Zach Colman (00:03):
Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of brand power analysis. Uh, today I have, uh, Ken on the show. Ken, why don’t you tell everyone a little bit about yourself?

Kens Journey

Ken Ungar (00:13):
Hey Zach, thanks for having me on the show. It’s exciting. So my name is Ken hunger and I’m the president of Charge. We are a sponsorship agency based in Indianapolis, uh, but with clients all over us, and we’ve been in business about 16 years now, helping really the buyers and sellers get the most out of sponsorship. And we work in a variety of areas. We work with brands, we work with properties and sports, uh, with nonprofits and a variety of different, uh, markets. But, uh, the common denominator is we’re helping people score big with sponsorship.

Zach Colman (00:52):
Beautiful, beautiful. I love it. I love that. And like I was saying before we hit the record button here is, is I feel like we have some commonality is I’m trying to really help bring value to professional athletes, sports organizations, entrepreneurs, and understanding, you know, not just the difference between a sponsorship opportunity for them, but understanding how that plays into the part of growing their brand and their business as they continue on their expansion path. So why don’t you start off a little bit on, discuss your journey as a business owner? How did you get where you are? How are you, how are you, uh, and, and what are you kind of doing today? It’s,

Ken Ungar (01:41):
It’s crazy. Zach, when, when I think about it, you know, people ask all the time, especially you work in sports, how did you get in sports? And it was a complete accident. And, uh, my, my path was definitely, I called weirdly unconventional. And, uh, so I started out as a lawyer a while ago. I thought I really wanted to practice law, and help people that way. Uh, didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought, but I had the opportunity to, uh, to join some, uh, colleagues that I know who worked for a governor, uh, in Indiana, where I lived at the time. And so I spent four years in government service, which was fantastic. And that would allow me to kind of scratch the itch of business. You know, I was a lawyer, but I really had a passion for business and communications. Uh, after a short stint in government, I had the opportunity to join the staff of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Indy car series as the first, as chief of staff.

Ken Ungar (02:39):
And then as the senior VP of, of, uh, business affairs, which really gave me exposure to all things sports. And what I found is I really had the passion for sports marketing, uh, marketing first, but sports because I loved what sports stood for. Right. And when you look at athletic competition and athletes preparing for competition, all the things that are so passionate about sports connect people, whether it’s preparation come from behind, winning the underdog, uh, beating the favorite, you know, all those things about sports that people love connecting people. And so I loved being a marketer in that environment. I’ve been doing that for 25 years, but about 16 years ago, I had the passion to set off on my own and start my own business. And so I started the charge, uh, back in 2006 and I’ve been loving what I do ever since. Uh, so that’s really my journey, but, uh, it was, it was kind of a crazy path from lawyer to government official to business person, to sports marketer.

Zach Colman (03:47):
Yeah, no, uh, we work with a lot of sports marketers ourselves, and I feel like, uh, in today’s environment, a sports marketer could have so many different meanings. so why don’t you, why don’t you go you, why don’t you explain a little bit about kind of your processes and what you help and how you help, uh, companies kind of achieve what you said with the sponsorship deals? Yeah,

Ken Ungar (04:12):
Great question. And so spot sports marketing is pretty broad. And once upon a time, our agency did a number of things within sports marketing that included branding and, some design work and public relations and a variety of things. But our, our forte, we really, what we did best was sponsorship. So we’ve been really focused exclusively now on sponsorship. And what we do is we help people use that platform to build their business. So if they’re the buyers of sponsorship, we find the right opportunity for them. If there are sellers of sponsorship, uh, we ensure that they brand first and then they sell. But the, but the process, whether it’s buyer or seller, you’re looking for the same things to make this platform work for business. So it starts, you know, step number one is identifying the audience. So if you’re a sponsor, you want to understand your customer base because you’re looking for a sponsorship partner that shares that customer base.

