Chris Baylis is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Sponsorship Collective.
After spending several years in the field as a sponsorship professional and consultant, Chris now spends his time working with clients to help them understand their audiences, build activations that sponsors want, apply market values to their assets and build strategies that drive sales.
Chris studied at Trent University and Mohawk College before he began his sales career in high tech and insurance. After several years in the sales industry, Chris decided to make the move to sponsorship.
The reason for Chris was simple:
“Sponsorship means you have to be an expert in sales, marketing, experiential, lead generation, account management and strategy. This challenging blend of skills is what makes sponsorship so fascinating but also incredibly complicated.”
Chris has been active in the sponsorship industry since 2007 selling sponsorship for a variety of organisations and every type of sponsorship opportunity as an employee, department leader, board member, consultant and volunteer.
After five years as a consultant with international consulting firm IFC out of London, England Chris decided to launch what is now The Sponsorship Collective. And the rest is history.
And it all began with a blog.
The problem, according to Chris, is that there was simply no information about best practice sponsorship when he began in the industry. Everyone was guarding their secrets and there was nothing by way of blogs, publications, or networking groups. And this is exactly what Chris decided to change.
When it was first launched, the goal of the blog was simple: to share sponsorship best practice with the world. Today, The Sponsorship Collective has been featured in countless publications, podcasts, websites, blogs, magazines, webinars and books. The Sponsorship Collective has also produced hundreds of YouTube videos, webinars and hundreds of thousands of words on the blog (at last count, enough to fill five business books on the topic).
In addition to speaking at conferences and stages across North America, a sample of publications featuring Chris Baylis include in Hopin, Blackbaud, several articles and references in Eventbrite, Inside Sponsorship, Cause Talk Radio, CSAE, The Partnership Conference and The Selling Show to name only a few.
Sponsorship is, at its heart, a marketing practice and marketing is nothing without audience experience as the main focus.
This is exactly how Chris thinks of sponsorship.
“Everything has to start with audience data and experiences focused on creating value for audiences. Most people think of sponsorship as simple logo placement, which could not be further from the truth” says Chris.
Because of Chris’ focus, The Sponsorship Collective takes an “audience first” approach to sponsorship. Starting with audience data, then moving to creating engaging activations before moving to valuation, sales material and then a “discovery based” approach to sales.
Here is a sample of the most recent articles written by Chris:
When you hear of brands like Red Bull or Coca-Cola being involved with various sports for decades, it’s easy to think that the only reason those kinds of extended deals happen is that they’re multi-billion-dollar companies with huge name recognition. If that were the...
When most people think of a sponsor, they think of someone who will hand them huge wads of cash. While it’s true that that’s one definition of sponsorship, it’s not the only one. In today’s guide, I’ll walk you through the four types of sponsorship and explain when...
Do you struggle to sell sponsorship to prospects? You can get prospects on the line, but it seems like after a certain point, the deal always fizzles out. You know you’re doing something wrong, but you can’t ascertain what. That’s what today’s post is all about. I’m...
Can you believe that we’re in the last stretch of 2022 already? I know that personally, this has been a very busy but rewarding year for the Sponsorship Collective, so I’m not surprised that time has flown. No matter where you are in your sponsorship program at...
I think one of the most common sponsorship topics that I still get asked about all the time to this day is the sponsorship proposal. People want to know how to write ‘em, when to use ‘em, and how to use ‘em, but especially how to write them. I’ve dedicated thousands...
High Ticket Closer (Inbound) THE SPONSORSHIP COLLECTIVE About you… You are a sales professional, relentlessly moving towards a target and you never miss (or if you do, you find out why and so you never miss again). A goal crusher, way maker, objection overcomer! You...
Your sponsorship programs, if you can even call them that, all seem to end the same way. You engage with a prospect and get them interested enough to the point where you think they want a proposal. Yet when you send said proposal, you never hear back. You don’t know...
Corporate sponsorship deals are alluring to sponsorship seekers because they usually mean reeling in the big bucks compared to working with smaller sponsors. You don’t get something for nothing in this life, and so you need to offer your corporate prospects excellent...
People have gotta eat, so it’s fairly safe to say that a food activation idea at your next event, program, or opportunity ought to go over big. That’s doubly true if your sponsor is in the food industry. What are my top food activation ideas? Here are 7 awesome food...
If I asked you to come up with a list of bad words, sponsorship would be nowhere on that list, I’m sure. After all, it’s not the B-word or the F-word. It’s just sponsorship. What’s so bad about that? While maybe not as bad as some profanity, sponsorship is still a...