Business Insights Interview: Jackie Fast, MD at Slingshot Sponsorship

Mar 1st 2011

In the current economic climate, brands are searching harder than ever for new ways to increase revenue – frequently this is coming via inventive and interesting channels that might not have previously been considered. Sponsorship is one such activity that has been receiving greater attention in recent months, providing an effective marketing outlet for brands to reach new audiences and markets.

Slingshot Sponsorship is a brand media activation agency that helps organisations, charities, and individuals create new revenue streams by integrating and creating sponsorship opportunities for brands to partner with. We caught up with Managing Director Jackie Fast for a chat about her background, the company, being part of a new business startup and the business environment in the UK at the moment.

Jackie Fast

Hi Jackie. First things first, can you tell us a little about your professional background, and how Slingshot Sponsorship started?
I have been working in sales and marketing for the past 15 years – typically focused around business development. Being a Canadian, my first professional roles were working with international businesses based in Canada – in the private and government sector. This provided experience in different cultural approaches and an understanding of business on a greater scale.

The launch of [Slingshot] came about from my experience in my previous role at the Direct Marketing Association where I was responsible for developing and integrating the first sponsorship department. Through this experience, I developed an approach to utilise audiences as a revenue stream by creating brand media assets.

Can you provide a bit of background on Slingshot as a company. Who or what is your target market?
Slingshot is fairly new to the sponsorship industry, having only officially launched in September 2010. However, it is backed by significant experience and we’ve been very fortunate to have clients who started with us at launch. Since inception, we’ve been working with a very diverse range of clients including some high profile musicians, international brands, publishers, e-commerce sites, and charities to help them identify ways in which they can work smarter through partnership opportunities that they create.

Our target market is varied, although the common denominator is that they all generate an audience that is valuable to businesses looking to promote their services or products to. Obviously, all companies are looking to do this in one form or another, so it makes what we do applicable across many different verticals and business sectors. Our typical client is one who has generated an engaged audience through their core business activities, but has seen a recent decline in revenue due to the recession, shift in market, and/or public funding cuts. In order to continue business growth, they have had to look at new ways that expenses can be reduced or new revenue can be created. Sponsorship can be the perfect solution.

Where does Slingshot call home? Tell us a bit about the area and building.
[We are] located at 37-38 Long Acre, London, WC2E 9JT based in Covent Garden. We are in the most convenient location – literally 10 steps away from the underground station. The area is fantastic as it is so central; however, the restaurant choices could be better. The silver lining is that we are only a stones throw from Soho so the walk back to the office after a lovely lunch is nice.

What is an average week like for the MD of Slingshot?
There is no average work week for me. Things change all the time and we constantly have to be flexible to meet the needs of our clients and our business. This is one of the best things about what we do. Some weeks involve attending a lot of client events – anything from black-tie balls at the Grosvenor House Hotel to high profile breakfast events in the City. Other weeks can involve white board strategy planning and briefing in creative work for new sponsorship proposals.

As we typically start working with clients at integration stage – with them having little experience in sponsorship – and then taking them to delivery, we can be at many different stages with different clients. This means that one day might be spent tweaking copy for benefits in a sponsorship proposal for one client and the next day spent on the phone setting up meetings to discuss how brands can get involved with our client’s media assets. The variety of our day to day work makes working at Slingshot Sponsorship exciting.

How has Slingshot Sponsorship found the past year? Did the state of the economy affect you?
The past year was our first year in business, which based on the current economic climate could have been very stressful. However, as our value proposition is helping other businesses achieve commercial success through monetising brand media assets, the climate is ideal for us. Our business has grown dramatically in the past year as the current economic climate has highlighted the need for improvement and innovation in other businesses.

The combination of [the economy] and public funding cuts has forced organisations to find new strategies to ensure continued business growth.

What more could be done to help small/medium businesses thrive in the UK?
I believe that business partners through sponsorship is key to helping SMEs thrive in the UK – especially during our current economic climate. Partnerships can help create synergies through resource enabling organisations to not only save on costs, but also to take advantage of better services and opportunities. They key is to understanding how to manipulate your brand media assets to create return on investment for both partners.

