Sponsorship
& Partnership Strategy
Community Engagement • Sponsorship Strategy • Partnership Marketing • Asset Assessment • Campaign Strategy • Creative & Messaging • Research & Insights • Measurement & ROI
A meaningful partnership can unlock new audiences, improve perceptions, and strengthen communities. I build and manage sponsorships with sports, entertainment, and nonprofit partners that deliver value well beyond logo impressions.
01
Starbucks
The Challenge: Starbucks does a lot of good – especially in its hometown – and needed to reinforce that among Seattlites.
The Solution: I pioneered a local partnership strategy that transformed traditional marketing sponsorships into innovative platforms for storytelling and community engagement. More than a transaction of money for logo placement, I approached sponsorships as a powerful communications vehicle and dove deep with individual partners to understand and leverage all available assets for engaging audiences. I developed unique sponsorship campaigns with sports, arts, and entertainment partners that elevated the Starbucks brand and communicated what it stood for.
For example, initiatives like Seahawks Guest Barista, Seahawks Player Job Shadowing, and the Up Next young artist series with STG reinforced Starbucks’ commitment to young people. Hometown Heroes with UW Husky Football celebrated military veterans. Collaborative volunteer events with the Seattle Seahawks, Sounders, and University of Washington reinforced Starbucks commitment to community service. Creating a VIP lounge for Starbucks Rewards members at Bumbershoot demonstrated Starbucks’ commitment to customer service.
Collectively, this approach served to raise Starbucks’ profile as a respected hometown company invested in the local community and committed to positive change.
02
Lyft
The Challenge: As the challenger brand in a highly competitive region, Lyft needed to win hearts and minds of customers in order to differentiate itself.
The Solution: I developed and led the sponsorship strategy including investments with other local beloved brands including the Seahawks, UW Huskies, STG, and Capitol Hill Block Party. Building on my philosophy that sponsorship are powerful marketing vehicles, my team created in depth campaigns with partners around a shared objective and leveraged earned, owned, digital, experiential, and out-of-home channels – rather than relying on logo placement alone. The approach I championed not only propelled Lyft to achieve record-breaking ride growth and to become the market share leader in the PNW, but it also became the playbook for Lyft’s local sponsorship strategy in regions across the country.
03
Amazon
The Challenge: Amazon supported hundreds of organizations in the Puget Sound through donations, partnerships, and sponsorships that were managed by dozens of internal teams. The brand needed a cohesive strategy to realize the full value of its investments.
The Solution: Doing something a new way can be hard, so first, I led a team to conduct original research and used data to align cross-functional leaders behind a unified objective and to understand the value sponsorships can offer. Then, I created a tiered approach that frugally prioritized the company’s existing investments, and built a sponsorship campaign mechanism designed to be scaled across hundreds of partners. Finally, I developed a sponsorship strategy that leveraged partnerships as campaign-style communication vehicles rather than transactional logo placement. This data-driven approach also created the infrastructure to validate and measure success of local sponsorships, a persistent challenge across the industry.
