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EP 178 | How a 10×10 Booth Booked 116 Meetings (And Why Pre-Show Is Everything)

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How to Identify and Pitch the Right Sponsors in 2026

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How to Identify and Pitch the Right Sponsors in 2026

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caytoos Sponsorship Sales Lowdown - what thrived in 25 and tricks for 26

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THE BEAUTIFICATION OF SPORTS SPONSORSHIPS

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THE BEAUTIFICATION OF SPORTS SPONSORSHIPS

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Great North Run company toasts rising profits and turnover in sell-out year of events

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Great North Run company toasts rising profits and turnover in sell-out year of events

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Great North Run company toasts rising profits in sell-out year of events

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Profits more than doubled at Nova Marketing as more people than ever took part in its runs and other events

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National Student Pride to end after 21 years

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National Student Pride to end after 21 years

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An interesting article about the impact of geopolitics on sponsorship - "LGBTQ+ initiatives by corporations seemed "increasingly deprioritised" amid the "shifting geopolitical landscape", as well as the current "economic uncertainty".

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National Student Pride to end after reduction in sponsorship

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Organisers say sponsorship has dwindled over recent years, meaning this weekend’s event will be its last.

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Cite Them Right Harvard is the institutional author-date referencing style used by most students at Manchester Met.

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Home - Taste of London: The World's Greatest Food Festival in London

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The world's greatest food festivals, in London. We will be returning to Regent's Park between 7 - 11 July and 14 - 18 July for the 2021 edition of Taste of London.

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Make a donation.

It all begins with an idea. The Pink Picnic first started in 2011 from the idea to have a get together in the park. The event has grown into Salford's annual LGBT+ Pride celebration. Salford Pride needs the communities help to be able to keep the event free for all to attend year on year. If you're able to support Salford Pride's hard work and help us to continue what we do best, please give a donation amount. Thank you.

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It all begins with an idea. The Pink Picnic first started in 2011 from the idea to have a get together in the park. The event has grown into Salford's annual LGBT+ Pride celebration. Salford Pride needs the communities help to be able to keep the event free for all to attend year on year.

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The Academic Phrasebank is a general resource for academic writers. It aims to provide you with examples of some of the phraseological 'nuts and bolts' of writing organised according to the main sections of a research paper or dissertation (see the top menu ). Other phrases are listed under the more general communicative functions of academic writing (see the menu on the left). The resource should be particularly useful for writers who need to report their research work. The phrases, and the headings under which they are listed, can be used simply to assist you in thinking about the content and organisation of your own writing, or the phrases can be incorporated into your writing where this is appropriate. In most cases, a certain amount of creativity and adaptation will be necessary when a phrase is used. The items in the Academic Phrasebank are mostly content neutral and generic in nature; in using them, therefore, you are not stealing other people's ideas and this does not constitute plagiarism. For some of the entries, specific content words have been included for illustrative purposes, and these should be substituted when the phrases are used. The resource was designed primarily for academic and scientific writers who are non-native speakers of English. However, native speaker writers may still find much of the material helpful. In fact, recent data suggest that the majority of users are native speakers of English. More about Academic Phrasebank.

This site was created by John Morley.

Academic Phrasebank is the Intellectual Property of the University of Manchester.

Copyright © 2023 The University of Manchester

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The Academic Phrasebank is a general resource for academic writers. It aims to provide you with examples of some of the phraseological 'nuts and bolts' of writing organised according to the main sections of a research paper or dissertation (see the top menu ).

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As Pride sponsorship falls, how can brands show up for the LGBT+ community?

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As Pride sponsorship falls, how can brands show up for the LGBT+ community?

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Amid DEI rollbacks, Pride events globally face a scale-back in corporate funding. The Drum asked marketing experts how brands can meaningfully support the cause.

Last year was a difficult one for Pride events. In October, Manchester Pride - one of the UK's most high-profile and well-attended LGBT+ events - filed for bankruptcy. Organizers cited rising costs and a reduction in ticket sales for the decision. Elsewhere, Prides large and small have suffered financial woes, with many pointing to reductions in corporate sponsorship.

