The End of Sponsorships

I spent a couple of days last week at a seminar that completely opened my eyes. Although it was billed as a “healing” seminar, by the end of day two it felt eerily similar to one of those Time Share sales pitches that promises you a free vacation as long as you sit through a two hour pitch.

I was completely down for the healing portion of the seminar and surprisingly open-minded about it. I could use some healing. Hell, who couldn’t? After trying once again to fit in in a corporate job, I decided that I couldn’t hack it, so healing here we come!

I knew that the guy running the seminar was a bit cheesy, maybe a little misguided, but overall seemed at peace with himself about how he made his money.

Day 1 was super fun. I participated and breathed and even did my best to help “heal” people myself. (BTW, healing is as simple as breathing, feeling your emotions, and understanding where they come from, I am not talking about real medical or any fake magical stuff here).

Day 2 was also pretty fun, but then the major sales pitch came in. The seminar leader stood up in front of the crowd and told them how they could be personally coached by him for the small fee of $56,000 per year (or $47,500 if you decided to pay it all up front).

He prefaced this price by showing the value of what he was offering point by point. He explained that the value of what he was selling was worth $250,000 (what a steal at only $56,000!).

With an open mind, and also a love for marketing I sat patiently as he went through his power point presentation line by line describing this value.

CHIVAZ DOES NOT SPONSOR

Chivaz Wear is my company. I want to keep it a respectable and honest company in whatever way I can.

Everyday people come to me, be it on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter and say: “Sponsor Me!”

In the beginning I was happy to send out a pair of socks to people here and there. No biggie. I never asked or required people to say something good about Chivaz just because they got a free pair.

Over the last year I stopped doing this so much, but that has mostly to do with the value that I was getting back from people.

But now, I am completely removing any thought of “sponsoring” people at all. Even if this company had money, we would never pay anyone to wear our products and promote them.

Note: I am not saying that we won’t send out any free pairs, I am simply saying that we don’t expect anything from anyone. If we send you a pair and you love them and post about them, awesome, if not, oh well…

After-all, isn’t a sponsorship the same thing as a paid endorsement?

If you really think about it, do you think Lebron James would wear Nikes if he wasn’t being paid millions of dollars to do so? Knowing that the answer is “hell no,” it kind of makes you wonder if there really is much of a difference between a company like Nike and the lowly life coach who is trying to convince you that his life-improvement techniques will lead you to success. Kudos to Nike for getting you to buy a pair of $150 basketball shoes that you won’t even play basketball in and Kudos to the time share salesman who got you to buy into a vacation that you have to take every year.

In this world, or at least in the world that I hope we are creating for the future, the winners will be the honest companies. We humans are too smart to be swindled by amazing deals, paid endorsements and limited time offers.