I told them no 5x. Then I did my homework…

With 20 years in the sponsorship business I like to think I can separate the winners and losers quickly. Efficiency has become a necessity because I get approached by hundreds of properties each month.

So when I was contacted by The Second Annual African Muzik Magazine awards my first reaction was: I don't know anything about this channel, how can I possibly be the right guy to represent this property? But they persisted and so I dug in and did my homework.

It quickly became obvious that I almost passed on a great property that the mainstream knows almost nothing about.

I had to dig, but here are a few highlights:

• Not only is there a great awards show, but the fan base on Facebook has over 500,000 likes and a reach of over 21 million.
• The demographics for African Immigrants are higher in education, income and home ownership than the U.S. average, by a lot.
• The brand loyalty and use of social media is double the national average.

It was like finding the secret fishing hole that almost no one knows about. And isn't that one of the biggest problems we marketers have? Dealing with the noise of over marketing in our channels?

I was so tied up in making quick judgments that I almost passed on a real jewel. We are having great success with our outreach. It took time to distill their messaging and perfect the outreach and now we can see the path to continued growth for many years.

P.S. I wrote this to share the business lesson that I learned from a prospective client. If you would like to know more about the African Muzik Magazine Awards please contact me.