Against this backdrop, New York City Pride reported a $750,000 fall in sponsorship revenue, a reduction of around 20%. San Francisco Pride saw funders including Anheuser‑Busch, Comcast, Diageo, and Nissan pull sponsorship, amounting to a loss of $200-300k from a festival budget of c.$3.2m. Meanwhile, 39% of Fortune-1000 companies surveyed said they intended to reduce external Pride Month engagement - up from 9% in 2024.

The picture in the UK is similarly challenging. Some 75% of Pride events reported reduced corporate sponsorship last year, according to the Pride Organisers Network. On both sides of the Atlantic, smaller Prides have particularly suffered. In the US, one investigation found that smaller events lost 70-90% of corporate funding in 2025. In the UK, both Southampton and Plymouth Pride events were cancelled due to huge drops in funding. In the case of the former, organisers had previously used £20,000 of their own money to keep the event afloat.

While Pride events may be typically associated with summer months, organizers will tell you that the hard work of putting on parades, rallies, and community events often begins once the party is over. Away from the tentpole events, campaigning and community initiatives - and the fundraising that supports them - go on. For brands sincere about allyship, support now could be more welcome than ever. So, as we look to the year ahead, the question begs: how can brands meaningfully support Pride?

Return to grassroots?

Ross Crump, founder and CEO of Ardent, explains that given the current climate, it's understandable brands might hesitate in backing LGBT+ causes.

"Brands that want to stay politically neutral or not upset the majority have found themselves in a particularly challenging position where mention, or indeed celebration of Pride, risks alienating large portions of their consumer base," he explains. "Not to mention, they have also previously risked backlash from the LGBT+ community for rainbow-washing. Paired with challenging economic circumstances, brands are likely realizing it might be easier to say nothing at all."

This corporate caution has contributed to the difficult climate for Pride events the world over. Tim Noblett, head of data at TMW, says that London Pride, for which he's head of marketing, experienced a marked decline in sponsorship last year. He says this pressure is being felt at a time when the LGBT+ community needs these events more than ever.

"The UK is not a particularly welcoming place, and conditions are worsening," he warns. "Pride and visibility and all the elements that are the reasons Pride exists are becoming more important. At the same time, they are becoming more difficult to put on at the level they have been previously."

Noblett points to the recent Supreme Court ruling clarifying that terms such as 'woman' and 'sex' regard biological sex, a decision with broad implications for trans rights and the use of single-sex spaces. He also highlights last year's ILGA-Europe Rainbow Map, in which the UK dropped six places to 22nd in terms of the safest EU countries for LGBT+ people, and received its lowest score (45.65%) ever.

Jamie Jefferson, co-founder and chief creative officer at independent agency Equator, and organizing committee member for Glasgow Pride, says there are no easy answers. "The optimist in me hopes for at least the Scottish government to take a firmer stand in support of DEI and, by extension, LGBT+ rights. But until that, or an economic turnaround, I fear we'll continue to be under attack for quite some time - and we can do little more than fight as hard as possible to hold our ground."

Jefferson concurs with Noblett on Pride's resilience, saying: "Pride will go on regardless of the level of sponsorship, and is really more important than ever."

Meanwhile, Anthony Leeds, head of global accounts at Propeller and co-director of communications at Outvertising, also emphasizes the current importance of the event - and stresses that corporate allyship is important internally too.

"This is no longer about getting Pride 'right', it's about showing up at all," he explains. "Your silence isn't neutral. It has become very clear that there are corporate brands that place inclusivity and safety of their employees and customers at the heart of their business, and those that want to make a quick buck and look good doing it."

The solution? "We need brands to get loud with us," he says. "It's time to really focus on creating business cultures, marketing, and community spaces that can remedy the harm we're facing. A logo on your LinkedIn is fine, but have you invested in queer-supporting policies that make your employees' lives and jobs safer? Have you thought about how you can financially support queer communities in and around your business?"

Leeds points to the Outvertising Advocacy Playbook, which he helped to create, for examples of how to get support right.

