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Banking on Impact: How One Financial Giant Rewrote Its Sponsorship Playbook with Elevent
Overview :
As one of Canada’s systemically important financial institutions, this leading bank manages more than $450 billion in assets with nearly 30,000 employees serving its 3 million clients across its Personal and Commercial Banking, Wealth Management, and Financial Markets segments. With more than $11 billion in annual revenues, the institution turned to Elevent to bring greater discipline, efficiency, and accountability to its sponsorship programs.
Challenge :
Large financial services companies face a unique set of sponsorship marketing challenges. With similar offerings across competitors and high customer acquisition costs, banks rely on sponsorships to stand out and connect emotionally with their audiences. Sponsorship budgets are typically about 4% of EBITDA, enabling high-visibility, long-term deals like stadium naming rights or category ownership partnerships with major sports and entertainment organizations.
However, many of these big-ticket partnerships are hard to evaluate—and in some cases, underperform. With few new opportunities in the market, maximizing the impact of existing investments and exiting low-value deals has become imperative.
Solution :
The bank partnered with Elevent on a multi-phase initiative that combined high- touch strategy work with the deployment of Elevent’s Sponsorship Lifecycle Management platform.
Strategic consulting deliverables included :
1. Clarifying Sponsorship’s Strategic Value
- Defined how sponsorship fits into broader marketing and business strategy
- Analyzed audience fit using demographic, spending, and lifestyle data
2. Portfolio Audit
- Evaluated existing partnerships across business units
- Identified gaps, redundancies, and underperforming deals
- Highlighted white-space opportunities aligned with strategic goals
3. Evaluation Framework
- Co-developed KPIs tied to business and community impact
- Created a custom scoring matrix based on institutional priorities
4. Governance and Process Overhaul
- Established clear guidelines for selection, renewal, and evaluation
- Provided internal best practices for sponsorship assessment and decision-making
With this foundation in place, the bank deployed Elevent’s Brickroad™ sponsorship management software to translate strategy into scalable, day-to-day operations.
Key Platform Capabilities :
- Custom-branded intake portal for sponsorship requests
- Configurable selection criteria aligned with strategic objectives
- Automated proposal scoring for consistent evaluation
- Intelligent routing to appropriate decision-makers
- Built-in financial valuation tools to support negotiation
- Governance dashboard for executive visibility and auditability
Results :
The organization now uses Elevent’s strategic frameworks and tools to guide sponsorship planning, identify gaps, exit underperforming partnerships, and prioritize investments that deliver brand and community impact.
With Brickroad scoring and sorting requests upfront, the sponsorship team now reviews far fewer, but significantly more aligned proposals, each with clear business justification and community relevance.
1. Operational Efficiency
- Significantly reduced time spent processing incoming requests
- Streamlined workflow across regional and departmental teams
- Shifted focus from administrative tasks to strategic planning
2. Data-Driven Decision Making
- Automatic scoring ensures proposals reflect brand values and goals
- Built-in valuation tools support fair and transparent negotiations
- Quantifiable insights support stronger business cases for sponsorships
- More informed negotiations result in higher-impact deals at better value
3. Cost Optimization
- Better visibility into rights fees and deliverables
- Improved ability to assess ROI and justify spend
- Avoidance of overpaying for underperforming assets
- Strategic exit from legacy deals that no longer serve organizational goals
- Rights fees savings through more accurate valuation and negotiation leverage
4. Enhanced Governance
- Clear audit trail of decision-making processes
- Stronger internal controls and accountability
- Centralized dashboard supports executive reporting and oversight
Testimonials :
“Elevent’s unique approach to Sponsorship Lifecycle Management brought clarity and structure to a complex portfolio, helping us move from a reactive sponsorship model to one grounded in strategy and impact. Their team challenged us in all the right ways—building a framework that reflects who we are as a brand and who we serve as a financial institution. The combination of thoughtful consulting and smart technology has been invaluable. BrickRoad has elevated our sponsorship management capabilities, enabling us to assess opportunities more rigorously, negotiate with greater confidence using automated financial valuation, and focus our time on partnerships that create meaningful value for the communities we serve.”
Conclusion :
Through a combination of strategic consulting and software implementation, this national financial institution has transformed its sponsorship management approach. The result is a more innovative, accountable program that aligns with its brand, delivers measurable results, and supports meaningful community engagement.
Want to empower your sponsorship strategy with tools and insights that matter? Contact us to learn how Elevent can help your team focus, streamline, and maximize impact.
