Already Marketing’s Sponsorship Agency of the Year for 2009, Synergy added another coveted gong last night when we won the Hollis Sponsorship Consultancy of the Year award.

Great excitement and a few sore heads this morning, but the feeling of pride in the agency and in the quality of our work far outweighs the hangovers.

Now in their 16th year, the Hollis Sponsorship Awards are a stalwart of the industry and, over the years, we have notched up a grand total of 26 Hollis awards.  But, this latest award is our proudest as it is testament to the fact that 2009 was our best year yet.

It was our 25th anniversary; a year of celebration but, more importantly, of change.  Against a background of economic crisis, the year started out with some uncertainties.  But we decided to embrace change wholeheartedly - in the way we thought and the way we creatively activated.  And it worked.  Last year we had nine new business wins as the market place recognised our industry leading position.  Most importantly, we put digital at the heart of our thinking, whilst drawing on some of the best thinking from our fellow Engine companies.

The result was that we produced some exciting, creative and quality work for our clients and it was pleasing to see that one of our clients, Betfair, won the Hollis Award for the best use of PR in a Sponsorship Campaign for its Fan v Fan Ashes Campaign.

Of course the truth is that behind great campaigns and a great company is one thing - great staff. Have a look at the short film to hear about 2009 from our people in their own words.

By Karen Earl on March 10th, 2010

Tags: Default, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultancy, Synergy

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Having just returned from two weeks at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games, I’m still catching up with my UK reading. So it was that I turned last night to the February 10 edition of Marketing magazine, and an article on sponsorship by one of my favourite columnists, Mark Ritson, on which I really have to comment. Here’s why.

In his characteristically forthright style, Mark lambasts the sponsorship industry in general and a number of people in particular for predicting that Tiger Woods’ travails would not damage his image and endorsement deals:

‘Then there was the scandalous inability of an array of experts to predict correctly the impact of Woods’ misdeeds on his sponsorship deals…If ever we needed proof that most pundits in the world of sports sponsorship and celebrity endorsements are buffoons, here it was, in spades. This is one thing they are supposed to know about, and they managed to be 100% incorrect in the assessments. Not just wrong, but dead wrong.’

I’m not about to defend the industry, or the people Mark names and shames. What I am here to do is point out that Synergy did call the Tiger situation correctly. On December 12 last year, the day after  Tiger announced he was taking an indefinite break from golf, I made the following post on Twitter:

‘Tiger’s move will play well in the media. It also makes it easier for his sponsors to quit - or to stay. Most will quit: Nike will stay.’

Time has of course proved me right. I’m not sure whether Mark is on Twitter - and if you want to follow me Mark, you’ll find me there as @synergytim, along with numerous other Synergists - but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he had Synergy in mind when he said ‘most’ - ie not all - pundits called the Tiger situation wrong!

By Tim Crow on February 25th, 2010

Tags: Golf, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultancy, Synergy, Tiger Woods

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So I open a copy of Metro on the tube this morning and read about Samsung’s new five year deal with Chelsea. Great news for the club in difficult economic times.

However, for a deal that is reputedly worth well over £50 million for the term, I thought someone could have pushed the budget a little further for the photoshoot and at least made the backdrop high enough!?

By Dominic Curran on July 16th, 2009

Tags: Default, Event management consultants, Football, Football Sponsorship, Public relations, Sponsorship consultancy

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When we started out as Karen Earl Sponsorship in 1984 we had little idea what the future held, nor did we realise just how far sponsorship would develop as a global marketing phenomenon.

What a ride it has been. So many wonderful clients and sponsorships, so many great friends and memories. Lots of hard work too of course, but always great fun - and is still. I’m so proud of our work, our people, and the unique reputation we’ve built.

Looking ahead, we’ve never been in better shape. We have the most talented and committed group of people in our history, and a client list that’s unrivalled in the industry - and growing. Our international work has grown exponentially in the last few years. And as part of The Engine Group, we are ideally placed to continue to spearhead sponsorship’s unique role in modern marketing.

