The only pain of college fests

While all students look forward to their college fest, only those organising the event know how difficult it is to get what’s needed the most — sponsorships.
Recently, the students behind the Nalsar Lit Fest had a tough six months looking for sponsors. As they reached out, most companies said no and even bookstores did not want to be associated with a literary fest.

Students say that explaining what the sponsor will get out of it is one of the most difficult parts of the job. Vishnu Saran, the general secretary of Bits-Pilani, Hyderabad lists the common questions sponsors ask. “They  are always skeptical. They want to know if the footfall that we mention is genuine or not. They enquire about the peak timings of the fest (for Bits Pilani’s fest Pearl, stalls are open throughout the night) so that they can arrange for maximum staff. Another question they ask is who are the other sponsors. Only if they are confident that other good brands are associated with the fest, do they feel it is okay to be sponsors,” he says.

At Bits-Pilani, a tradition has existed since its inception, related to sponsorship for fests. “We have a specific team that writes the content for the sponsorship brochures. The team is trained by the senior batch and this has been going on for many years now. Four months before the fest, we start looking for sponsors,” says Vishnu.

Meanwhile, at IIT-H, it’s a year-long process. For their annual fest Elan, that will take place again next year in January, preparations have already begun. Arpit Vijay, who was elected as the marketing core for the fest in April, says, “Till June end, we try to build  contacts, make strategies etc. From July, we start approaching them.”

Talking about the problems, Arpit says, “Ninety per cent of the companies you reach out to say no. Last year, we had approached an automobile company but they said no as students are not their target audience. For this year, we will be approaching 600-700 companies and maybe 50-100 will reply positively.”

And that’s why they build particular strategies. Vishnu says, “We look for sponsors to add value to the fest. We create creative publicity avenues for them. For example, we had Coke Studio as one of our sponsors last year. Since they usually sponsor concerts, we had a concert by the fusion band Advaita which was sponsored by them.”

Vishnu adds, “Another problem we face is that our fest is in March, so most companies write back saying that it’s the end of the fiscal year. That’s why we are planning to start reaching out to people earlier.”