Internal audiences learn about long-term event sponsorship from the news unless you reach them first. Credibility in the wider communications and media practice agenda is spent quickly and rebuilt slowly. Where this part of communications and media practice is measured, it improves; where it is only discussed, it drifts. The course leaves participants able to diagnose weaknesses in long-term event sponsorship before they become incidents. Participants come from operational and oversight roles, and both perspectives on the communications and media practice capability are used deliberately. What blocks progress on this area of communications and media practice is usually unclear ownership rather than unclear intent. It treats long-term event sponsorship as an operating discipline and equips participants to run it as one. Exercises escalate in difficulty, ending with the ambiguous situations that make this strand of communications and media practice hard in practice. Participants leave with a plan for this part of communications and media practice sized to what their organisation can realistically absorb.
Expected Learning Outcomes
✓
Assign clear ownership for each element of long-term event sponsorship across the functions involved.
✓
Align communication on long-term event sponsorship with legal and regulatory constraints.
✓
Plan the handover of long-term event sponsorship so that capability is not lost when key staff move on.
✓
Compare the organisation's handling of long-term event sponsorship with recognised practice, and close the material gaps.
✓
Define the key messages for long-term event sponsorship and hold to them under pressure.
✓
Prepare spokespeople to handle hostile questioning on long-term event sponsorship.
✓
Protect the personal reputation of leaders associated with long-term event sponsorship.
Who Should Attend
✓
Public relations and communications managers responsible for long-term event sponsorship.
✓
Analysts producing the data on which decisions about long-term event sponsorship rest.
✓
Marketing staff coordinating with communications on long-term event sponsorship.
✓
Digital and social media managers handling long-term event sponsorship online.
✓
Training and development staff building internal capability in long-term event sponsorship.
✓
Content producers creating material about long-term event sponsorship.
Course Modules
Open any module to see its sessions and topics.
01
Long-term event sponsorship: message architecture and discipline
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1The three messages on long-term event sponsorship you will not move from
Write down the assumptions underpinning the approach to long-term event sponsorship.
Assign responsibility for keeping documentation of long-term event sponsorship current.
Rank the weaknesses in long-term event sponsorship by consequence rather than by ease of fixing.
Prepare the acknowledgement for long-term event sponsorship that does not evade responsibility.
Session 2Coordinating long-term event sponsorship across markets and languages
Estimate the resource long-term event sponsorship requires to run as designed.
Sequence internal notification about long-term event sponsorship ahead of external release.
Identify single points of dependency in long-term event sponsorship and reduce them.
Review whether coverage of long-term event sponsorship changed anything that matters.
02
Long-term event sponsorship: crisis preparation, roles and authority
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Measuring communication on long-term event sponsorship beyond clippings
Draft materials on long-term event sponsorship that need no rewriting to be published.
Distinguish symptoms from causes when long-term event sponsorship underperforms.
Build the internal briefing that explains long-term event sponsorship to those affected.
Agree the smallest change to long-term event sponsorship that would be visibly useful.
Session 2What to measure in long-term event sponsorship and what to ignore
Identify the journalists who actually cover long-term event sponsorship and what they need.
Prepare the holding statement for long-term event sponsorship in advance.
Plan the recovery sequence after a reputational event involving long-term event sponsorship.
Configure monitoring that flags coverage of long-term event sponsorship within the hour.