Easy to say, but let me explain.

We evolved into Synergy a year ago and moved into Engine’s new building just north of Oxford Circus. This meant that, as well as our three existing specialist units - Consultancy, Experiential and Communications - we were able to offer four new services: Branded Content, Digital, Employee Engagement and Sales Promotion. And all under one roof.

Our clients all tell us the same thing: they love it!

We now provide them with the broadest, most flexible and most relevant toolkit for 21st century sponsorship. Successful sponsorships are those which are truly integrated into brand marketing campaigns. Truly outstanding sponsorships are those which act as a catalyst for this integration using compelling ideas which both cut through the media clutter and effectively engage consumers.

We help our clients do that every day.

You can see numerous examples on our website. Two that immediately come to mind are the Guinness Premiership and the Powerade InnerGear campaign, each of which completed a clean sweep of the three major sponsorship awards in the last two years.

Our 25^th year makes this a landmark year for Synergy, but there’s going to be a lot more to shout about. We’ve already announced, for example, that we’re now working with Philips on their global Formula 1 sponsorship and with Betfair to develop their sponsorship strategy and portfolio. There are more announcements in the pipeline - watch this space.

Here’s to the next 25 years!

Karen Earl, Founder and Chairman of Synergy

Ed Kemp from Marketing spoke to Karen about the last 25 years - read his blog here

By Karen Earl on June 4th, 2009

Tags: Branded content, Communications, Consultancy, Digital marketing, Employee engagement, Experiential marketing, Guinness Premiership, Olympic sponsorship, Sales promotion, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultancy, Synergy

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It was good to see Kenneth Lewis, CEO of Bank of America, defending his organisation’s estimated annual $125m sports marketing budget so robustly the other day.

“I was never inclined to pump big sums of money into sports marketing until I saw the facts and the numbers…for every dollar we spend on sports marketing, we get $10 in revenue and $3 in earnings. This is not wasted money.”

A welcome and authoritative riposte to the overwhelmingly negative and ill-informed commentaries, on sports sponsorship in general and banks’ sponsorship in particular, that we’ve seen rather too much of in the media over the last few months.

By Tim Crow on March 23rd, 2009

Tags: Default, Public relations, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultancy

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The team behind Powerade’s InnerGear campaign is celebrating today after picking up the ’Best Communication Campaign featuring Sponsorship’ at the highly regarded MCCA Best Awards last night.

Entered by Synergy, Coca-Cola GB’s sponsorship consultancy, the campaign’s striking photography, of Team GB athletes doing their individual sports naked, caught the judges eyes.  The win is the second in a row for Synergy campaigns.  In 2008, Guinness, with its title sponsorship of the English Rugby Premiership, was the victor.

Fingers are now crossed for both the Hollis and Sport Industry Awards 2009 for which the Powerade InnerGear campaign has also been short-listed.

By Sara Wilson on March 6th, 2009

Tags: Beijing 2008, Default, Guinness Premiership, London 2012 sponsorship consultants, Olympic sponsorship consultants, Olympics, Rugby, Sponsorship consultancy, Synergy, Team GB

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Powerade, the Sports Drink of the Rugby Football Union (RFU) and Welsh Rugby Union (WRU), launches a new advertising campaign today featuring three rugby superstars as you’ve never seen them before.

Building on the success of the Olympic InnerGear campaign, Synergy and Powerade commissioned rugby superstars Steve Borthwick (Captain of the England rugby team), Paul Sackey (England winger) and Shane Williams (Welsh winger and 2008 IRB World Player of the Year) to be photographed performing their sport stripped of all their performance clothing, captured without their outer gear.   

The essence of the Powerade InnerGear concept illustrates that what players put inside their bodies and how they prepare – their InnerGear – is just as important as their outer gear (Sports Kit). 