Aligning Audiences

Ken Ungar (05:17):
So those audiences have to be aligned. And often we see when people don’t do sponsorship quite right, or it’s not working well for them. It’s because there’s a mismatch between the sponsor’s customer base and the audience of the property. So we always start with the audience. And the second thing is to understand what both parties are trying to accomplish and how they can work together to get there. So we commonly see sponsorship being used for one or, or two purposes. First, it enhances the brand of the sponsor. So if they’re looking for more brand awareness or greater consideration or to change or, or improve the opinion of their brand, uh, they use sponsorship for a specific purpose. They can also use sponsorship to increase sales. So they might be trying to generate more leads. They might be trying to sell to a certain kind of market. So we see, for example, not only business-to-consumer sponsorship but there’s an entire category of business-to-business sponsorship, where really you are targeting, this, the property’s audience to actually sell product to them. So it’s either enhancing your brand or sell more goods and services either way. Uh, both parties are trying to benefit from this relationship, but that’s essentially the first two stages of the sponsorship process as we help people develop their sponsorships.

Zach Colman (06:50):
Oh no, that’s beautiful. How do you feel, how do you feel social media has played in the role of sponsorships?

Ken Ungar (07:00):
Wow. It, it, it is a complete game changer. And so for the last 10 years, so it’s been a fascinating journey with social media and sponsorship. So first it was a nice to have, and I always saw social media can just hanging out there at the edges, uh, of sponsorship. Yeah, we’ll integrate Twitter, we’ll integrate Facebook and those types of things, but it wasn’t a core feature. Well, more and more, and this absolutely exploded, during the recent COVID 19 pandemic where social media has become pretty much the core of sponsorship relationships, because it is flexible because you could tell your story so well using, using social media, that social media is now not a nice to have. It’s a gotta-have within the context of how you tell the sponsorship story, but, uh, it is one of the most versatile cost-effective, platforms within sponsorship that you could possibly think of.

Zach Colman (08:03):
Yeah, no, I mean, I totally, I totally agree with you. how do you think that has kind of taken a role in other digital marketing aspects? I think that I think that one thing I see with struggling business owners, especially at the very beginning is they don’t just really understand the difference between, like you said, brand awareness and lead generation. And I feel like there’s so much opportunity out there for not just athletes from businesses to use other platforms like their website and get good brand consistency going and their messaging that they focus so much on social media that they don’t understand that it kind of works hands in hand with these other digital platforms. So how have you seen that take effect into other things like Google and in websites and things of that? Yeah, Zach,

Ken Ungar (08:56):
I think you’ve nailed it. I mean, so our philosophy, not only in sponsorship and in marketing as a whole, is marketing has to be integrated, right? Just like, just like you have, you know, five fingers and they all work together to create a fist. You have multiple different platforms and channels of communication. They have to work together. Like your fingers work together as a fist. So your social media is telling the story of your brand, but that might not be where people are finding you. They might be finding you through search, right? So they might be finding you, through a Google search, which leads them to your website before they even see your social media. So all the channels of communication that you use for your particular business have to sing off the same song sheet. So it’s your brand. It starts with your brand, right?

Ken Ungar (09:46):
Your core message of who you are and what you stand for. Then you’re, you’re sending this message out to your potential customers, all these different channels that should work together really well in order to deliver that message. Because right now people are consuming content the way they want to. So you can’t be a one-trick pony and put all your resources and your website and ignore social media, or put all your resources into search and ignore social. So it’s, uh, it’s really interesting the way you described it as exactly the way that we recommend to clients, that they, they approach kind of their marketing message to build their business. Right. It’s all about building your business. Yeah.

Zach Colman (10:27):
And, and, and nothing against traditional sports marketing agencies, but I’ve only seen, seen a handful of them really take that opportunity and understand we’re going into the digital age. Uh, a lot of them still focus on cold outreach and, and trying to just get sponsorships. And I’ve been really trying to push that message to them is, Hey, like, you know, these large brands like Nike, these large brands, like Adidas, they have custom archetypes. They have a certain fan base that they’re focused on, very similar, to what you said, we’re the target audience. And they don’t, they want to work with not just athletes, but businesses that have that same core, those same core values, and that same audience focus because that’s where they’re going to get most of their things. I work with quite a few retired athletes that, that ask me all the time. Should I buy followers? Should I do this? And I’m like, there’s no easy gimmick. There’s no, there’s no get quick rich schemes out there. Do you know? and so with that said, uh, tell me a little bit more about, uh, you work with a few sports brands. So what makes us, uh, someone that’s really good at sports or something that’s very athletic? Uh, what do you think makes, those companies more successful as business owners?

