Preliminary Agenda

Event Features

1. All areas of sponsorship represented: properties, buyers and media
2. Senior-level speaker faculty of marketing, research and sponsorship executives
3. Workshops and roundtables drilling into today’s most pressing issues

Benefits

1. Gain insight on current trends in metrics and how sponsorship executives are using building effectiveness models to calculate return on investment and return on objective
2. Hear case studies from industry leaders showing new ways to engage with the consumer, giving them a memorable experience so they can be an ambassador for your brand
3. Learn how to balance communications and investment in a sport’s core fan base with your potential growth audience
4. Find out how to boost your in-game exposure in a less cluttered landscape through exclusive contracts

Key Content Areas

ORGANIZING YOUR SPONSORSHIP TEAM

SMART USE OF INVESTMENT DOLLARS

NEW DEFINITION OF EXCLUSIVITY

OLD WORLD ART, NEW WORLD SCIENCE

ANSWERING CORPORATE OBJECTIVES THROUGH SPORTS SPONSORSHIP

MEASUREMENT

ONLINE

BALANCING SPONSORSHIP AND ACTIVATION

RESEARCH

BETTER APPROACHES TO RETURN ON OBJECTIVE

ORGANIZING YOUR SPONSORSHIP TEAM

1. Building A Partnership Management Process Geared Towards the Growth Of Your Business
2. Capitalizing on the enormous growth of your sport in its short US history
1. Sport-specific stadiums
2. Several rights paying broadcast partners
3. Varied ownership group, attesting to the viability of the clubs
4. Diverse players, ranging from world-renowned icons and a fresh blend of new talent
3. Three distinct marketing segments
1. Core fan
2. Youth and family
3. Multicultural
4. Expanding marketing resources and dedicating them towards existing operations
5. Driving value for partners to ensure their retention over time
6. Achieving and over-delivering in all partnerships to build on your business’ strong foundation

1. Re-Engineering Your Sports Sponsorship Department
2. Assessing your department’s strengths and weaknesses
3. Drilling into three key areas for growth
1. The Internal Team
1. Focusing on the interaction between your team and your client:  Ensuring that you are in touch with the client more than twice a year
2. Starting with the end in mind: realizing that your team needs to be as focused on activation as it is on sales
2. The Client
1. Understanding your clients true needs vs. the packages in which they are currently invested
3. The Technology
1. Revitalizing your database to ensure that you are focused on collecting and maintaining accurate data
4. Focusing on the future: taking the early key wins in each key area for growth and building your business from there

1. Organizing Your Management Structure – Ensuring The Right Hand Is Talking To The Left Hand
2. Making certain that when you rethink and/or expand your sponsorship team the structure includes input from different staff members at strategic moments along the journey to securing the brand’s investment
3. Separating sales from retention
1. These are different skill sets but need to work together
2. Sales are hunters, activation staff are farmers
4. Thinking like an agency, not like a team
5. Structuring your pitching process so that the first sales call is to understand the problem and the second call should be a meeting with all of your marketing specialties represented in order to sell your business solutions effectively

1. Developing An Effectiveness Model With A Composite of External And Custom Research
2. Attempting to develop a benchmark in the industry
3. Identifying what you want to accomplish by category and regional results, compared with national data
4. Isolating information as it relates to consumer and retail criteria
5. Requiring multiple components to understand if a sponsorship is effective
1. Eg imagery, proprietary information, categories
6. Moving beyond numbers and trying to understand how to engage the consumer by quantifying your ability to reach them on an emotional level
7. Understanding that targets and metrics are continually changing as properties and buyers become more and more
8. Using this model to provide addition information about whether to sustain, accelerate or eliminate a sponsorship

1. Developing The Optimal In-House Sponsorship Team To Show Brands How They Can Integrate Into Your League
2. Expanding your marketing group in-house rather than relying so heavily on agencies
3. Understanding that ticket sales and relationship marketing are the engine of your sponsorship business and executives in these areas can learn from both outside your industry and within
4. Working closely with account managers on the agency side to ensure they recognize what is important in your market and collaborating openly
5. Carefully morphing the artform and the science of sponsorship to continue to add value for your partners

1. Translating Global Company Values Into Effective Sports Sponsorship Decisions
2. Leveraging your local staff’s knowledge to build your multi-billion dollar company
3. Understanding the opportunities for growth that would be visible only to someone living in the same community as the customer
4. Putting trust in your staff on the ground, as they are well placed to know which local teams resonate
5. Dividing corporate budgets so that team sponsorships are paid for by the relevant territory
6. Understanding that that while your corporate headquarters may be more interested in securing impressions and brand awareness, the local retail team is looking for ROI, eg coupon redemption
7. Working in partnership to ensure both sets of needs are met by the sponsorship and that the costs are comparable with your company’s other team partnerships
8. Finding new ways to engage customers and employees to achieve growth

1. Capitalizing On Agency Partnerships To Ensure The Biggest Bang For Your Buck
2. Understanding that, given their reach in the marketplace dealing with other clients, agencies can be better situated to gauge current trends in the marketplace
3. Appreciating that agencies are sometimes able to provide excellent data that you would be unable to source in-house
4. Realizing also that in order to remain credible there are times when the information you provide to prospective buyers needs to be impartial and using this outside resource to conduct vital research
5. Balancing responsibilities equally between your internal and external teams, to foster each team member’s professional development

SMART USE OF INVESTMENT DOLLARS

1. Going Beyond Branding – Ensuring Your Business Units Leverage Your Sponsorship Success
2. Achieving a boost in brand recognition following a sponsorship in a given market
3. Being clever with your limited sponsorship and activation dollars
4. Showing results through new prospects and/or leads
5. Demonstrating results for each of your scrutinized activation dollars
6. Ensuring metrics are in place to measure your goal whether it is brand exposure or sales
7. Ensuring the utmost value from each sponsorship by having a complete and total focus on visibility of results tied to initial goals

1. Optimizing Your Investment By Aligning Your Disparate Sponsorships Under One Portfolio
2. Collating your league, team and television deals into one greater program
3. Ensuring that you get the most out of each property by understanding what one hand is doing in regards to the other
4. Maintaining a cohesive and integrated approach with your sponsorship dollars to receive maximize your ROO
5. Continually examining each sponsorship program to ensure that all sponsorship dollars, all assets and all activation activities are constantly optimized

1. Tailoring Proposals To Buyers’ Stated Goals For ROI And ROO
2. Understanding that many buyers look at ROI and ROO the same way
3. Working individually with each sponsor to meet their stated goals
1. Building programming to activate at retail and stating the number of opportunities you can feasibly deliver
2. Showing the number of impressions, based on online and TV ratings
3. Creating occasions for one-to-one interactions with consumers
4. Leveraging your sport’s key differentiators in terms of promotional opportunities
1. Eg limiting the number of commercials during key periods of the game, taking the clutter away from the game landscape and adding value to other assets, such as jersey sponsorships
5. Delivering a winning pitch, with clearly outlined strategic benefits to your partnership

1. Walking In The Shoes Of The Other – Building Sophisticated Sponsorship Proposals That Resonate With Brand Executives
2. Understanding that a brand electing to engage with an event must be based on decisions that follow strict business guidelines
3. Realizing that sponsors examine internal ROI data when reassessing a sponsor agreement and setting down internal processes accordingly
4. Conducting your own research to be able to show why your property is a niche that fits precisely with the goals of the given brand
5. Making a compelling story for your property using all available information, showing maximized opportunities for fan engagement and on-site one-on-one marketing

1. Identifying A Sponsorship Portfolio Appropriate To Your Budget – Taking Calculated Decisions When You Can’t Afford To Be Everywhere
2. Isolating the particular market segment you wish to address
1. Eg core stakeholders at the heart of the campaign, followed by semi-regular enthusiasts and occasional participants using your product
3. Identifying which aspect of your sponsorship portfolio best resonates with the greatest number of your core stakeholders
1. Eg sporting events, specific athletes, charity activities
4. Discerning the medium that will help you reach out to as many of the core stakeholders as possible, with an anticipation of a trickle-down effect to the other, less regular segments requiring your product
5. Choosing strategically to concentrate your limited budget on one type of sponsorship and activating aggressively