For Bryan Goodpastor, VP of foresight and cultural strategy at global brand design agency Marks, Nike and Patagonia provide sterling examples of brands doing purpose correctly. "There are brands that certainly have stood firm in their support of progress," he says. "Nike and Kaepernick being the classic example. Brands like Patagonia have also been standouts. I think these brands have been successful not because they're performative or because they're glomming on the issue of the hour. They made a deep commitment that is not just purpose-led branding, but is part of their brand's purpose."

Missing the mark

There has long been hostility and skepticism towards brand involvement in Pride that seems self-serving. According to Pew Research, some 68% of LGBTQ+ adults say they believe brands only show support to further their interests, while only 16% believe brands do it because of a "genuine desire to celebrate LGBT+ people." Younger LGBT+ individuals under 30 are the most skeptical, with 51% saying only a few or no companies support Pride for this reason.

Noblett sees a potential reduction in pinkwashing, as companies insincere in their support retract involvement with Pride, as a good thing. "Those that were looking for the looser, lighter touch approach of 'I will put some money for my name or logo to be on Pride' stepping away, if they don't really believe in that necessarily, if there's any doubt, then that's not such a problem. Whereas those that do believe in the community, that want to support the community, are happy to stick around and are getting more involved."

However, brands should think carefully before winding down support. One survey found that 80% of LGBT+ community members would be willing to boycott a brand that withdrew sponsorship for a Pride event. In the US, Target is perhaps the most high-profile example of a brand facing a customer boycott after rolling back its DEI efforts, through a period in which it lost around $20bn in market value.

Moreover, Goodpaster points out that companies that support Pride merely as a pinkwashing exercise, without adequate thought or planning, may not even enjoy an increase in sales or a reputation bump. So, mishandling the issue of allyship, or doing it flippantly, amounts to a lose-lose.

Goodpastor charts a shift from the 'performative allyship' of the early 2010s to hopefully something more sincere emerging today. "I think Pride globally has been treated almost like a seasonal activation," he explains. "Whether that's applying the rainbow aesthetic, sponsoring events, or even retail activations, it's been seen as a capitalist opportunity."

"Broadly, the notion of this performative identity that we gave birth to in the early 2000s is pretty hollow. And I think people are shifting strongly from that. And so where that's going, I don't know. I think it could be a lot more meaningful, a lot more deeply connected to the human condition."

He adds: "Certainly younger audiences have looked to brands to be representative of their own stance on social issues, and so what has been kind of the norm has now fallen into question under political pressure."

Stick of rock

So, how can brands ensure authenticity in their support for Pride? Like the writing in a stick of rock, the commitment should run all the way through an organization.

Noe Marti, VP marketing strategy and operations at GumGum, says that having LGBT+ internal voices is essential to successful outward messaging. "Don't show up for Pride just when it's convenient or trending, show up because you genuinely care about the community," he says. "If your brand doesn't have the right internal voices that are part of the queer community and who can provide the right feedback and advice, it's better to pause and learn rather than do something superficial."

Goodpastor points out that having these voices is also beneficial for creative output. "You can't develop anything new or remarkable in an echo chamber," he explains. "So while it's easy to make a capitalist argument for diversity, the reality is that sameness doesn't generate anything worthwhile."

"Breakthrough ideas, truly culture-shifting thinking, only come out of isolation and marginalization. So, if you think of the Harlem Renaissance or ball culture, both of which are now very much mainstream, these things did not come out of the mainstream. They came out of resistance. So, if anything, maybe this friction will give birth to some more declarative, more meaningful commitment."

To make the point, Goodpastor points to a quote from Gertrude Stein: "There may be no peace where there is calm". Here's hoping for a little more peace in 2026.

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As Pride sponsorship falls, how can brands show up for the LGBT+ community?

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Amid DEI rollbacks, Pride events globally face a scale-back in corporate funding. The Drum asked marketing experts how brands can meaningfully support the cause. Last year was a difficult one for Pride events. In October, Manchester Pride - one of the UK's most high-profile and well-attended LGBT+ events - filed for bankruptcy.

