Over the years Shaun Whatling, CEO of UK-based sponsorship consultancy Redmandarin, has earned a reputation, and no little respect, for his willingness to challenge the accepted wisdom of sponsorship.
He is a free thinker whose approach has been shaped by a career which has taken him from the voluntary sector to the CEO’s chair at Redmandarin via the world’s largest action sports agency - which he co-founded - and a media plc.
That challenging nature is now manifest in a book, ‘Defining Sponsorship’ in which he has drawn together and analysed the cumulated wisdom and insight of a galaxy of sponsorship sector stars in order to cast fresh light on a industry which has, from time to time, appeared to be on the verge of eating itself.
Even the cover of the book appears to deliver a message. It features the skeleton of a dinosaur - an image which might seem to be a case of Whatling getting his conclusions in first.
“The reason for putting the book together was to give a conceptual framework for sponsorship. It is sad the industry is lacking in self awareness. It doesn’t seem to know enough about itself and what it needs to do to articulate its strengths,” he says.
“My understanding of a mature industry is one which is able to accept criticism. It is puerile to rebuff criticism unthinkingly. “You have to be able to put it into a wider context and for me, and many of the book’s contributors, the bigger context is that sponsorship is completely under-valued.
“I agree with contributor Lesa Uckman (co-founder of IEG) that talking about sponsorship from a narrow perspective effectively narrows what it can do for a business.”
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