This is always one of the most challenging blog posts of the year to write. Neither Derek nor I are natural salesmen (especially Derek – his daughter pleaded with him last spring to ask his co-workers to each buy a single box of Thin Mints to support her girl scout troop. She was grounded indefinitely due to “the audacity to make such a preposterous request” [dw note: FAKE NEWS! My daughter has never been part of the girl scouts. The statement about my salesmanship, however, is wholly accurate. Carry on…]).
Meeting folks use all sorts of fancy tricks and numbers to substantiate why sponsors (or more commonly, exhibitors) should spend money to have a presence at their events. Typically, this surrounds attracting attention and potential clients to their organizations, and there is certainly nothing remarkably misleading about this tactic. Hey, we do it too.
So yes, you can look near the end of our Sponsor prospectus to get a sense of the CMEpalooza audience and our annual reach (spoiler alert: it’s a lot of people).
But at its core, the value of CMEpalooza sponsorship is the opportunity to be a part of something that is both valuable to the CME community and, well, fun. Let’s face it – we don’t exactly color within the lines when it comes to some of our promotional efforts. I’m particularly proud of my A Few Good Men parody from 2015 and my mea culpa last fall regarding old leaked audio of a conversation Derek and I had years ago. Derek gets giddy writing his bizarre awesome [dw note: fixed your typo] CMEpalooza haikus.
Last year, we extended some of the fun to sponsor “events” such as #CMEpalooza Challenge and CMEpalooza Bingo!! I have no idea what we’ll have in store as a spring promotional event, but I promise that there will be something and that it will be focused on bringing attention to the good and unique work all of our sponsors do.
Now a few truths:
We can’t promise that if you sponsor CMEpalooza, your business will grow by a guaranteed 20% this year.
We can’t promise that if you sponsor CMEpalooza, you will suddenly be flooded with phone calls saying, “Hey, I read about you guys on the CMEpalooza website and I’m really interested in learning more about your organization.”
We can’t promise that if you sponsor CMEpalooza, you will win Powerball this year.
What we can promise is that you will find your CMEpalooza sponsorship to have some value and that you will be proud to be associated with us. If your business does grow by 20% this year and if you do get that deluge of phone calls and if you do win Powerball, we’ll of course happily take all of the credit (and 20% of your winnings).
All we ask if that you are scratching your head and thinking, “Hmm, maybe…” that you take a gander at our Sponsorship Prospectus. We offer a bunch of different potential goodies – the higher your level of financial support, the more goodie-ness you get (please won’t someone save CMEpalooza Company Spotlight?)
Derek even promises to throw in a free box of Thin Mints for all of this Spring’s sponsors. Once his daughter is allowed out of her room.
CMEPALOOZA 