1. Capturing A Combination Of Marketing And Media Opportunities Through A Network Partnership
2. Outsourcing the management of a property’s sponsorship, marketing, licensing and publishing rights not to an agency but to a television network
3. Allowing the network to become the sponsorship arm of the property
4. Combining the corporate and broadcast alliances to allow for a more integrated and comprehensive sponsorship package
5. Establishing a system in which the network conducts the day-to-day servicing and approvals for sponsors
6. Allowing the property to make final reviews on all partnerships
7. Streamlining processes to ultimately provide better and more efficient exposure and activation for sponsors

NEW DEFINITION OF EXCLUSIVITY

1. Building A 360-Degree Sports Marketing Strategy To Ensure Your Brand Shines In A Crowded Space
2. Finding unique ways to profile your brand attributes, personality and capabilities to increase awareness and push for consideration and purchase
3. Distinguishing the consumer, how your company should be presented at an event and ways to engage your employees
4. Identifying an activation that visually showcases what your brand offers
5. Tying in official provider status to every sponsorship, obliging properties to use your service and matching those results back to your ROI
6. Measuring also the networking introductions that come from the partnership
7. Offering opportunities to major clients to special activities not available to the general consumer
1. Eg batting practice, fashion shows
8. Contributing also from a social responsibility perspective, working with young players, helping refurbish stadiums and engaging internal staff with volunteer opportunities

1. Securing Sacred Cow Status – Adding Value To Your Property’s Activations To Ensure Your Sponsors Will Never Leave Their Deal
2. Complementing the stated benefits of the sponsor’s purchase with as many opportunities as possible to suit their marketing goals
3. Looking deeply at your sponsors’ core business and finding ways to help them develop through creative partnerships with one another
4. Sending the powerful message to your partners that you care about their business
5. Developing your partners’ business and surrounding them with your property’s assets

1. Changing The Meaning Of Exclusivity – Slicing And Dicing Your Assets
2. Ensuring you are utilizing the full potential of each of your assets
3. Realizing revenue growth by creating exclusivity of each asset
4. Delivering specificity of audience as it relates to each asset
5. Tying metrics and analytics to each new found exclusive asset
6. Continually searching for new meaning and new money from each asset

1. Restructuring Your Offerings As An Exclusive Experience Based On Your Bottom Line: Panel Discussion
2. Are you creating a premium experience for each partner by optimizing each dollar in each sponsorship?
3. How can you expect more in terms of activation from the sponsor?
4. How can you demonstrate remuneration from all lines of revenue as opposed to simply selling sponsorship for dollars’ sake?

OLD WORLD ART, NEW WORLD SCIENCE

1. Maximizing Team Relationships When A Competitor Is Already Dominating At The League Level
2. Ensuring that your investment dollars are optimized on game/race day
3. Thinking creatively to find new ways to gain exposure for your brand without contravening contractual boundaries
4. Building viral campaigns to draw attention to your service and differentiating your brand from its competition
5. Enjoying the exposure of these campaigns and spin-offs from your grass-roots activation
6. Building your brand in terms of consumers’ impressions of companies associated with the sporting event

1. Guerrilla Activation – Capitalizing On The Fan Base To Convert New Brand Ambassadors
2. Building a parallel sporting event where the fans are the competitors
3. Tying the name and concept to your new marketing campaign
4. Making the event exclusive to finalists and their friends, providing them with five-star hospitality during their participation
5. Boosting employee morale by contributing your own internal team to the competition
6. Collecting contact information from over 100,000 entrants and potential customers
7. Observing the results in your customer adoption path among competition finalists and their friends as they become “evangelists” for your products in their wider circle
8. Enjoying the “confusion” at the legitimate sporting event when fans and other stakeholders think you’ve secured naming rights to a fixture

