Blessed Events

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Lately, Kelly has expanded his efforts, sponsoring a 13-person pro cycling team that competes nationally in 45 races a year. To coincide with a big race in Chicago last year, Kelly set up meetings with potential customers there. Kelly's team won the race, and the business signed up several new accounts, which covered the cost of the sponsorship many times over. This success has led Kelly to cut back on other marketing efforts. "I'd rather put my money into sponsoring an event than in traditional advertising, especially in new markets," says Kelly. "I don't know why more businesses aren't thinking along these lines."

Garnering sales leads

The sponsor: Tutor.com, a New York City company that creates online educational services

The event: The annual conference of the American Library Association

The cost: $10,000

Each year, George Cigale invests a big chunk of his marketing budget to spend some quality time with 21,000 librarians at the American Library Association's annual conference. From a sales perspective, it's a target-rich environment, because Tutor.com sells online tutoring services to public libraries.

Given the more than 7,000 exhibitors, it can be hard to cut through the clutter. Tutor.com sponsors the event at the same level as Google, LexisNexis, and Target -- which means that, for $10,000, it enjoys plenty of signage and a discounted rate on booth space as part of its package. Tutor.com, which has just over $10 million a year in revenue, spends an extra $50,000 on travel costs for the seven or eight employees who come to the event, as well as to host a breakfast symposium during the week. Last year, more than 300 library directors attended the symposium. Rather than putting on the hard sell, Cigale sets it up so that customers talk with sales prospects about online tutoring. "Too many salespeople at these events fear that they'll lose control of the message," says Cigale. "But giving that control over to our customers has been a huge benefit."

Sponsoring the conference has paid off. A woman Cigale met there in 2001 hired the company to create a pilot program for California's library system. That relationship has helped Tutor.com land projects worth nearly $3 million a year in revenue.

Getting prestige

The sponsor: Pods, a company in Clearwater, Florida, that rents containers for moving and storage

The event: A PGA Tour event

The cost: An estimated $5 million to $7 million, according to IEG research

When Mark Calcavecchia won the Pods Championship by just one stroke last year, Pods founder and CEO Pete Warhurst had the honor of presenting him with the championship trophy. That the tournament had an exciting finish was good news for Pods. The company had bet a lot of money on the sponsorship, its first foray into this kind of marketing.

When Warhurst heard that Chrysler had dropped out as the event's title sponsor, he was intrigued. Pods was growing fast but was by no means a household name. Warhurst wanted to change that. The PGA's fan base seemed like a good fit for Pods, which markets some of its services to corporations for executive relocation. "Their demographic matches up perfectly with our customers," says Mike Gavelek, Pods' chief marketing officer.

To capitalize on the exposure the tournament would bring, Pods blanketed the venue, the Innisbrook Resort and Golf Club, with 200 of its 1,500 employees. Workers staffed a booth at the site and served as ushers, directing spectators from hole to hole. The company also arranged to have one of its shipping containers placed rather conspicuously near the 18th green -- the site of Calcavecchia's nail-biting win. And Gavelek struck a deal with the PGA's television production unit to create local TV ads for the event, bearing the Pods name and logo, virtually at cost.

Did the company get a good return? Gavelek thinks so. The PGA Tour event drew 75,000 spectators and was seen by an estimated 4 million viewers on NBC and the Golf Channel. Pods' logo was given ample airtime during the TV broadcast. After the tournament, the company conducted a survey of potential U.S. consumers. The percentage who said they were familiar with Pods more than doubled. "We've never seen an increase like that," says Gavelek.

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