The campaign will run throughout the RBS 6 Nations, with the anticipation that it will be as, if not more, successful than the Olympic InnerGear campaign which is shortlisted for the MCCA Best Awards - winners will be announced on 5 March.

By Sara Wilson on January 26th, 2009

Tags: Default, Olympics, Rugby, Sponsorship consultancy, Synergy

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The newspapers have been a bit depressing of late, but this morning I was greeted with a couple of early telephone calls which brought a smile to my face;  a smile of incredulity, a touch of embarrassment and, above all, delight.

Apparently I’m listed in The Times Power 100 as one of the most influential people in British sport. 

What an honour!  Especially when you look at the exalted company with which I’m mixing.  One of my callers pointed out that I come higher in the list than Tiger Woods which, I can see, I’m going to have a hard time living down.

Other names below me include Andrew Flintoff, Steven Gerrard and Zara Phillips.  So,  I agree with the venerable Kevin Eason and Patrick Kidd (who put the list together) that there will many hours of disagreement and debate when Times readers plough through the 100 names.

Needless to say I buy The Times every day (maybe that had something to do with it) and I think its sports pages are excellent.  And, before you all ask, no, there were no backhanders.

What a great way to start our 25th year in business - as on May 27 Synergy (Karen Earl Sponsorship that was) celebrates this landmark.

Maybe Kevin and Patrick were awarding points for those still standing after all this time!

By Karen Earl on January 21st, 2009

Tags: Media, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultancy, Sponsorship consultants

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Traditionally, November is the sponsorship industry’s conference time of year.  Last week’s Future Sponsorship conference in Brussels is now well-established as a gathering of the great and the good in the industry and, as its name suggests, where the future is discussed.  This year was no different.

The first question on most people’s lips was “how will the sponsorship industry be affected by the credit crunch?”  

My answer was, and is, that the sponsorship industry will be affected, just like all other industries and it’s short sighted to pretend otherwise.  Budgets will be trimmed, cuts will be made and everyone will be squeezed in one way or another.

But the industry is far better placed than it was during the last major downturn in the 1990s.  Then, only some marketers were convinced that sponsorship worked.  As a consultancy, we were still busy educating companies on the benefits of sponsorship and showing them that it worked. 

Now, we spend little, if any, time persuading marketing directors that money will be effectively spent on sponsorship – they’re already convinced.  They have numerous examples for reference and it’s pleasing to note that they are considering sponsorship in their current and future strategies as a matter of course.

Increasingly, sponsorship is being asked to provide tangible business benefits.  And, thank goodness, it can, because now is the time when proof is needed that marketing expenditure can indeed put money on the bottom line.

A great deal of time is spent within the industry discussing precisely how that proof should be declared.  Unlike the advertising or PR industries, sponsorship has no universally-agreed evaluation system, arguing as it does that sponsorship’s success depends upon objectives set at the outset.  The difficulty (or, as many argue, the advantage) being that these objectives can be immensely varied and, therefore, results need to be individually tracked.  Thus a universal system is both impractical if not impossible.

I’ve always argued that sponsorship’s marketing advantage is its flexibility; the fact that it can solve a multitude of business challenges.

But I came away from Future Sponsorship thinking that it would be in the industry’s interest if it can make itself bullet-proof against accusations of non-accountability, especially in this economic downturn. 

By Karen Earl on December 2nd, 2008

Tags: Brand marketing, Public relations, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultancy

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Congratulations to the Guinness team who picked up their fourth award last night for the title sponsorship of rugby’s Guinness Premiership. The sponsorship, managed on behalf of Guinness by Synergy, won the Rugby Business Award for Rugby Sponsor of the Year (over $500k).

The judges particularly commended the ground breaking work on the Guinness Club Together campaign across 2007/8. Synergy manages all aspects of the sponsorship from strategic consulting to experiential events and PR.

By Dominic Curran on November 18th, 2008

Tags: Experiential marketing, Guinness, Guinness Premiership, Public relations, Rugby, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultancy, Synergy

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