Category Archives: Selling Skills

On June 17th, the Ottawa Senators announced a new naming rights deal with Canadian Tire for the soon-to-expire Scotiabank Place agreement. The complexity of the eight-year deal (with 10 year renewal option) really illustrates how sponsorship activation is playing centrestage vs. the traditional “let’s just put a sign on the building” approach.

The new arena deal (Canadian Tire Place) will be used to promote more than just the flagship brand. It will also involve other companies under the Canadian Tire umbrella. Activation elements planned as part of the naming rights agreement include:

  • One restaurant in the facility will be renamed the Sport Chek Sports Pub and Grill;
  • The 800 arena staff members will [...]
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Recently our firm played a role in helping to secure naming rights for two municipal facilities – one in Ottawa, Ontario for an initial 15 year term for $1.45 million and the other in Burlington, Ontario for $1,360,000 over 20 years. In both cases, we worked closely with each municipality to identify and determine the value of naming rights assets as well as package naming rights benefits into an offering that resonated with the potential sponsor. In Ottawa, we directly pitched the opportunity along with City staff and the Ward Councilor.

What made both of these efforts successful was the teamwork that was involved in preparing and packaging the naming rights [...]

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A lot of professionals who attend my sponsorship workshops or conference presentations ask about sponsorship activation. The Oxford Dictionary states that to activate is to make (something) active or operative or in other words “to set in motion”.

From a sponsorship perspective, activation is any activity that a sponsor undertakes to leverage the sponsorship opportunity to achieve some desired result. When a company sponsors your organization, program or event, they typically are paying for the right to be associated with your property and the opportunity to market to your audience. And typically, the sponsor property provides a range of baseline benefits that generally increase awareness of the sponsor’s association with the [...]

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