All Sponsorship Blog Posts

Recently I caught up with Darren Morgan of Darren Morgan Racing; the 2011, 2012 and 2013 Australian National Drag Racing Association (ANDRA) Top Fuel Champion.

Affectionately known as Morgs, Darren is one of a handful of professional drag racers whose racing operation is completely funded by sponsorship and local investors. In Australia, the norm is for sponsorship to fund part of the racing program, with a significant portion often coming from a racer’s business interests.

Darren was introduced to Top Fuel in the 90s while crewing for drag racing legend Graeme Cowin, both here in Australia and in the US. In 2004 Darren joined the Lamattina Top Fuel Racing team, putting together the total race package including training the crew, building the transporter, preparing the tooling AND taking on the driving duties, winning the 2005 Top Fuel Championship in the process.

Welcome to part 3 of my interview with Nathan Prendergast of Ignition Productions.

In part 2 of the interview we covered:

• Keep your eyes open for opportunities
• The importance of creating a personal brand
• Forget the camera and be natural

Provide value and don’t overrate your worth

Kym: What common mistakes do you see sponsorship seekers make?

Nathan: I would be guessing. But I would think that overrating their worth would be one of them. People can be a little bit arrogant about the way they approach things. Again, potentially, depending on who’s evaluating their worth.

Kym: Does that come back to how you value a sponsorship? It’s not about cost. It doesn’t matter what you think you’re worth. It’s actually about how much value you can return to the sponsor?

In part 1 of the interview we covered:

• Exposure and being unique
• Being prepared
• Create and leverage your media opportunities

Keep your eyes open for opportunities…

Kym: So you’ve got to always be thinking. You can’t just focus purely on what you’re doing right now, but you need to be looking for opportunities, keep your eyes open?

Nathan: You can’t just sit there. You can’t chase the sponsor. They give you a check and go, “Great. Deal Done.” I can go race for the rest of the year because what benefit is a sponsor going to get out of that unless you win every single race, and there’s only a couple of people in our sport that are good enough to do that. I think you need to be constantly thinking, “Okay, how can I service this sponsor better?

Nathan has a long history with motorsport, growing up around race tracks his family owned and operated during the 80s and 90s. From the age of 16 Nathan began commentating at drag racing events at Eastern Creek Raceway. This led to opportunities to work in front of the camera on TV programs like Speed Week here in Australia.

Keen to work behind the camera, Nathan honed his editing skills by putting together drag racing promos. After demonstrating his abilities he was given the opportunity to become an editor with AVE. For close to ten years Nathan worked with AVE, learning how to edit, produce, direct and manage the cameras.

Here’s a summary of my interview with Brett de Hoedt including common mistakes sponsorship seekers make, golden rules for a successful sponsorship and key points from the interview.

The full interview was pretty long so I divided it into 3 parts:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

5 common mistakes sponsorship seekers make: