Q&A with The Sponsorship Experts Founder, Managing Director and Chairman, Paul Poole

For more than two decades The Sponsorship Experts have been the premier sponsorship and partnership marketing agency in Thailand, offering a host of services, products and training to rights holders and brands helping them maximise their sponsorship efforts.                                             

Over the years, more and more services have been added so we’ve sat down with Founder, Managing Director and Chairman, Paul Poole to learn more.

Q: Tell us about The Sponsorship Experts.

A: I established The Sponsorship Experts in 2004 with the aim of becoming the best independent marketing consultancy in Bangkok. We specialise in commercial sponsorship and partnership marketing, serving as a bridge between rights holders and brands to foster successful collaborations and maximise their potential.

Over the years, we have developed, marketed, and managed sponsorship and partnership opportunities for a diverse range of rights holders. Additionally, we have collaborated with many of the world’s leading brands to identify, secure, and optimise sponsorships and partnerships that align with their goals.

Q: Tell us about the work you do with rights holders.

A: We provide rights holders with a comprehensive full-service and packaging solution, offering expert guidance on packaging, sales, management, and marketing communication strategies. Specifically, we help rights holders understand the motivations behind brand sponsorships and partnerships, how to position their opportunities to attract sponsors and partners effectively, and how to leverage sponsorships to enhance the overall value of their property.

Our services include developing and distributing sales materials, identifying and sourcing sponsors and partners, setting sales targets, and managing negotiations and contracts to ensure successful collaborations.

Q: How does that differ from the work you do with brands?

A: The work with brands focuses on helping them identify, secure, and maximise the value of sponsorship opportunities that align with their marketing objectives. This includes researching potential sponsorships, negotiating rights, activating sponsorships, and measuring their effectiveness to ensure a strong return on investment. 

We provide brands with a comprehensive engagement and activation service, guiding them through every stage of the sponsorship journey. This includes researching sponsorship opportunities, conducting sponsorship audits, creating market activity reports, managing sponsorship initiatives, negotiating rights, and evaluating sponsorship effectiveness using both qualitative and quantitative analysis.

Q: What does the Full Service include?

A: The Full Service provides comprehensive support in packaging, selling, and managing sponsorship and partnership opportunities. This includes developing a sponsorship and partnership packaging and pricing strategy, creating sales materials, and operating a sponsorship and partnership sales service.

Q: What is included in the Packaging and Partial Packaging Product and how does this differ from the Full Service?

A: The Packaging and Partial Packaging Product involves developing a sponsorship and partnership packaging and pricing strategy and creating sales materials, without the comprehensive management and sales services included in the Full Service. This ensures that sponsorship opportunities are presented in an attractive manner to potential sponsors and partners.

Q: What is Marketplace?

A: Marketplace is a platform where rights holders can promote their commercial sponsorship and partnership opportunities to influential decision-makers and sponsors. 

Q: How can brands benefit from the Sponsorship Opportunities listed?

A: Brands can browse a curated selection of sponsorship opportunities across various sectors, allowing them to find partnerships that align with their marketing objectives and target audiences. If a brand sees an opportunity that appeals to them, we book a consultation and explore how to activate the opportunity to maximise the outcomes for the brand.

Q: What services are included in Engagement and Activation?

A: Services include research and development, such as sponsorship audits and market activity reports, strategy development through PerforMind™, execution of sponsorships including negotiation, activation, and exploitation, and measurement of sponsorship effectiveness through qualitative and quantitative analysis.

Q: What is PerforMind™?

A: PerforMind™ is a scientific approach to selecting sponsorship criteria and sourcing a sponsorship that best fits a brand’s marketing needs. It involves auditing existing sponsorships, benchmarking available opportunities, and creating an objective exploitation plan.

Q: What is Sponsorship Part One and Part Two and who should attend each?

A: Sponsorship Part One and Part two are advanced one-day intensive and highly interactive training workshop for rights holders and brands who want to unleash the power of sponsorship.

Sponsorship Part One is designed for rights holders who want to understand the power of sponsorship, why brands sponsor, and how to present their rights as a central part of a brand’s marketing strategy. 

Sponsorship Part Two focuses on helping brands understand how to select the right sponsorships, negotiate rights, activate sponsorships through experiential marketing, and measure sponsorship effectiveness.

Q: If working with a large sports organisation. How can we use Sportskred in our social media marketing?

A: Sportskred is a social media sponsorship platform designed to help sports organisations monetise their athletes’ social media presence. By leveraging the personal and engaging content that athletes share, your corporation can enhance its social media marketing strategy. This includes:

Monetize athlete social media: Athletes often have a more personal connection with their followers compared to corporate accounts. Sportskred enables you to tap into this by creating sponsored content that athletes can share, thereby reaching a wider and more engaged audience.

Integrated analytics: The platform offers tools to track the performance of sponsored posts, providing data on audience engagement and return on investment. This allows for informed decision-making and optimisation of future campaigns.

Simplified collaboration: Sportskred streamlines the process of collaborating with athletes by providing a centralized platform to manage content creation, approval, and distribution.

Q: What is Asia Sponsorship News and how does The Sponsorship Expert incorporate ASN into their work?

A: ASN is a subsidiary of Paul Poole (South East Asia) Co., Ltd. and serves as the leading market intelligence service for the sponsorship industry in Asia. ASN offers an unrivaled dataset of over 290,000 commercial sponsorship and partnership marketing deals in Asia, allowing professionals to trade faster and more efficiently in an environment of greater transparency. It provides independent news, analytics, and insights on a subscription basis, along with bespoke consultancy and training services.

Paul Poole (South East Asia) Co., Ltd. is an independent marketing consultancy based in Bangkok, Thailand specialising in commercial sponsorship and partnership marketing, working with both rights holders and brands – acting as a catalyst by bringing them together and maximising the relationship.

The consultancy has packaged, sold and managed sponsorship and partnership opportunities for a wide range of rights holders and worked with many of the world’s leading brands to source and engage the right sponsorships and partnerships for them to maximise.

www.paulpoole.co.th / info@paulpoole.co.th