Check out the complete list of 2010 SMCC Marketing Award winners

With over $1.4 BILLION invested in sponsorship in Canada, are you a PROPERTY looking to improve on your recipe for success in securing sponsors? Are you a company, business or marketing agency representing a SPONSOR needing to get your ROI when it comes to investing in a sponsorship opportunity?

Whether you’re seeking or spending sponsorship dollars, the Western Sponsorship Congress™ is where you need to be on Oct 26 + 27 to get a piece of that sponsorship pie.

Featured this year are:

• 21 Workshop Presenters
• 2 Keynote Addresses
• Five Minute Pitch™ - Panel Discussion
• *NEW* Discovery Session - Panel Discussion
• Networking Opportunities with Leaders in the Industry

In Attendance: Properties, Sponsors, Corporations, Events, Businesses, Marketing + Communications Agencies and more.

For all the details, click on the tabs above or

^*REGISTER NOW - Early Bird pricing ends July 31, 2010*

What is the Western Sponsorship Congress™?

Since 2005, the Western Sponsorship Congress™ has provided professional development and networking opportunities that have focused on a range of sponsorship related topics from inventory development, prospecting, branding, designing proposals, technology, communications, case studies and insights from properties and corporate sponsors.

This two day conference - held annually in October in Calgary, Alberta - is one of the largest sponsorship focused events in Canada.

Each year up to 200 registered delegates and speakers attend from across North America. They represent a cross section of corporations and small businesses that invest in sponsorship, non-profits and charities, sports organizations (professional and amateur), all levels of government and advertising, communications, public relations and sponsorship agencies.

Click here for details.

May 13, 2010 - 7:30am - 5:00pm

Rogers Centre, Toronto

Marketing, Canada’s leading industry magazine, is holding its first sports marketing conference, bringing together some of the brightest thinkers and most successful professionals in the industry for a full day of conversation about the future of sports marketing and how marketers can get in the game.
Presenters will share real examples and lessons from what’s been done before and visionary thinking about what should be done tomorrow.
The conference will cover both sides of the field–marketers and sports companies alike–and delve into the most pressing issues facing companies involved in sports marketing, like finding the right fit for your brand and how to measure the return on your investment.
And with the largest and most important sporting event in Canadian history just concluded, no sports marketing conference would be complete without some lessons from Vancouver 2010.

Regular ticket price $395 + GST

Conference Agenda

Sports Marketing

Rogers Centre
One Blue Jays Way
Toronto, ON M5J 1J1

7:45 am to 8:40am
Registration & Continental Breakfast

8:40 am to 8:45 am
Opening Remarks
David Brown, Managing Editor, Marketing Magazine

8:45 am to 9:30 am
Lessons from Vancouver 2010:
Bill Cooper, Director, commercial rights management, VANOC 2010
Jolan Storch, sport and sponsorship lawyer with Macleod Dixon (and former member of the national volleyball team)

Bill Cooper was the person responsible for protecting the investments of sponsors at the Vancouver Games. He’ll share sponsorship insights, lessons and stories from Vancouver and talk about how the successes achieved over three weeks in Vancouver –by athletes and marketers alike– can be carried forward, after the glow of Vancouver has gone out, to the London Games in 2012 and beyond. Of course, not every marketer trying to leverage Olympic goodwill was entitled too. Cooper will be followed by Jolan Storch, a partner with Macleod Dixon and Group Leader for the firm’s Sport and Sponsorship group, who will share stories and insights on the always controversial topic of ambush marketing.

9:30 am to 10:30 am
Amateur Athletics & Olympic sponsorships– The business case for doing it again:
Bob McCown, host of the Fan590’s Prime Time Sports
Jacqueline Ryan, Director, Olympic Marketing, RBC
Peter Nowlan, Chief Marketing Officer, Molson Coors Canada
Chris Rudge, recently retired CEO of the Canadian Olympic Committee
This roundtable discussion will bring together marketing leaders from Olympic sponsors like RBC and Molson along with expert observers like Chris Rudge and Bob McCown, who has called on corporate Canada to play a bigger role in the sponsorship of Canada’s amateur athletes. But is there a business case for sponsoring Canada’s Olympians after Vancouver?

10:30 am to 10:45 am
Networking Break

10:45 am to 11:30 am
Golden Olympian Denny Morrison:
Russell Reimer, Managing Partner of Agenda Sport Marketing
This session will provide rare, first-hand insights into the relationships between sponsor and athlete with Denny Morrison, a speedskating Gold medal winner in Vancouver. The session will delve into how important sponsorship has been to Morrison, and just how important Morrison has been to his sponsors like Wrigley.

11:30 am to 12:15 pm
An update: 2015 Pan American and Parapan American Games
The Pan/Parapan Am Games may be five years away, but the time to start planning is now. Roger Garland, chair of the board of directors of the Toronto 2015 organizing committee, will share the vision for the Games and begin the conversation about how marketers can be involved.

12:15 pm to 1:15 pm
Lunch

1:15 pm to 2:15 pm
The right sports sponsorship for your brand
Brent Barootes, President, Partnership Group
Making dollars and cents of sports marketing.
A marketer can enjoy tremendous return on a hockey investment without ever knowing what a faceoff is. Brent Barootes will discuss the importance of finding the right sporting fit for a brand and how to measure the sponsorship ROI.

2:15 pm to 3:00 pm
Pro sports, new rules:
This will be a panel discussion with major professional sporting properties like the Toronto Blue Jays and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. The Canadian sporting landscape has changed and marketers can’t afford to put their money into sponsorships without knowing there’s a payoff. This session will discuss some of the new rules of professional sports sponsorships, what marketers need and how the pro franchises are giving it to them.
Gary Murphy, Vice President of Sales, Sports Entertainment, Rogers
Remaining panelist TBD

3:00 pm to 3:15 pm
Networking Break

3:15 pm to 4:00 pm
New sports, new rules: A changing sporting landscape includes sports that weren’t even sports a few years ago. Red Bull has enjoyed remarkable success with Crashed Ice, an extreme hybrid “sport” that sees competitors skating (hurtling?) down an icy hill over jumps and bumps and thrilling thousands of new fans along the way. We’ll have a session on how marketers are connecting with fans of action sports and the youth market, from mixed marital arts to skating and snowboarding.
Panelist TBD

4:45 pm to 4:50 pm
Closing Remarks
David Brown, Managing Editor, Marketing Magazine

Speakers

Brent Barootes		Bill Cooper		Jacquie Ryan		Russell Reimer
Denny Morrison

Click here for details

http://www.marketingmag.ca/sports/

Monique Giroux, Senior Director, CIBC and SMCC Chair opened up the event.

Jo-Ann McArthur, SMCC MC introduces twitter backchannel #smcc to encourage audience to interact throughout the day

Jim Little, Chief Brand and Communication Officer, RBC shares his Olympic journey, getting out early with their promotions and national torch relay created excitement and unexpected activity in communities across the country. Letting the communities embrace the relay and do it their way.

Stephane Berranger, Commercial Strategy Manager, Quebec, Sleeman Breweries, talks about the integration of their sponsorship of Quebec’s 400 Anniversary celebrations; this program was the 2009 SMCC best in show award winner.

Norm O’Reilly, visiting scholar, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, shares insights from 2010 Canadian Sponsorship Survey. One of the biggest surprises from the survey was that sponsorship spending did not decrease.

Jamie Michaels, Director of Marketing, CBC Media Sales and Marketing shares best practices in branded entertainment sponsorships. Key to success is integration, activation and social media.

Lucie Lamoureux, Corporate Director, Sponsorships and Social Commitment, Loto Quebec, talks about the importance of research, and how their measurement tool sponsorship performance from Sponsorium allows them to meet their return on objective.

IFM Senior Vice President, North America, Derek Mager explains how research intelligence helps marketers learn from the past, make informed decisions, implement successful strategies, optimize performance, and create opportunities.

Panel: Overcoming Hurdles to Creating Opportunities: Janice Price, CEO Luminato; Sue Bundy, Director, Corporate Sponsorships and Marketing Alliances, BMO Financial Group; Andreas Duess, Principle fisheye Connection Architects