Ken Ungar (11:49):
Yeah, that’s a great question. And I think, uh, what I see cause we, we’ve worked with hundreds of athletes, we’ve represented over 50 of them in terms of helping them develop their brands. Not, not from a visualization perspective like you do, but sort of then helping them define who they are and what they stand for. and then having them work like with great agencies like yours to express that in, in digital or, or, in design. So in that process, what we’ve seen is there are two characteristics that I think make, athletes like great business owners, and one is discipline, right? So you don’t, especially those who are pro athletes, even collegiate athletes. But, but when, by the time you get to the pros, you, you, discipline is such an ingrained part of who you are and what you stand for. That aspect makes them great business owners. And then the next thing is resilience because it is hard on this, this, you know, that, I know that anyone, anyone who owns a business there is setbacks. Like what

Zach Colman (12:59):
I call it, the business owner, I call it the business owner depression, because you’ll have one day where you’re, you’re really depressed. And then the next that you’re, but you know, you’ll be better tomorrow. And then the next day you’re up on your two feet and it kind of goes back and forth, you know?

Athletes and Grit

Ken Ungar (13:13):
Right. Exactly. So I think that, that the athletes in, in the developed sense of resilience, bounce-back resilience, right? You, you know, if you’re a golfer and you hit a bad shot, or if you’re a baseball player and you strike out, you gotta get your head back in the game, right next up at play, you know, next time you get up to the tee box, you have to be ready to perform at your best. That resilience makes, makes badly for former athletes, and great business owners. So discipline resilience, they got, they got most of it down cold.

Zach Colman (13:47):
I’m going to, I’m going to reverse that. Like, what do you think are some of the struggles that some of these athletes face, uh, compared to someone who hasn’t played a sport or, you know, been in the sports and yeah. Yeah. I

Ken Ungar (14:02):
Think one of the things that I have seen is, so especially once you get to be a professional athlete, you’ve spent your life honing your craft and your craft is, you know, on the field of competition, right? So you’re, you’re in top physical form, you’ve developed the skills to make you a great athlete, but all of a sudden, when you, when you become a professional, you’re now expected to know everything about the business. So if you don’t have a family member who is skilled at business, or if you didn’t study business in school, I think a lot of athletes are behind the eight ball because they’re not ready for those things in business. And, you know, ironically it’s if it’s something that you, where you and I work, it’s there, isn’t a fundamental understanding of the brand. And I think that really back athletes, because the recipe for success in business is first your brand, and then you sell. Yeah. And so a lot of athletes, especially when they’re professionals, they know, well, listen, I’m in the best in the game. So I shouldn’t have to brand myself. And it’s like, no, no, no, no, no, no. That’s just, that’s just the entree, right? The fact that you’re the best in the game gets you, you know,

Zach Colman (15:15):
That’s what I usually athletes use that free marketing you’re getting on the field, but let’s leverage that to bring in, you know, a more targeted fan base and to brand yourself. Exactly. Yeah. And

Ken Ungar (15:28):
So I think, so those who understand it, like are crazy successful. I, my favorite example, I’m based in Indianapolis. So, you know, obviously I, I love the Colts, Indianapolis Colts, but Peyton Manning, when, during his professional career. And I think it was because he’s from a football family, but he knew from day one, the importance of brand, he worked his brand, he developed his brand, obviously, you know, he was a superstar on the field. There’s no doubt about that. But there was an athlete that I think understood the power brand so much. And I look at him today and I don’t know, I don’t know what he earns, but based on what I do know about athlete earnings, he’s making every bit, as much as he probably made when he was a professional football player because his brand was so supremely developed by the time he retired and he’ll be enjoying that for the rest of his days, because he knew the power of developing a, uh, a brand position for himself. And it’s authentic too. I mean, it is authentic to who he is and what he stands for. So I love Peyton Manning as an example of the power of branding within a professional, athlete’s career.

TB12 and Tom Brady

Zach Colman (16:42):
Yeah. I’m, uh, I, I’m in, I’m in Arizona, but I’m a huge Atlanta Falcons fan. And, uh, so the person I like to always, always talk about, isn’t a hundred percent necessarily my favorite person, but I still think he’s nice as Tom Brady, you know, everyone knows him, but I try to tell athletes, Hey, it’s, doesn’t worry about status, but think about more, so, more so on what he’s doing, how he worked with bill Belicheck today, how the organizations in the shadow he did TB 12. I mean, I still say today that the reason he moved to Tampa bay was that their initials are TV and it was the easiest way he could get his brand to move without having to change the whole name. Cause I tell him that all the time, I’m like, do you not, your name is fine numbers and stuff.

Zach Colman (17:31):
I can color schemes. I’m like, don’t a hundred percent focus on your team. We could, but don’t, but he did such a good job. And the way he used Facebook to start moved over to Instagram, and then he built a personal page and then move it. And then the bill, a corporate brand on the side of that and had it, and then built that within his website and in his target market, that way I actually have a video where I kind of critique his brand throughout the years. And so I’ll show that I’ll showcase that as well on the podcast. But, but it’s, it’s crazy to me. I mean, there’s so much opportunity out there. I think Brad, it’s not just as that, but for influencers, you know, and they are really the next influence and teams don’t even really take advantage of that as much as they could, to kind of help build the team and the players as they keep going. so I totally, I totally a hundred percent agree with you on that. It’s oh, we could probably talk about that all day. so what are some, so back to the kind of relate it to that? What are some things people can learn in regards to, and we don’t have to be athlete specific here? We can be sports in general, but uh, in building their brands, uh, from other business owners, what can they learn from other business owners like yourself? Yeah,

Ken Ungar (18:47):
I think it’s important. So, you know, I’ve said it here earlier that first, your brand and then you sell, and I think that’s an important lesson for all business owners. And so for example, our website charge, sponsorship.com. We have a sponsorship readiness assessment tool it’s completely free, but, businesses can go on there and kind of answer the questions. It’s a series of questions to determine whether your sponsorship is ready and, essentially being sponsorship ready is, do you have all your marketing ducks in a row? Yeah. It starts with your brand. It starts with your look and feels. And do you have a strategy? Are you implementing it? Because essentially, especially if you’re selling sponsorship, what sponsorships looking for is a strong brand and marketing position because they’re looking for a partner that’s going to help them communicate their brand message, the sponsor’s brand message.

Ken Ungar (19:45):
So it’s really put if so, whether you’re an athlete selling an endorsement or sponsorship, or you’re a, you’re property, you know, a nonprofit, a sports team of a concert venue. If you’re selling sponsorship, it all starts with being sponsorship ready, and being sponsorship ready means I have, I have my brand ready to go. I’ve got a great marketing plan and execution behind that. So I think that’s a great lesson because whether it’s like a general business. So in the course of kind of my marketing career, I’ve worked with construction companies and sports teams. And so whether it’s in sports, out of sports, for-profit, not-for-profit, I see the common mistake we’re going to sell. We’re going to open the doors, we’re going to sell, but we’re going to neglect marketing because it’s perceived to be like a soft side of the business or it’s perceived to be something I’ll get to. Once I get my product ready and I take it to market, then worry about marketing almost every single time. I see failure because it isn’t treated with the same importance as the other disciplines within business-like operations and finance and sales. So I think the biggest lesson for business owners is first your brand, then you sell. Yeah.