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London is pulling out all the stops in order to position itself as a world-class city for foodies. With culinary tourism expected to reach $1.8 trillion by 2027

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London is pulling out all the stops in order to position itself as a world-class city for foodies. With culinary tourism expected to reach $1.8 trillion by 2027

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Interesting reference to "those looking for a quintessentially British experience" promoting London Marriott Hotel County Hall....

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What Participants think about (Mass Participation) events?

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What Participants think about (Mass Participation) events?

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Get In Touch

What Participants think about events?

Drawing on nearly 40,000 participant responses collected over four years, the Mass Participation Pulse maps the changing landscape of the mass participation sector across the UK and Ireland.

It highlights key trends, challenges, and opportunities shaping the future of events - informed directly by the people taking part.

We've partnered with other event organisers, brands, charities, and entry platforms to help shape the future of mass participation events in the UK.

Our belief is that the best route to this growth is through better understanding current and potential mass participation event participants; why they take part, their behaviours, needs, thoughts and their attitudes towards active events. We hope that this report provides those insights, highlights trends and identifies opportunities to support the growth we all want to see.

Key findings from this year's report:

Participation remains strong: 89% plan to maintain or increase events in 2026, though new entrants are declining (from 26% to 18%).

Running dominates & longer challenges rise: Running accounts for 95% of entries, with marathons and ultras gaining popularity.

Financial pressures growing: Average spend stable (£189), but only 36% feel events offer good value, and 82% expect no rise in discretionary income.

Younger, social, and diverse participants: New entrants are younger, more female, and often join with friends or clubs.

Charity & sustainability trends: 14% fundraise (~£1,453 avg.), while interest in greener events is growing but cautious.

More of our News

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The Mass Participation Pulse 2026 - Massive

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The largest report of its kind, The Pulse maps the changing landscape of the mass participation sector across the UK and Ireland.

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Man Met Library - Mintel: accessing UK market reports

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Man Met Library - Mintel: accessing UK market reports

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Marketing Week’s YouTube channel features the best video content covering the latest marketing news, opinion, trends and challenges facing the marketing industry.

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marketing advertising brand digital "mark ritson"

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Marketing Week's YouTube channel features the best video content covering the latest marketing news, opinion, trends and challenges facing the marketing industry.

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The political economy of informal events - 2030

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The political economy of informal events - 2030

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This white paper includes some interesting data about events!

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AAA White Paper The political economy of informal events, 2030

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Access events industry news articles and search for information on event marketing and sponsorship.

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The event industry's reliance on data to help it plan for the future, increase its resilience, manage risk and justify investment decisions, is growing year on year.

The engagement and access that The Power of Events (UK) has across all 7 sectors of the industry, enables data gathering and in-depth research projects to be delivered confidently and consistently. This will be primarily facilitated through the new insight web app to be launched in Spring 2023.

By bringing the industry and university partners together, research projects will be designed to deliver real benefits to the industry in terms of trend analysis, insights and performance improvements.

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The event industry's reliance on data to help it plan for the future, increase its resilience, manage risk and justify investment decisions, is growing year on year. The engagement and access that The Power of Events (UK) has across all 7 sectors of the industry, enables data gathering and in-depth research projects to be delivered confidently and consistently.

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Strategic Sports Sponsorship: A Comprehensive Guide

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Strategic Sports Sponsorship: A Comprehensive Guide

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Some interesting information about Athletes and "From Logo to Legacy" as discussed in the week 4 lecture.

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Why Do Brands Partner With Multiple Sports?

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Why Do Brands Partner With Multiple Sports?

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Why Do Brands Partner With Multiple Sports Properties_

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How marketers can turbocharge performance in 2026

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How marketers can turbocharge performance in 2026

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The episode spans everything from what levers marketers could pull to help gain investment and influence, to the shifting media and marcomms landscape, social media's growing share of brands’ budgets and the impact of AI on martech.

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How marketers can turbocharge performance in 2026

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Listen to this episode from The Marketing Week Podcast on Spotify. Hosts Charlotte Rogers, deputy managing editor and head of insight, managing editor Lucy Tesseras and senior reporter Molly Innes are joined by the wider editorial team to find out what trends, developments and decisions are shaping the year ahead.

