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Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
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I'm sitting in the St. John's airport staring at a poster for Stewart McKelvey, a legal firm in the area. Poster shows a Chess King, with a reflection of a lighthouse below it. It looks like someone to try for sponsorship.
I'm sitting in the St. John's airport staring at a poster for Stewart McKelvey, a legal firm in the area. Poster shows a Chess King, with a reflection of a lighthouse below it. It looks like someone to try for sponsorship.
What benefit would he get from sponsoring chess? He already has all of the benefits of being associated with chess (serious, indicative of intelligence, regal) without having to pay a dime.
What benefit would he get from sponsoring chess? He already has all of the benefits of being associated with chess (serious, indicative of intelligence, regal) without having to pay a dime.
Interesting. Putting up a poster of a real [professional] hockey player or team/league logo could suit a company's image in a similar way, except that permission (= $) would be needed. Besides that, a real player, team or league would have a considerable fan following.
A poster showing a 'real' chess piece, on the other hand, costs nothing, as you point out, and there is little reason at the moment, in Canada at least, to show a real [competitive] chess player since there would be little fan recognition (there could have been an exception for Fischer, while he was still not so controversial, or perhaps for KS soon after Saint John 1988, especially if he had gone farther in the Candidates after).
The question is, why didn't all sponsors of chess in Canada in the past followed this line of reasoning, i.e. just use posters of chess pieces for their advertising? Perhaps it is that they saw benefit in sponsoring a tournament or organization for chess players. There could be an advantage in using the image (or the mention of a governing organization) of tough, serious, brainy, regal chess competitions, as opposed to sponsorship/advertising based on a mere single chess player or piece, which may only be suggestive of a single game between just two opponents. Besides this, I should note that chess competitions for kids or women exclusively might be attractive for some potential sponsors, if this approach hasn't been tried already.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
The question is, why didn't all sponsors of chess in Canada in the past followed this line of reasoning, i.e. just use posters of chess pieces for their advertising?
First, to answer your question, many companies do choose to put up ads for sports that don't use pro teams or pro athletes. Then some will put up ads that *just* use pro athlese so they don't have to pay the licencing fees. Our sport/game/art doesn't have any such valuable trademarks and as such, it's not a relevant comparison.
Not to re-hash old arguments, but it is what I have always said - almost any business sponsoring a chess event in Canada (with potential exceptions) should be approached as doing it as community goodwill, rather than a marketing project with ROI.
Now, this past weekend, I played in a tournament in Blackpool England, where if you stayed in the hosting hotel, you received 20 pounds off your entry fee (which was 36 pounds). The hotel would then kick some amount into the tournament (tbh I didn't get too inquisitive as I was just there to get slapped around the board, which I succeeded in doing).
So, in this situation, you had a sponsor who had (let's say) 100 extra rooms filled, but at 20 pounds less than their usual rate; still a good ROI for them as rooms were still running at ~80 pounds per night. Further, they get some benefit as if I would go back to Blackpool for a visit, I'd be inclined to stay in that same hotel again. That's a great example of a proper approach to a sponsor based on "you invest X and you get X+1 return back" which will create long term sponsorship possibilities. The hotel was jammed and I would imagine they were happy with the results of the deal.
On the other hand, if a local accounting firm or lawyer (for example) had sponsored that tournament, in my mind they would be essentially making a charitable donation, as it's unlikely their sponsorship money would lead to any significant new business for them. You're approaching this person as "you invest X and you will get nothing back other than maybe a heartfelt thank you". These kinds of sponsorships are usually dependent entirely on that one chess fan who works in the company.
I've always believed you need to classify sponsorship attempts into one of three types:
1) Actual ROI based marketing proposals: Go to ICC and ask them to sponsor the Canadian Open. The offer would be: $10 off your Canadian Open entry fee *if* you provide a valid ICC handle with your entry fee. Then ask ICC to kick in $10 for every ICC member who is in the tourney. What you want to do is clearly tie in: your sponsorship will lead to more business for you.
2) Small companies: Go to a local university and propose a project to a marketing class. When I was in school, we always had to do project work, and one of the biggest pains of it was trying to find a suitable external project. Say "Chess has a lot of positive qualities attached, and we need to find a way to tie our players into those qualities to make a mockup ad that would be impressive to show to sponsors". If you don't have a lot of steak to sell (that being clear and obvious ROI), you have to sell some sizzle (a cool looking ad that a small company would be excited to be associated with).
3) Large companies: Stop approaching marketing departments for sponsorship; they demand ROI. I go through this on a daily basis with our marketing department. However, almost every company has a "community outreach" or similar type of department - these are the areas that sponsor kids soccer teams or whatever. Those are the people we need to talk to about chess sponsorship, because they are just looking to get a list of relatively inexpensive projects they can put in the annual report that will make everyone feel good. This strategy has to be worked on continually as these kinds of "sponsorships" are one offs and have to be re-established consistently.
Ok, I totally rehashed my original arguments once again. But I still believe that until the CFC rethinks their marketing strategy, we are never going to see any particular sponsorship of chess.
I'd be curious to know how many of the over 40 group of players who write here or are CFC members played in the provincial junior events.
Not quite 40 yet (but close). I played in one junior event in my life, an active tournament in December of my last year of eligibility. Never in any kind of CYCC/GEMS/whatever else it's been.
what I have always said - almost any business sponsoring a chess event in Canada (with potential exceptions) should be approached as doing it as community goodwill, rather than a marketing project with ROI.
Come to think of it, the goodwill approach probably IS what was at least partly used to obtain sponsorship in the majority of cases in Canada in the past, though a given pitch to a company may have also involved stating the vague hope for a ROI ("if you sponsor our tournament [or chess organization, for that matter?], potential customers may remember you from the publicity for some time to come, even if they don't play chess).
A pitch is also greatly assisted by personal connections to the company in question, which may cause someone to give a break to a chess event [or chess organization?] that they otherwise normally wouldn't.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
I played the Manitoba Junior only one year and won it. That would have been around 1960 or 61.
I didn't realize that we were, relatively speaking, that close in our ages. :)
I came in second in the 1978-9 Canadian Junior, as well as the Ontario one. The 1979-80 Juniors I played in didn't have nearly as stellar a finish for me. However, when I write that I finished second in a given event, I fear that some jokester will reply "Who was the other guy?".
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
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