter per minute?
- Where do the people live who were twittering about the story?
- How many comments were attached? What was the sentiment of the comments?
- Was the story shared amongst friends via Facebook? ….
Obviously PR companies don’t work in a vacuum. They are representing brands and personalities that may not yet themselves understand the value of these new media. If a client tells you that their objective is to have a photo on the front page of the paper, do you sell them the benefits of bloggers? If you don’t someone else might.
All of this assumes that you want to communicate externally. Social media principals are just as important, perhaps more so, when communicating internally, but that’s a subject for another blog.
Pilote Media are offering Social Media Health Check for companies who want to learn more. The free 30 minute sessions can be held, in London, via phone or skype conference. The aim is to provide honest, down to earth advice without the jargon. For more information see http://www.pilotemedia.com/social-media/
Pilote Media Announce who’s who of Yacht Racing
November 1, 2008 by admin · Leave a Comment
The Dark Blue Book
Pilote Media, the publishers of yachtsponsorship.com are launching a new directory. The Dark Blue Book - the who’s who of yacht racing, will be the definative guide for professional sailing. Submissions are now invited for the directory that will be printed in early 2009. Pilote Media CEO, David Fuller said:
The yacht racing industry is reaching a level of maturity that makes this the right time to bring together sponsors, teams, suppliers, journalists and other key players in one source.
More information can be found at darkbluebook.com
Hemi Shootout Online through Pilote Media
August 30, 2008 by admin · Comments Off
Hemi Shootout Design
The 2008 NHRA US Nationals have been taking place in Indianapolis this week. In amongst the racing in the Superstock division has been an event within an event - the MOPAR HEMI Challenge, otherwise known as the Hemi Shootout.
In association with Nash Performance, Pilote Media have provided fans of these cars with unprecedented news, results and images from the event via a new site: hemishootout.net
Pilote Media designed a new logo for the site as well as consulted on website strategy and launch.
As well as covering this week’s US Nationals, the site is updated with official results for the whole Hemi Challenge season.
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Dark Blue Book
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Getting Onto The Plane
