Sponsor Direct Strengthens Product Offering with Strategic Acquisition and Partnership Agreement
-- Sponsor Direct Acquires SponsorAid and Partners with Image Impact to Enhance Industry Leading Software Application SponsorPort 2.0 --
NEW YORK, NY, March 29, 2006 - Sponsor Direct®, the leading provider of Web-based sponsorship management tools and solutions for the sponsorship industry, today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire SponsorAid, the only existing online solution offering systematic dollar valuation of sponsorship assets. Sponsor Direct also announced today that it has partnered with Image Impact, the leading Web-based provider of brand placement evaluation services. The addition of these new extensions to Sponsor Direct's core application, SponsorPort 2.0, will further strengthen the most comprehensive front-end and back-end online sponsorship management platform in the industry for new and existing customers. Sponsor Direct's most recent clients include Ameriquest Mortgage Company, Nestlé Waters Canada, Washington Mutual, Nationwide Insurance, Relay Sponsorship & Event Marketing, Dick's Sporting Goods, 24-Hour Fitness, and UPS.
The combination of Sponsor Direct's SponsorPort application and SponsorAid's online valuation capabilities will provide customers with a powerful and comprehensive suite of seamlessly integrated Web-based sponsorship management resources to source, screen, evaluate, value, manage, and measure new and existing sponsorship opportunities from their desktop.
"Quick and reliable access to a fair financial snapshot of new or existing sponsorship opportunities is an absolute necessity in today's fast moving and competitive marketing environment," says Mark Rockefeller, founder and CEO of Sponsor Direct. "SponsorAid's ability to provide such information and our ability to integrate this service into our existing application made this an easy decision that we believe will have an enormous impact on effective sponsorship management and decision making for our customers going forward."
"The announcement that Sponsor Direct is acquiring SponsorAid is great news for Miller Brewing. The combination of SponsorAid's valuation services with Sponsor Direct's overall sponsorship management platform should offer Miller Brewing the best of both worlds,” says Dockery Clark, director, Sports and Alliance Marketing at Miller Brewing.
Sponsor Direct will add Chris Thompson, former founder and president of SponsorAid, to its management personnel. "I am very excited to join the Sponsor Direct team," Thompson says. “They are the clear leader and pioneers in sponsorship management software, and I strongly believe the combination of our capabilities will have a major positive impact on the industry as a whole."
The addition of Image Impact's brand placement evaluation service will allow SponsorPort customers to receive brand placement quality and monetary measurements and values directly on their SponsorPort desktop. "We are constantly looking for new ways to add value and help improve how our customers manage, track, measure, and optimize their sponsorship programs and investments and our relationship with Image Impact clearly delivers toward this goal," says Ken Brenner, president of Sponsor Direct. "We are committed to helping companies address the management of the entire sponsorship lifecycle with our Web-based infrastructure and are dedicated to delivering the most relevant, dynamic, easy-to-use, and robust sponsorship management platform possible to aid in this effort."
Using cutting-edge technology, Image Impact assures timeliness, accuracy, and verifiability at unprecedented levels to deliver brand placement quality measurements and monetary values. Image Impact identifies, records, and measures all appearances of brand identifiers presented in targeted mass media programming including signage, graphics, and audio, and active or passive product placements.
"It is our belief that now, more than ever, sponsorship professionals need the proper tools and framework to capture and manage critical information, to help improve decision making, to automate time-consuming tasks, and to institutionalize sponsorship processes across brands and business lines,” says Brenner. Our goal remains to help empower corporate sponsors to find the best opportunities for their brand and business faster and easier, to equip sponsors to negotiate smarter, and to help companies manage and measure their sponsorship investments more consistently to better optimize the opportunity at hand."
Sponsor Direct will be integrating SponsorAid's sponsorship financial valuation tool and Image Impact's brand placement evaluation tool into its SponsorPort 2.0 platform, which will then be available as an option for all existing and new Sponsor Direct customers.
"We made the switch to Sponsor Direct not only because they are best in breed for proposal management, but because SponsorPort 2.0 will enable us to track, activate, and measure our current portfolio,” says Christine Bunch, manager, Sponsorships and Events at Ameriquest Mortgage Company.
Sponsor Direct maintains its headquarters in Tarrytown, NY, and a sales office located at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City.
About Sponsor Direct
Founded in 2000, Sponsor Direct® is the leading developer of Web-based software applications that improve workflow and information management for corporate sponsors and their agencies. Sponsor Direct's software helps companies capture the enormous benefits and efficiencies made possible by moving from paper-based to electronic management of all information relating to sponsorships, product placements, and corporate contributions. No other company combines Sponsor Direct's experience in state-of-the-art Web-based technology development with an in-depth understanding of the sponsorship process. For a complete listing of Sponsor Direct's clients, please go to www.sponsordirect.com.
About SponsorAid
Founded in 2002, SponsorAid has provided a financial assessment for more than $200 million in negotiated sponsorship agreements. During this time, SponsorAid has managed the entire proposal submission process for event sponsorship on behalf of the Miller Brewing Company. Unique among companies offering Web-based proposal management, the essence of the SponsorAid solution is the systematic dollar valuation of sponsorship assets. SponsorAid allows properties to submit sponsorship assets according to highly delineated, quantifiable criteria, which is programmed to a database of 100,000 coefficients that calculates values in sixteen asset categories. The fourth version of SponsorAid technology will be introduced in April 2006, and will provide nearinstantaneous turnaround from the point of proposal submission to property valuation.
About Image Impact
Image Impact identifies, records, and measures all appearances of brand identifiers presented in targeted mass media programming, including signage, graphics, audio, and active or passive product placements. The quality of every brand detection is evaluated based on its duration, size, and whether or not they appear in isolation of competing brand identifiers. Image Impact provides two important summary statistics: the Quality Index (QISM) and the Monetary Value (MVSM). The QISM measures the quality of the presentation's potential for impacting viewing audiences. The MVSM provides a fair market value of the brand placement opportunity.
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