Zach Colman (21:08):
Yeah. It’s, it’s common, the common thing I see right now is so many, people that open businesses, they don’t value certain aspects of the business. So they look at marketing as an expense and not, not an investment. And they go about creating, you know, and I, and I’ll go low because a lot of them kind of look at it this way is I’ll just use a logo. For example, they look at a logo and they’ll get some, you know, cheap logo, not really look at their copy and not really look at their values, their color schemes, and stuff like that. And it’s all over the place. And I’m like, no, one’s really gonna recognize you’re, remember you, if your logo doesn’t resonate with your target audience, it’s not you, it’s your target audience. And the fact that you, uh, the fact that you’re not putting that much effort into your brand is they’re going to see that people see that.

Zach Colman (22:00):
right. And, and that branding is all about bringing people back where the marketing is all about bringing the people in it, you know? And, uh, so I think if anyone could take anything away from our chat today, it would be, you know, really get your ducks in a row. And then you have your marketing plan. You know, when you have your business plan, make sure you have a good 10 to 20% of that, that income going towards marketing. As you continue to grow your business, you know, take branding, as an important factor. I, I mean, nothing against sponsorships at all. I mean, I mean, I, but I see sometimes as you said, you have that, that, uh, evaluation for good reason. I see a lot of clients that I have that will like, I’m going to go out and do a print ad, or I’m going to do this.

Branding Tangibles

Zach Colman (22:48):
I’m like, dude, we need to get your brand guidelines going. We need to create your messaging first. You’re actually paying more upfront for these small ads that aren’t going to have as much effectiveness. If we don’t do this first, they just don’t look at it that way. And I also say, you know, the digital side, as you said, the social media and SEO and all the Google and all that stuff has become so trackable these days that they don’t see the difference between the lead generation and the brand awareness side. And it’s like, Hey, you have to look at these as two separate factions. Billboards are great, but they also are very hard to track,

Ken Ungar (23:23):
Right? No, exactly. And I tell people, so like for instance, uh, my wife and I will drive to dinner tonight, we’re going to pass five dry cleaners on, on the way. So if you want a dry cleaner, what’s the difference? There are five on my way to this restaurant, I could stop at any one of them. What’s the difference between them? Will they dry, and clean the same way? I mean, the dry cleaning process has been the same for the last 30, 40 years. So the only thing that’s going to really differentiate them to not only to attract customers but as you said, Zack, bring them back

Ken Ungar (23:59):
And so without that, they’re just commodities, meaning that I could stop at any of these five dry cleaners because I don’t care. They’re all the same. Right? No. And, and if I’m a commodity, then I’m going to stop at the dry cleaner that’s cheapest. Yes. But marketing could also help you create a premium brand position or I’m going to spend maybe three or $4 a shirt. Because I think that that dry cleaner through marketing will do a better job cleaning my shirt, than its competitors. So like, even if you’re a business like that like it’s all about what you said, Zack, it’s about marketing that digital or whatever they feel is, is needed to communicate that message and bring people in and keep them got to do it. It’s not a, it’s not, it’s not a nice to have. It’s a gotta have, yeah,

Zach Colman (24:46):
It’s, it’s a gotta have. And it is like you said, we could run about it all day, but situations that its product knowledge to, you know, it’s, it’s one of those situations where it’s, it’s the value that you bring. Some people would rather go to a dry cleaner that they know, Hey, this, I know I’ll pay the extra three or $4. And I think businesses like you and me are willing to spend more money on certain things because we understand that. I mean, I’ll look at a website for instance. And, if I’m vetting, you know, uh, someone that I’m going to work with on, you know, business development or, or other things, and even products that we go to restaurants, we go to, and I’ll see their market. And I’m a little biased cause we do web development, but, uh, I’ll see the bias of, oh, they didn’t even care about their site or there, their, uh, their menu is still in a picture format. Like it should be, you know, they should write it all out. You know, they already want to find you locally, you know, and I see the bias and I’m like, but they’re not putting enough effort into their marketing. So if they’re not putting enough effort into their marketing, to me, that that shows that they’re not putting enough effort into their business and, and doing things right for their clients, but

Ken Ungar (26:04):
Right. And the only reason that you and I are ranting Zach is that we know, and we’ve seen it that if, if businesses don’t do this, they’re underoptimizing their entire business. And so they don’t enjoy the success that they deserve to enjoy because they’ve, underoptimized themselves by ignoring marketing. And that, that’s why we’re ranting is because we’ve seen it. We’ve seen, you know, these businesses and athletes who are under-optimized because of that.

