Event Marketing

4 Examples of B2B Event Sponsorships Executed Brilliantly!

Eventually Learning Team

“I can’t, but we can.”


That ubiquitous attendee face time with sponsored swags and pop-up brand banners is what every event planner enlists as a must-have while designing the event trade show floor or product showcase.

Balancing the books has always been a pain point for the B2B event industry movers and shakers!

Come Covid-19; the situation has only served to expose and aggravate the above reality – Sponsorships are the lifeline of a B2B event’s success. Digital-only streaming events have further added to the 'Sponsor' need as the online event ticket prices have plummeted compared to their in-person counterparts.

Plus, here is data to substantiate the event planners’ woes - 70% of brand leaders and marketers have opined that their need to cross-examine the returns from event sponsorships has increased in the past two years!

Brand leaders today are looking at the ‘different formulations for different audiences’ approach, while keeping disruptions in creative sponsor promotions on top of mind.

Here are the yardsticks for you – the four best examples of Event Sponsorships, the B2B kind, ever executed to ring in sure-shot revenues! 

Doritos and Mountain Dew At PAX Prime

One good example of event sponsorship!

PAX Prime has been synonymous with brilliant cosplay, retro arcade machines and amazing toys! Unlike E3, PAX Prime is an open-to-all event gamers (E3 has its welcome gates for mainly industry professionals), with tickets comparatively easy on the pocket. So Sponsorships are a big deal at PAX Prime.

When at the Intel booth at PAX Prime in 2013, the conquering heroes of the Intel Level Up Game Demo Contest like Perfection, Lilly Looking exhibited their games; the contest’s sponsor, Valve Corporation, was quick to bag the opportunity to upload these winning game demos for free download on Steam. But the PAX Prime sponsorship ideas got more ingenious with time, with the usage of event tech to its fullest!!

The video game convention got on board a QR-Code led scavenger hunt on their event app for its Sponsors - Doritos and Mountain Dew. So when on-ground at PAX Prime, if any of the 6,000 attendees happened to chance upon a QR Code, all they had to do was scan it, receive points and take home the prizes!! This out-of-the-way gaming tactic won Doritos and Mountain Dew a whopping 2000 tweets and social media impressions - a perfect example of a brand’s event marketing strategy seeing success.

Our Takeaway Liner: Get interactive with attendees, and your engagement will never lag!

Rolex At TED Talks

TED Talks and Rolex have been going strong since 2007. When Rolex first started out as a TED Partner, they crafted a powerful video that ran only for a few minutes but spoke wonderfully about their own history and evolution in the innovation-developing market at that time. This content made its way into the advertising spaces at TED Talks that envisioned the same themed dreams.

As years rolled by in 2012, the powerful duo again struck gold as they took to the unveiling of the ‘Surprise Me’ feature on the iOS TED Talks app. The ideation of Surprise Me was mind-blowing! Rolex has always believed in its philosophy of time-keeping. So if you fancied a 30-minute quick motivational speech or took out time for a 40-minute erudite session - TED Talks was ready with a customized ‘Surprise Me’ playlist – by talk length and criteria to weave those attendee serendipity moments! Surprise Me saw 200,000 downloads globally, with individual viewers binging on TED Talks during office-hour breaks and weekends.

Our Takeaway Liner: Weaving in Sponsor Brand values with Business values takes due thought to get it right!

New Relic At TechCrunch Disrupt

Okay, first - who are New Relic and TechCrunch Disrupt? New Relic is a tech knight that brings cloud-based software to the business world. Something that website and application owners can be thankful for to keep their services performance at par.

TechCrunch Disrupt is where you can network at large with the Start-up Ecosystem Superstars…..the Disrupt stage has been honored by Zuckerberg, Benioff, Musk and many more!

The TechCrunch Disrupt boasts of a unique ‘Hackathon’ too, wherein creators and tech geniuses crowd together to create fantastic new tech products.....remember GroupMe was made here overnight and acquired later by Skype for some $80 Million dollars!!! The Hackathons at the event are so popular that New Relic decided to go the distance and serve F&Bs for the after-event party, plus took up the Hackathon winner announcements. The winner won sponsored privileges like 365 days subscription to the New Relic Pro, and the exclusive blog mention.

New Relic gained returns through social media coverage of this association too.

Our Takeaway Liner: More to Awards and Competitions! They are the showstoppers of any event and the best brand collaboration opportunities.

The Brilliant Sweets & Snacks Expo

The one prime feature that stands out at the Sweets & Snacks Expo is their attendee footfall – it’s 16,000 attendees! Hence the event has been the Sponsors’ all-time favorite for some time now. The event is a must-go-to for the confectionery and snack industry players. Names like Godiva, Hershey, Kellogg’s, Lindt, Mondelez International and more have been the 2022 Sponsors at the Sweets & Snacks Expo! But what truly sets this event apart from other industry events in its category is the creative sponsorship ideas they come up with! The Sweets & Snacks Expo has offered attendees out-of-box sponsorship solutions like light boxes, candy breaks and sponsor-promoting Segways! Each Segway on the show floor had content tailored to the sponsor's brand proposition and distributed cool sponsorship swags around the event!

Our Takeaway Liner:  Out-of-Box Event Sponsorship partnerships win the day!

Frequently Asked Questions

How to brainstorm unique B2B event sponsorship ideas?

You can brainstorm unique B2B event sponsorship ideas by:
  1. Deciding on the budgets jointly for Sponsorship promotions
  2. Determining the turnaround time and the expected execution date mapping
  3. Getting clarity on your target audience and the action you expect them to undertake during and post the sponsor promotions

What are some proven Event Sponsorship Ideas?

Here are some proven Event Sponsorship ideas:
  • Sponsor Branding during the Pre-event period
  • Breakout Rooms for Sponsored Speakers
  • Sponsored Q&A Sessions
  • Sponsored Wayfinding, Signposting
  • Event Swag that resonates with the Attendees 

Name some famous Sponsorship Marketing collaborations?


Some famous Sponsorship Marketing collaborations are:
  • Coca-Cola and the Olympic Games
  • Cristiano Ronaldo and Nike
  • The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and L’Oréal
  • SXSW Interactive and Ten-X and more.

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