The Right Environment

We need to be in the right environment to be successful. We can survive in the wrong environment, but it is tough, even grueling. To really succeed, we need to truly be in the right environment. If you are constantly fighting with your partner and they don’t want to live in the city where you have found work, it can result in a bad environment scenario. It can result in a breakup. You may be in a job where you hate your boss or the culture is not right for you. As a result, you won’t do your best work. You won’t thrive. If you leave a peach seed on a counter or in a dark cellar, it will not grow and bear fruit. But if you put it in the ground with good soil, warmth, sunlight, and water, it will thrive and bear fruit. When it is in the wrong environment, it yields nothing.

The same goes for our sector. If the sponsorship or partnership is not in the right environment, or the people working on it don’t believe in it, it will not be successful. I want to cite a few examples to drive home this point. You can work hard, you can work long hours, your event/ activation can be planned to the nth degree, and you can have the right partners, but if the environment is not right, it will fail. Here are some examples from both sides of the fence.

• Years back, KFC decided to partner with the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation in the USA. They offered pink buckets of chicken. The Foundation had built its reputation over the decades on promoting healthy lifestyles. They looked at KFC and dollar signs filled their heads. It was a bust. They raised money until donors pushed back so hard that they shut down the partnership. Bad PR all around. Not the right environment for promoting fried chicken.
• Louisville Bats the minor league baseball team. During COVID when there was no baseball, they ran a campaign using VR and encouraging fans to visit their partner restaurant and its multiple locations to take a picture with VR Batty (the team’s Mascot) in the background while picking up a curbside order. There were lots of prizing and enter-to-win fun. The environment was perfect. People could stay protected, support a local restaurant, get great food, and win prizes—a home run by any standard. The season (warm) was right and the elements all came into alignment. The environment was perfect.
• There was an industry member who had been in the business for about 5-6 years across two to three different organizations. She was a sponsorship salesperson for the property side. She moved around because each place she worked was “not the right fit.” It was too big, too small, no infrastructure, too structured, no creativity allowed. “I am willing to work hard, but not willing to dedicate my life to it.” Working evenings and weekends were not an option for her, but she was in the sponsorship industry. She wanted to work with people and was good at it, but not really a collaborator. She left the industry. She is thriving in a whole new creative/ innovative world where she runs her own business and is the master of her own domain. Our industry was not the right environment for her. She learned a lot while here, and applies a ton of that learning, but she needed free rein. Now she has it and is blossoming. She is truly in the right environment and doing great.

I watched (a few times) great front line staff people (doorman at a bar, sponsorship salesperson, radio sales guy) struggle when they changed environments.

• The doorman was promoted to manager. Prior to that, he was head doorman and had the respect of patrons and staff. When he spoke, people listened. The club owner could get things done when he went through this doorman to “talk to the troops.” When he became a manager, that was lost. He had to make decisions based on profit, seniority, etc. versus “getting the feel.” He went back to being a doorman and thrived once again.
• There was a great sponsorship salesperson. They moved him to manager and he failed—same situation as the doorman. But in this case, he lost the ability to work with clients and be creative. Instead, he had to manage salespeople (ugh). He went back to the environment where he thrived. He is back focused on sales and managing accounts versus people.
• Finally, there was a radio sales manager. He left radio to go into the home building sector. Now, there are two different industries with different price points, sales cycles, and objectives. It took him about seven months to figure out the home building industry was not the environment for him. He went back to radio and thrived once again.

Make sure you and your events, programs, activation, and partners are in the right environments to thrive.