1. Understanding That Shared Values Are Critical To Brand Affinity
2. Convincing consumers to suspend rational decision-making and attach themselves to your business
3. Appreciating that consumers expect sponsors to provide value to their sporting experience and support their passion
4. Understanding that fans are pulled in many directions and have an overwhelming number of options in their purchasing decisions
5. Realizing, also, that TIVO makes television advertising somewhat redundant as viewers can skip over your commercials
6. Making an impact on fans in a meaningful way, with more than just signs and media
1. Enhancing their experience, engaging with their communities
7. Choosing core partners whose values correspond with your own long-term vision
8. Finding creative ways to showcase these similarities in a substantive, cohesive way with strong impact, integrating the brand into the fabric of the sporting event

ANSWERING CORPORATE OBJECTIVES THROUGH SPORTS SPONSORSHIP

1. Overcoming The Fears Inside Your Organization Of Giving Others A Competitive Advantage By Sharing Your Company’s Data
2. Realizing that as budgets remain static the onus is on both parties to share information more freely in order to build a successful partnership
3. Understanding that it is reasonable that some people may be apprehensive about having info flow two ways
4. Listening to the arguments for sharing data put forward by colleagues
5. Recognizing that industries that are not under threat are less likely to feel the pressure to collaborate
6. Learning from the experience, should you be “stung” following a data breach, but weighing up carefully the risks and benefits before changing strategies to return to an inward focus
7. Moving forward with a relationship based on trust in order to maximize your sporting partnerships

1. Sponsorships For Retail – Can You Leave It In Your Suppliers’ Hands?
2. Understanding that, as your vendors structure activation around in-store experiences, you stand to reap the benefits
3. Identifying whether or not piggy-backing on your partners’ existing relationships might bring your store enough exposure to meet your marketing needs
4. Realizing that your brand needs to be just as compelling as that of your vendor partners
5. Running programs on your own to enhance your store’s brand image
6. Offering vendors the opportunity to buy sponsorship benefits from your store in cases where there is no conflict with the property’s other partners
1. Eg on-site signage and coupon distribution

1. Linking Staff Sales Incentives To Your Sponsorship Agreement
2. Choosing a property that resonates with your own staff’s sporting passions
3. Offering hospitality on game nights to sales employees who meet or exceed quotas
1. Making assets available to sales staff to use in their local market
4. Building staff morale while also creating an easily quantifiable metric to be used in future negotiations

1. Refining Your Property Choices According To Cultural Preferences – Targeting The Hispanic Market Through Major League Partnerships
2. Identifying your own company’s values first
1. Eg providing a trusted perspective to customers, helping them to improve their quality of life and goals
3. Comparing these with the passion points in your target market and finding synergies
1. Eg family, sports, music, sometimes religion
4. Conducting studies into your brand recognition in the Hispanic market
5. Understanding that the Hispanic market segment has many textures, including country of origin, age on arrival in the US, first or second generation immigrant
6. Identifying a region in which this population is growing and exploring appropriate sponsorship opportunities in that area
7. Choosing a sport that is internationally known, especially in the countries you are considering for expansion
8. Associating your partnership with a further sponsorship of a star Hispanic player
9. Leveraging that relationship to gain further exposure in the target market outside of the team’s region, as all fans will be watching his career

1. Using A Property To Stimulate Civic Development And Investment – A Unique Motorsports And Local Government Partnership
2. Leveraging a major sporting event to promote the region to potential investors
3. Taking venue naming rights and extensive hospitality options to ensure an optimal experience for the executives you are targeting
4. Understanding that in a sponsor-heavy environment like motorsports racing, brand managers will be attending races to ensure activation on their sponsorships
1. Using their presence as an opportunity to promote the region for investment
5. Maximizing in-venue options for strategic video promotion, signs, and other activation opportunities
6. Observing the outcome of the partnership with new business development resulting directly from this kind of investment

MEASUREMENT

1. Metrics And The Race For Success
2. Understanding that pressure is mounting to quantify the results of your partnerships
3. Knowing that there are many ways to measure ROI and, while no one has all of the solutions, a composite understanding can be reached
4. Realizing that everyone involved in the sponsorship process wants the partnership to be a success
1. Ensuring everyone from sales to research is involved from the get go
5. Continually involving each department in each sponsorship to optimize customer service, build solid relationships and drive revenue