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The importance of community in mass participation events.

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The importance of community in mass participation events.

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Running is becoming less of a solo pursuit and more of a shared experience.

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Mass Participation Events Shift: From Solo to Social Running | Motiv Sports UK posted on the topic | LinkedIn

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What if the future of mass-participation events isn’t about running faster… but running together? The running boom is still very real. Entries remain strong, events are selling out faster than ever, and participation has surged since lockdown. This year’s Mass Participation Pulse report from Massive included a gentle warning for organisers: while experienced runners are staying highly engaged (still averaging around five events per year), the number of brand-new participants has dropped by 8% over the last two years. For those of us working in mass-participation sport, that’s not a reason to panic. But it is a reason to stay curious, listen harder, and keep evolving. One insight from the report stood out to us: the growing power of connection. For many runners today, it’s no longer just about chasing a PB. It’s about doing it together. 53% of runners are now part of a run club Among 18–24-year-olds, 80% sign up to events with other people Running is becoming less of a solo pursuit and more of a shared experience. And we’re seeing the same shift in our own data at Motiv UK. Over the past year, we’ve seen a 9% increase in runners affiliated with social run clubs signing up to our events. We’re also seeing this behaviour in booking patterns. We’ve seen an increase of 11% year on year in the number of bookings for 2+ participants. Put simply: the social running movement is real, and it’s showing up clearly in the data. Of course, events have always had a communal energy, the crowds, the finish-line celebrations, the post-race catch-ups with friends and family. But what’s changing is how that sense of connection shows up before the race even begins. Across our portfolio at Motiv Sports, we’re seeing more run clubs, community groups and charities engaging directly with events; from cheer zones and community entries to authentic brand activations that genuinely support local communities. It’s bringing organisers closer to the communities we serve than ever before. And that matters. Because while sentiment toward events remains incredibly strong, with 89% of participants say they plan to maintain or increase their involvement, the industry can’t afford to stand still. The opportunity ahead is clear: design events for the social runner. The runner who signs up with friends. The run club that travels together. The charity team supporting each other. The community that turns race day into something bigger than the race itself. Our events are selling out faster than ever, which suggests we’re on the right track. But the real magic happens when events become more than races; when they feel like festivals, celebrations, and moments where communities come together. Whether it’s in Hackney, Central London, Shoreditch or Oxford, we can’t wait to see communities come together again and experience the power of running.

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"This is a business where the product is a human experience, the raw material is emotion"

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"This is a business where the product is a human experience, the raw material is emotion"

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An interesting article about the commercialisation of events.

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FESTIVALS ARE SACRED AND SOME OF YOU ARE TAKING THE PISS

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Festivals aren’t content, their community. When you treat culture like a commodity, you end up with soulless weekends. Respect the scene or get out!

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Micro-influencers work, but they aren't a substitute for brand building

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Micro-influencers work, but they aren't a substitute for brand building

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As the world of influencers changes before our very eyes, this thought provoking article gives a timely reminder of how critical brand building is. When thinking about your events and any possible inclusion of influencers, this may be worth considering.

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Mark Ritson: Micro-influencers work. But they aren’t a substitute for brand building

