Freeman doubles down on strategic sponsorships

When it comes to putting on successful events, organisations are constantly challenged to innovate, increase revenue, drive attendance and create exciting sponsorships that drive engagement. With this in mind, Freeman has  announced it is expanding its sponsorship practice to help solve clients’ revenue and audience engagement challenges

The expanded practice will apply the company’s expertise in designing tailored sponsorship communities to help clients create a high level of alignment between event attendees and sponsors. With the expanded focus on sponsorship, Freeman will extend its influence well beyond establishing a growing partner community, it also will help clients better understand how aligning goals and building relationships between attendees, sponsors and exhibitors can help all parties involved achieve a more effective and profitable brand experience.

“Show organisers need sponsors, partners and activations that align with what their audiences want and what their business objectives dictate,” said Hellena O’Dell, senior vice president of corporate sponsorships, Freeman. “By building a strategic sponsor community, we can help our clients deliver a better audience experience, which results in more success attracting attendees and offsetting costs.”

Freeman recently chose O’Dell to lead its team of sponsorship experts. She joins the company from Hartmann Studios, where she served for more than three years as vice president of event strategy, partner and customer engagement. Prior to that, she led global partner engagement at Oracle for 19 years.

“Devising the best approach for sponsorship can be a tricky task for a brand,” said O’Dell. “At Freeman, we design our sponsorship community by aligning a brand’s strategy and future goals with the right sponsors to create more authentic and powerful experiences for attendees.”

At Freeman, sponsorship experts custom-tailor a brand’s strategy to drive increased audience engagement and improved results. Their strategic approach looks across associations, non-profits and corporations to identify common trends and find the best sponsorship partners for a brand.

“Adding Hellena’s experience and talent to our team further strengthens our presence in this key focus area,” said David Gauthreaux, executive vice president of global sales, Freeman. “Recent success working with brands like Atlassian, Cisco and SEMI Americas demonstrates that demand for sponsorships integrated with strategy and digital capabilities is going to continue to increase. With Hellena’s leadership, we will be even better positioned to deliver effective and profitable sponsorship designs for customers in the years to come.”