TEDx expands partnership platform, new partners use festival of ideas for content
Dezarnaulds: “TEDxSydney sponsorship model is evolving well beyond cash investments”
TEDxSydney, one of the world’s most successful iterations of the famed festival of ideas, has seen major transformation in the way sponsors are engaging with the event, with many now creating experiences that extend well beyond the one-day conference.
Having previously taken on sponsors to help underwrite TEDxSydney, which began its life at Sydney’s Carriageworks seven years ago before moving to the Opera House, organisers are now aiming for a partnership model that allows supporters to tap into the TEDxSydney audience.
Head of partnerships, Kate Dezarnaulds, said there has been a real shift in the way that sponsoring TEDxSydney was seen both internally and by the organisations seeking to align their brands with the festival.
Don’t kid yourselves TED X. Sponsors are going to want to have a say in what’s presented. They’ll say the won’t. but they will. They won’t be able to help themselves. And there goes the whole concept of an open platform of fresh ideas.
TEDx is pretty useless as far as the calibre of audience for sponsors.
The audience is filtered, hand-picked by the organisers on the basis that they comply with the predictable inner-city Lefty groupthink.
There’s no possibility of diversity of thought, politics, demographics, psychographics.
If the audience was like normal audiences – self selecting – it would be appealing to sponsors. It would provide that randomness and diversity that ultimately defines an event – not the event defining its audience. But a bunch of under-employed (it’s on a weekday after all), angry activist wannabes just doesn’t deliver for sponsors.