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Urban Outfitters, American Eagle and Sephora are assembling armies of micro-influencers to reach fragmented younger audiences. The data is compelling, but the smartest brands know these tiny voices work best alongside the mass reach that still builds brands.Last week, Urban Outfitters launched ME@UO, its new micro-influencer program. “We’re moving from campaigns you watch to campaigns you join,” explained Cyntia Leo, the brand’s head of brand marketing. “We’re focused on resonance, not scale.” The retailer joins American Eagle, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Express, Home Depot, Lowe’s and Sephora, all of which have unveiled similar schemes in the past few weeks.Thousands of small influencers, each with fewer than a hundred thousand followers, recruited to post about the brand in exchange for product, commissions, and the flattering illusion of commercial partnership. The executives are very excited. They describe this as the future of brand building. They use trigger words like ‘authentic’ and ‘gamified’ and – gags slightly – ’ecosystem.’Three things have happened, roughly simultaneously, to push major FMCG and retail brands towards these programs: data, Vaseline and the death of television.The data has been consistent for several years. Micro-influencers – those with between 10 and 100,000 followers – are better value than their more famous, expensive peers. I could spend $2.5m on a single Instagram post from Kylie Jenner to her 400 million followers. Or I can recruit around 5,000 micro-influencers to post on my behalf to their average 30,000 followers each – for the same money. Kylie has more raw reach. But the micro-influencer army delivers far greater engagement. And their granularity lets me target only those who post in brand-relevant categories with genuine audience fit. Kylie’s followers are not just relatively inert – they are extraordinarily heterogeneous in location, interests and purchase intent. Advertisement Add up the focus and engagement and micro-influencers consistently outperform on response. According to Later’s 2025 Influencer Marketing report, almost three-quarters of big brand marketers now prefer micro and mid-tier influencers over celebrity partnerships. Then there is Vaseline. For a brand sitting quietly in bathroom cabinets for 153 years, the numbers from Vaseline Verified were the kind that fill marketing conference keynotes from London to Chicago.Unilever noticed people were already posting Vaseline hacks – creative uses for petroleum jelly – across TikTok and Instagram. Rather than issuing a corporate brief, they joined the conversation. They invited over 450 micro-influencers to co-create content and had Unilever scientists test the hacks on camera. The result: 136m social views, a 43% sales uplift, 87% positive sentiment, and Vaseline becoming Unilever’s latest one-billion-euro Power Brand in 2024. It won the Titanium Lion at Cannes. The industry took notes.And then there is television. There was a moment, not that long ago, when a brand could reach nearly every young person in the country in a single evening. A prime-time ITV slot in the early 1980s or a US network buy on a Thursday night could deliver 60, 70, 80% of under-40s in one commercial break. One creative. One message. One giant funnel. The economics were extraordinary not because television was inherently efficient – it wasn’t, by modern targeting standards – but because reach was easy and absolute. You couldn’t miss young Britain if you bought peak ITV on Coronation Street in 1982. The whole country was watching the same three channels and two of them carried no advertising.That world is diminished – though not, it needs to be said, destroyed. Television remains the single largest source of video advertising in every major market. Linear TV commands over $60bn in annual US ad spend. Broadcast and cable combined still reach around 72% of American adults every month. The medium is not broken. It is lesser. Want to go deeper? Ask The Drum Digital video, streaming and a proliferation of digital platforms have sliced the mass audience into viewer spaghetti, and that fragmentation is sharpest at the younger end of the demographic spectrum. Marketers will never again enjoy the singularity of peak mass-market television. It remains potent and essential, but no amount of programmatic targeting will ever fully reconstruct the ancient funnel of yesterday.But big brands still need big markets and mass reach. This is the context in which the micro-influencer explosion makes sense. If you cannot reach the young through one dominant channel, you try through many smaller ones. A hundred micro-influencers, each with their own loyal audience, becomes a plausible substitute for the broadcast commercial you can no longer reliably buy. In categories where the product lends itself to demonstration and community – skincare, lifestyle, fitness – it can work very well. Vaseline is proof.But this is also where we need to put the influencer Kool-Aid down for a moment, because the industry is in the shiny-new-idea phase where enthusiasm, fueled by numerous perky startup operators, runs well ahead of honesty. There are real structural weaknesses in the mass micro-influencer model that are not getting enough airtime.The first is salience. Good advertising works, in large part, through mental availability – the ability of a brand to come to mind in the buying situation. The research of Sharp, Romaniuk and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute is unambiguous: reach and distinctiveness are the primary drivers of brand growth. A hundred micro-influencers, each talking to their own small community in their own organic voice, is a low-salience activity. The brand’s distinctive assets – the colors, the characters, the sonic identity – are filtered through a hundred different aesthetic sensibilities. What you gain in engagement, you sacrifice in the consistent, high-frequency brand signal that builds memory structures over time.The second is brand-building breadth. Having briefly dismissed Kylie Jenner’s engagement numbers, let me quickly make amends. She may generate lower engagement rates than an army of anonymous micro-influencers, but those anonymous parts will never sum to a Kardashian in brand-building terms. Celebrity endorsement bleeds into brand equity in ways that micro-influencer reach does not. The signal of being able to afford Kylie tells audiences something about the size and confidence of your brand. There is something small, fleeting and transactional about a micro-influencer post that does not scale, even when you multiply it by thousands. Advertisement Third is message control – or the lack of it. A brand working with 4,000 micro-influencers does not control what they say. It nudges, briefs and supplies product. But the micro-influencer’s relationship with their audience depends on their credibility, and credibility requires perceived independence. The moment they begin accepting multiple briefs or sounding like a TV ad, their engagement drops. So brands have to let go at scale, meaning some percentage of partners will say things that are off-strategy, inconsistent, and occasionally damaging. Vaseline navigated this by joining a conversation that already existed. That is considerably harder to replicate when you are American Eagle building a micro-influencer army from scratch using gamified incentive tiers.Fourth – and the one that no creator agency will mention in a pitch – is that this is, ultimately, glorified word of mouth. Word of mouth is powerful; there is solid evidence that micro-influencer short-term ROI matches the all-channel average. But word of mouth has always been the medium of the already-engaged, the already-interested, the already-close-to-purchase. It spreads through networks of the like-minded. It does not penetrate cold audiences, because cold audiences were not following these micro-influencers in the first place. The blunt, expensive universality of television still reaches people who weren’t looking for your brand and makes them aware of it anyway. A micro-influencer network, however large, primarily reaches the already attentive.Fifth is measurement – specifically, the industry’s tendency to measure what is easy rather than what matters. Engagement rates are seductive: immediate, abundant, free and impressively large. But engagement is not sales, brand equity or mental availability. The IPA’s effectiveness data is consistent: short-term engagement metrics correlate poorly with long-term brand growth. Marketers who have shifted budgets into micro-influencer programs based on cost-per-engagement figures are typically measuring activation output, not brand-building input. The numbers look extraordinary right up until you ask what they are driving downstream.Sixth is disclosure fatigue. Regulatory bodies in the UK, US, EU and Australia have spent three years tightening the rules on influencer disclosure. Audiences have become fluent in reading the hashtag-ad, the paid partnership label, the gifted sticker. The trust premium that micro-influencers once held over traditional advertising is eroding. Scale is the enemy of genuineness. When you have four thousand people in your micro-influencer community, you do not have a community. You have a managed distribution network dressed up in the language of belonging. Advertisement The final problem keeps CMOs awake once they have run one of these programs: the management overhead is brutal. Coordinating thousands of micro-influencers – briefing them, approving content, tracking performance, paying them, managing the inevitable handful who go off-script – requires a significant internal team, a growing roster of specialist agencies, or a technology platform that does not yet exist at the required scale. The cost rarely appears in the headline cost-per-engagement figures that justified the program. Urban Outfitters and American Eagle are both, in effect, betting that technology can automate this overhead away. Maybe. But right now, the operational complexity of running a micro-influencer army at scale is routinely underestimated by the brands rushing to build one.None of this means they are wrong. Urban Outfitters, American Eagle and the rest are right to invest in micro-influencer programs, for now, in the categories they operate in, for the audiences they are chasing. The data is real. The ROI is often exceptional. Vaseline’s transformation from bathroom-cabinet staple to billion-dollar TikTok brand is a genuine and instructive case study. But it is a case study in activation, community, cultural relevance – not in mass-market reach. The brands succeeding with micro-influencers are the ones who understand that distinction and still appreciate the role that other media must play in building long-term growth.A thousand tiny voices are a wonderful thing. Just don’t mistake the choir for the whole stadium.Mark Ritson is a former marketing professor, brand consultant, and multi-award-winning columnist. He is the founder of the MiniMBA in Marketing, which has trained over 40,000 marketers across 40 countries. If this column made you wish you had a better grip on brand strategy and media effectiveness, www.minimba.com is where you start.

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Are we seeing the change in trends for alcohol v non-alcohol sponsorship at a food festival event?

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Cheshire and North Wales Food and Drink Festival. Located at The Chester Racecourse for easter weekend.