Leaving a Mark Sometimes Means Removing One: How to Flip the Script on Sponsorships

This is an edited version of my conversation from Marketing Brew’s The Brief Summit with Elyssa Margolis , VP and Head of the Creative Studio at Morning Brew, about Smartsheet’s Sponsor X initiative: how it embodies our mission to empower anyone to drive meaningful change, how we got everyone on board, and how we proved that purpose-led initiatives can work hand-in-hand with business goals. Elyssa and I spoke on-stage in New York City in front of an audience of marketers and creatives as part of a day-long event to share and learn from brands and marketing leaders about innovation, strategy, challenges and solutions.

Elyssa: I’d love to kick this off by having you take us through an overview of your partnership with McLaren and Formula 1.

Andrew: I got the CMO role at Smartsheet about a year ago, and our CEO Mark challenged me to take some big swings in my first year in the role. We had just signed a sponsorship with the McLaren Formula 1 team and during the signing process, the CEO of McLaren Racing encouraged our team to be bold and push the limits of the sponsorship. Here’s what we decided to do: first, at the Australia Grand Prix:

And again, at the US Grand Prix:

Elyssa: Wow! Now, sponsorships can really fall flat and just be a logo slap. How did you go from your logo on a McLaren car to that of nonprofits?

Andrew: In wanting to take those big swings, one of the things we recognized with a platform like a Formula 1 sponsorship is that you have an incredible global reach. We are a company that has always been focused on meaningful work. Our mission is to empower anyone to drive meaningful change.

There’s only so much that a company name and logo can accomplish. Throughout the racing season, we wanted to tell the world what we stand for by giving the platform to people doing amazing work that matters — like DeadlyScience, which does STEM education for kids in remote schools in Australia, and The Hidden Genius Project, which does technology and leadership training for young Black men in Oakland, Los Angeles and Detroit.

Elyssa: Amazing. Like you said, Sponsor X obviously aligns with Smartsheet’s values. What factors do organizations need to take into account when they’re looking to partner with others and do sponsorships??

Andrew: One of the things that was really clear when we were talking to McLaren about a Formula 1 sponsorship is that they felt much the same as we did: they wanted to be innovative, and they were invested in telling those bigger stories given the amazing global platform of the sport.?

But no matter who we’re sponsoring, we think about mission alignment: in this case, Smartsheet and McLaren are both driven by moving technology forward and competing with integrity.

Identifying organizations that share your values will make your partnership that much more effective and organic.

Elyssa: I’d love to hear about the big, and not so big, moments that Sponsor X created for you and your team as well as the impact of the activation for the non-profits you highlighted in Australia and Texas.

Andrew: First and foremost, good has been done in the world. Kids in remote areas of Australia are getting a better education as a result of this initiative. Corey Tutt, the founder of DeadlyScience who you saw in the video, won the highest civilian honor in Australia three months after our Sponsor X partnership with them. Their donations went up by 400% after Sponsor X.?

We saw an impact directly in Austin at the US Grand Prix. We brought out four of the graduates of The Hidden Genius Project and they did an event on the ground with 50 high school students from East Austin. They taught seminars in robotics, sports analytics, and using Smartsheet. The students got to go to the track, meet the drivers, and see all the technology that goes into a sport like Formula 1.?

It was really cool to see the spark in those students’ eyes when they experienced all these opportunities.

Additionally, helping DeadlyScience and The Hidden Genius Project get greater visibility and funding has been highly motivating for our teams. Our internal and social engagement was through the roof. People who were interviewing at the time Sponsor X was running were coming to us saying, “I want to work for a company that would do that.”

Back at the beginning of the initiative, I remember our CFO saying, “Andrew, this all feels great, but how does this make sense for the business?” The answer has been in the phenomenal earned media and social engagement of Sponsor X. It allowed us to break away from the really noisy and crowded F1 sponsor pack — something a normal brand activation wouldn’t have gotten us.

In Australia, we had the #1 share of voice of all 40 of the McLaren sponsors.

In Austin, we were the second most mentioned brand at the whole race, of over 300 brands sponsoring F1 teams.

Elyssa: I love hearing about the balance there of the head and the heart. How is this impacting the decisions you’re going to make in the future? Are you going to do Sponsor X again?

Andrew: I can’t spill all the beans, but we absolutely plan to do more and go even bigger with Sponsor X next year during the 2023 season of Formula 1 with McLaren Racing.

We have a couple of other sponsorships, and we’re thinking about how to apply these principles there, like our partnership with the Seattle Kraken NHL hockey team and their home venue, Climate Pledge Arena. We’re also sponsors of the Special Olympics, which I’m really passionate about, and Pip Hare, an amazing woman who sails solo around the world.

We’re going to apply the same process to all of our sponsorship investments by thinking about what we do to act in a way that’s consistent with our mission, and has a real lasting impact. We have some really cool plans ahead!