Zach Colman (26:33):
Yeah. Yeah. It’s sad sometimes. I mean, it’s sad when I see it. And I mean, I’m at the point now where, when I even have prospects come into the door, if even if they’re still at the point where, where they don’t see the value that causes they haven’t gone through certain pain points that every business owner does that I’m willing to say, Hey, well, let me help you find one of your, one of the people that you’re competing against me with. And let me see which one, I don’t want you to fall into those same mistakes. I want you to try to save money here and there because I know how it works. You know, I know that it’s a plethora of the buying process with, with some of this stuff. And so, you know, and that’s, that’s why people like you and me try to bring as much value as we can by providing product knowledge. I think because it’s, it’s one of those situations where even the larger companies, they get to a point where they, they, their brand is so inconsistent. Right. so what are some of the things you can do that let’s talk about a little bit back to you and how you’re helping these businesses, how are you helping them with the sponsorship opportunities? Yeah,

Ken Ungar (27:50):
No, I appreciate that. So we try to help, we help our clients, however, they, they want to be helped. So an example is we, we wrote, sponsorship strategy, a practical approaches to powerful sponsorships is a book that we published last summer because we wanted to, we wanted to share with businesses as many of the secrets of sponsorship as possible. So, so they can create great sponsorships themselves. And so the next level up, if, if you want to know, or you want to experience more than a book, we have webinars and we speak at conferences to, to help again, share those best practices within sponsorship. So the buyers and sellers of sponsorship, could, can engage in best practices to, to, to really make the most of it. Of course, we’re, we’re available for one-on-one, it’s the core of our consulting business, where we’re working directly with people to help them identify opportunities that may have been overlooked.

Ken Ungar (28:55):
So if they’re the, if they’re the buyers of sponsorship, we’ll take a look at their business and we’ll identify the best opportunities for them. We’ll help them match their audience, their customer base with an audience. So very often we’re asked by the buyers of sponsorship, you know, for instance, give us five examples of different, different kinds of sponsorships that can help us enhance our brand or sell more products. And we’ll bring them, uh, examples of sponsorships that they can purchase that will help move their business forward. And on the, on the sales side, people are saying, well, we don’t know who are the right buyers, who are the right buyers, who are the people that we should approach, who would want to have a with us. And so we’re helping those organizations, first of all, create the best offering that they could, that they can have, what assets they have besides their logo and their name, what assets can they put together that are valuable to the buyers of sponsorship.

Types of Sponsorships

Ken Ungar (29:58):
And then we’ll identify what types of sponsors are best aligned with their business strategy that they’ll have the most success selling sponsorship to that could be a variety of different areas. And the fun part of our business is that could be a very different process for sports teams than it is for nonprofits. Yeah. Yeah. So, but, but that’s what we love to do. And we’ve even through that work, speaking of nonprofits identified an entirely new area of, of sponsorship. That’s become really prevalent as companies, as sponsors engage in more and more social responsibility. So you have companies that are, are really being more sustainable, you know, hiring with diversity and inclusion, doing all those things that they need to do to, to be the types of companies that, that their customers are demanding. So we’ve identified new and unique opportunities for nonprofits to align with those companies.

