Attracting sponsorship is tricky at the best of times but attracting sponsorship for a brand new project offers particular challenges. Richard Sanders looks at how the Manchester International Festival is going about generating sponsorship in advance of its launch next year.
The Manchester International Festival will be the worlds first international festival of original, new work commissioned from across the spectrum of arts, popular culture, innovation and music. For the Festival team, generating sponsors was and is a challenge. Following early financial support from Manchester City Council and the Urban Cultural Programme, awarded in 2004 and amounting to £2.5m, the fledgling Festival team, led by Festival Director, Alex Poots, and Associate Director, Christine Cort, worked closely with the City Council to target appropriate potential local sponsors to sign up to the Festival first.
It was originally the City Councils idea to develop a new international festival in the city as a legacy of the Commonwealth Games; and it was the city who appointed Alex Poots based on his track record of programming and presenting innovative large scale events. This track record included taking English National Opera to Glastonbury, a new production by Arvo Pärt, Anish Kapoor and Peter Sellars at Tate Modern and the first Fat Boy Slim on Brighton Beach. Armed with only a vision, reputable track records and bags of enthusiasm, the team set about developing relationships with a wide range of key local public and private sector stakeholders, networks and businesses, including Marketing Manchester, MIDAS (Manchester Inward Development Agency), Arts About Manchester, Manchester City Centre Management Company, Manchester Evening News and CIDS (Creative Industries Development Service), to name a few. The Festival therefore used a non-traditional arts sponsorship approach talking to companies without any marketing collateral, not even a sponsorship pack!
One of the legacies of hosting the Commonwealth Games in Manchester is that the partnerships and collaborations across different sectors have flourished, and former Games sponsors are keen to develop and extend their relationships with exciting new initiatives with wide-reaching potential. However, a considerable amount of work was required to assess the potential benefits and impacts that a festival might generate. An economic benefits analysis, commissioned by the City Council and carried out by Cambridge Policy Consultants, estimated that a festival could generate approximately 160,000 visitors in its first year with a projected economic impact of £22m.
Whilst the early negotiations were taking place, the Festival also had to develop a tiered sponsorship structure and benefits packages. My appointment and my background in sports sponsorship has enabled the Festival to utilise best practice ideas from the world of sport, particularly in developing commercial rights packages used by rights holders in sport. I was also able to bring sports business law firm Couchman Harrington Associates (CHA) in to develop the underlying intellectual property and commercial programme for the Festival. After months of negotiations the Festival signed up the first three top tier sponsors: United Utilities, Northwest Regional Development Agency and Bruntwood with the largest single sponsorship deal for a single festival totalling £1.8m. This was announced after last Novembers successful Trailblazer event Gorillaz: Demon Days Live at Manchesters Opera House Theatre. With another two sponsors to be announced soon and negotiations underway with a range of other potential sponsors in different sectors and media partners, the Festival is aiming to reach its sponsorship targets.
The ongoing challenge is for us to create unique commercial partnerships which protect us and the artists as rights holders, whilst allowing the appropriate access to deliver value to all commercial partners. Drawing on the citys pivotal role in music, the Festival programme will have a focus on new music premiering work by established and emerging international musicians. In step with the citys history, the Festival will also focus on the important issues and stories of our time, through debates, film and new commissions.
Richard Sanders is Head of Sponsorship at the Manchester International Festival. The inaugural biennial Festival will
run from 28 June through to15 July 2007.
t: 0161 238 7300;
w: http://www.manchesterinternationalfestival.com