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:
You might have read this title once and did a double-take. Why in the world would I want to talk about the path to failure in sponsorship? Well, because you can’t change something that you don’t know is there. In sponsorship, it’s easy to think you’re doing something...
Here’s a fun quiz for you. Where in your sponsorship program do you think the most critical window of opportunity is? I bet you would say it’s early in the sponsorship program, right? Like right after the discovery session or a follow-up meeting or two? Actually, it...
Have you ever been to a magic show and the magician correctly guessed the number you were thinking of or the card you were holding without having seen it? It’s pretty cool, right? Okay, I’ll give credit where it’s due. It’s very cool. Yet if that magician had guessed...
Here’s a scenario I’m sure you’ve faced before. You spent a lot of time digging deep into your audience and segmenting them. You came up with thoughtful sponsorship prospects that you figured your audience would be especially receptive to. You reached out to a few...
If I told you that the best sponsorship programs came down to only three components, you probably wouldn’t believe me, right? I’m sure you’d tell me there are at least six or seven must-have components to your sponsorship program, or maybe 10 or 12. Whatever the...
Are you afraid to ask for feedback? I think a lot of us are because receiving feedback implies that we’re doing something wrong, and who wants to admit they’re doing something wrong or that they can stand to improve? You should, especially when it comes to your...
The discovery session is a golden opportunity to learn more about your sponsorship prospects and decide whether you two are a fit. Sponsorship seekers can squander this golden opportunity if they treat the discovery session as a sales meeting (which it is not) or if...
You’ve put together your sponsorship menu, your prospect has looked at it, and they decided on some things. You earn those almighty sponsorship dollars, and the rest doesn’t really matter, right? It does matter, or it should. The problem I’ve come across is that many...
The big day of the event has come and gone, and it was a rousing success. Your sponsor lived up to their end of the deal, and you lived up to yours. Now it’s time to prove it with a sponsorship fulfillment report. Some first-time and second-time sponsorship seekers...
Have you ever worked in tech support? I did back when I was in college. Even if you’ve never personally had a tech support job, I would bet you have experience using tech support, such as when your new iPhone begins randomly turning off or your Windows computer has a...