Moving on to marketing, how much of an online presence does Slingshot Sponsorship have on social networks? Do you view it as an effective part of your marketing?
We have a fairly decent online presence, but it could always be improved. As we are a start-up and what we do is fairly innovative, we rely on word of mouth as our core marketing strategy. This has been greatly helped by making sure our blog content is visible through social networks and that we are actively engaging with the platform and our content.

Specifically, I am a huge advocate of Twitter and am constantly encouraging other brands to get involved. It is a great asset to marketing and communications departments as it helps direct traffic to the messaging they work so hard to create. I am by no means a social media expert, but the benefits I have found through social networks for promotion of Slingshot Sponsorship have been immense. I think that if your potential customers, current customers, or industry peers are using social networks, you might consider what you are missing out on.

Are you a smartphone user? Are there any business related apps you’d recommend?
I am literally obsessed with my Apple iPhone. I don’t have any specific business related apps I’d recommend as I think it depends on the nature of the business; however, I tend to use the TweetDeck [Twitter] app almost everyday and could not live without my Google Maps app. I also love the Toptable app for personal and business reasons as it is so handy when booking restaurants for lunch meetings – you can do it on your iPhone in the meeting without having to make a single call.

What have been some of the biggest challenges for Slingshot, and what would you say are the biggest challenges faced by businesses in general this year?
The biggest challenge for our company as a whole has been articulating our value proposition to new clients. What we do is fairly unique so the way in which we work is developed and highly tailored to the clients we work with. Although this is great approach for our current clients, it makes it difficult to describe our process to new clients we’d like to work with. Having simple concepts to overcome confusion so that it is easy for people who want to work with you to get through the red tape is the key to overcoming our company challenge.

I feel that the biggest challenges facing businesses in general this year will be the continued economic climate. Although some people believe we are coming out of a recession, I still feel that we are very much within it – especially with the recent public funding cuts. Businesses are still wary of hiring and moving forward to quickly. Until the market stabilises and we see a longer period of continued growth across all sectors, I think we will remain in this transition period.

Are you attending or speaking at any business events or conferences this year?
I think attending business events and conferences is one of the easiest ways to stay informed about what is going on in your industry. Attending free seminars through exhibitions can be a great way to find out what brands are doing successful and can also put you in touch with some extremely creative case studies you may not have yet seen. I wish I had more time to attend everything!

However, due to lack of time, I can only attend a select few a year and this year I plan to attend UK AWARE, Think! Sponsorship, Technology for Marketing & Advertising, eConsultancy’s JUMP, International Confex, Ad:Tech, the Digital Publishing Conference, and Internet World.

I spoke last year at a couple of Direct Marketing Association events along with sponsorship conferences: Sport & iGaming and Marketing Week’s Sponsorship Summit, which I will aim to speak at again this year.

What’s the best piece of business advice you’ve ever been given?
The best piece of advice I’ve been given happened just recently when someone told me to keep it simple. This piece of advice was given to me by a trusted friend and who has experience in starting service based agencies so has been through it all and can speak from previous experience. I tend to overcomplicate strategies including Slingshot Sponsorship’s value proposition – more based on poor articulation rather than actual implementation – which can make it difficult to get the message across. Keeping things simple and straightforward is something I tell clients every day when putting together their sponsorship proposals, but clearly not something I take my own advice on!

Give us some examples of new initiatives or campaigns that you currently working on? What does the next year (and beyond) hold for Slingshot in this regard?
We have just finished implementing a new sponsorship strategy for Haymarket Consumer Media for their What Car? Car of the Year Awards. It enables brands in the motoring industry to get involved with this high profile, prestigious event through some exciting sponsorship opportunities. We have created and developed their media assets through a combination of online, print and social enabling brands to communicate their messages to an engaged B2C and B2B audience. We have just completed the creative and are in the process of the next stage which is going out and getting brands involved with this exciting opportunity.

We have also started work on an exciting new project with Random House’s Good Pub Guide. This popular review guide has created a loyal and engaged B2C and B2B audience in a niche food and beverage market – creating the perfect opportunity to build sponsorship opportunities for brands. We will be working with them to develop some new and innovative brand media assets that have never been done before – very exciting times.

You can engage with Slingshot Sponsorship though its blog, Twitter profile (@Slingshot_UK), and LinkedIn page. You can also follow Jackie on Twitter (@JackieFast) and LinkedIn.

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