Ken Ungar (30:59):
They share a cause. For example, if a company is dedicated to recycling its product align that company with a recycling nonprofit yeah. In a sponsorship way, there’s been caused marketing for a long time, but there really hasn’t been what we call purpose-driven sponsorship, where the benefit of the sponsorship is neutral. That is the for-profit sells more products, but the not-for-profit not only raises money for its cause and has more impact, but they promote its cause through sponsorship. So, I mean, these are kind of the fun offshoots of what we do and helping these organizations find success with this platform. I mean, obviously, we’re biased, but we think this sponsorship platform is really unique in marketing and that it’s mutual, right? It helps both the buyer and seller be more successful. It’s a win-win relationship, which we love. And it’s a little different than say advertising, which is more one way. Yeah. Right. The brand speaks to consumer sponsorship in two ways. And so that’s a little, that’s a little insight into what we do and how we do it.

Zach Colman (32:06):
I think it’s really key there where you said, find re I mean, I think that that’s one of the, one of the things you brought up that I think really does probably separate you out of your competition is the fact that you relay, it sounds like very similar to what I said earlier, where it’s you focus on finding the right matches. I’ve seen so many, you know, advertisements and so many sponsorship things where I’ll see something that totally does not relate to what, you know, what the situation is. And, and a good example is we just did we do something very similar at the beginning of our brand identity process, where we create, we focus on the brand archetypes of, of the individual athlete or the individual business. And we try to find sponsors that, that, uh, related to that same brand archetype.

Zach Colman (32:59):
And so you can mesh the two together and create a cohesive sponsorship opportunity. We don’t do sponsorships, but we partner with people like you to help, you know, create that message together so that we can, you know, do it. And a lot of traditional sports marketing agencies just don’t do it. So I definitely think what you’re, what you’re providing is definitely very, uh, very high quality. And I, uh, I think that a lot of people, if they could take anything away from this is, is that find your target market care about branding, care about finding unique sponsors, find your focus, fan base and things of that nature. Yeah.

Ken Ungar (33:39):
I think you nailed it Zach because what people don’t even realize is those, those different sponsors, sponsorships that don’t really align. They create what we call dissonance sponsorship, dissonance, where they conflict with each other. And there’s actually, you know, negative blowback from consumers on that because they look at the sponsor and they go, what are they doing here? Like this makes no sense. And they actually, so, you know, the example I give a family-oriented brand, uh, at an EDM concert or, you know, as opposed to say an energy drink, right? So when, when, those opportunities don’t mesh brand to brand, consumers look at it, they shake their head and there’s actually a negative reaction to it, as opposed to when they align. There’s, there’s a huge positive, which we call image transfer, which, you know, say you’re an energy drink and you’re in an action sport.

Ken Ungar (34:40):
You actually think better of the energy drink because they’re in the action sport. Because if you love that action sport, you’re you as a, as a fan are going to love that energy drink, which we call image transfer in sponsorship that doesn’t work when there is an alignment. So, there is a lot to this, which can really be a benefit for both parties if they do it. Right. Which was again, why we wrote the book sponsorship strategy, you know, why we do free seminars. Cause we, we want people to do it. Right. So that sponsorship works the way it was intended. Yeah,

Zach Colman (35:14):
Definitely. When we finish up here, definitely, uh, send me over a link to that, that, uh, your book and I’ll, I’ll put a link to it. I’ll put a link to it, into the podcast so that people can find it. I appreciate that. Yeah, definitely. Well, it was great to have you on, I really appreciate it. Why don’t you again, tell everyone where they can find you? and uh, some of the outlets.

Ken Ungar (35:38):
Yeah. So, uh, you can find us at the chart, sponsorship.com. That’s our website and we have a variety of free resources there. You can certainly, I’ll send you the link. You can link over to the book. The book is available on Amazon and apple books, but also we have free resources and we actually created a, uh, free resources page for this shows acts so that beautiful. All, of your listeners, and your audience can benefit from sponsorship. It’s at chargesponsorship.com, backslash free stuff, all one-word free stuff. So just go over there. all you gotta do is click the link, download we’ve got templates, we’ve got resource directories, all the things that people might need to, to, uh, have more powerful sponsorships.

Zach Colman (36:27):
Beautiful. Well, I think that sums it up again. I want to thank you for being on the print brand power analysis, and I hope everyone has a good day. Thank you, Zach.

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