1. Distinguishing Your ROI Metrics When Your Brand Is A Service, Not a Product
2. Appreciating that certain industries can measure information based on point-of-sale and SKUs whereas others will likely have more information on their customers
3. Understanding that there is limited insight into your business to be found in the proprietary research offered by agencies
4. Realizing that sporting events, while costly, are an excellent vehicle for engagement
5. Identifying the effective marketing mix and the true value of an experiential impression

ONLINE

1. Leveraging Online Communities To Activate Your Sponsorship
2. Noting customer feedback indicating appreciation of your athletic sponsorship
3. Finding new ways to offer grass roots and inclusive promotions, sharing the opportunities to show support outside your organization
4. Providing fans with a unique opportunity to show their support through online video recordings
5. Profiling not only athletes but also their friends, family and communities providing them with support
6. Complementing these activities with a direct, business-related dollar-for-dollar donation scheme to encourage further support for your sporting partner

1. Building Sales And New Partnerships Through Web-Based Sponsorship Management Tools
2. Examining your processes for communicating with prospects and existing partners on a day-to-day basis and finding new ways to distinguish yourself in the marketplace
3. Realizing that as soon as you create a sponsorship prospectus it is out of date and continually being updated throughout the life of the sponsorship
4. Using the Internet to showcase inventory and manage activation with existing sponsors
5. Engaging an agency to independently identify your audience’s core values and attributes
6. Demonstrating through your online sponsorship management program your plans to target consumers
7. Working with an existing corporate partner to identify the kinds of services they might wish to use in an on-line relationship management system
8. Stressing that this new resource is not to be a replacement for “live” communication with sponsors, rather it is an addition to procedures already in place
9. Using the tool also to offer business-to-business networking opportunities for your sponsors

1. Making Your Athletes Part Of Your Family – Using Their Profiles Creatively To Promote Your Brand Online
2. Identifying the most efficient way to reach your young target market and exploit your athletes’ celebrity in their field
1. Eg via Internet video sites
3. Working with athletes to facilitate the production of short films about their training, leisure activities and sporting performances, to be diffused online
4. Exciting your athletes to engage with different parts of your business, trying other products and experiences, also to be filmed for viral marketing
5. Achieving a deeper kind of partnership with your athletes, as they come to adopt your brand and products as a whole, not just the specific line they are endorsing

BALANCING SPONSORSHIP AND ACTIVATION

1. Over-Delivery As A Baseline Focus – Zeroing In On Exceeding Sponsorship Goals
2. Realizing that the overarching exclusive deal is being relied on less in sports sponsorship
3. Understanding that budgets are being used in one area
4. Ensuring that your team is more creative and focusing in on the specific goals of your sponsor
5. Protecting exclusivity and enhancing exclusivity by using more specificity in reaching your partner’s goals
6. Growing innovatively by utilizing your data to reinforce a partnership for you and your client

1. Activating Sponsorships With A 1:1 Ratio – What If The Budget Just Isn’t There?
2. Realizing that an ideal industry standard is an equal investment in sponsorship and activation
3. Identifying the specific market you want to target
1. Eg 18-34 year-old males
4. Understanding that the best way to reach them will be through a combination of entertainment and sports marketing and investing accordingly
5. Ensuring that you keep enough funds available to correctly activate on your sponsorships
6. In the event of an over-spend, trying to find economical solutions to retain your brand association with the property
7. At all times, maintaining good relations with colleagues at the properties in order to retain those partnerships when your budget is flush once more

1. One-Day Sporting Events – Associating Sponsorships With Hospitality At Your Sold-Out Game
2. Understanding the swings and roundabouts of your sponsorship cycle and adjusting your activities accordingly
1. Brands more interested in sponsoring closer to the event date and they understand how scarce tickets are
3. Selling nothing à la carte
1. Attaching all VIP hospitality to a set list of sponsor offerings including signage, advertising etc. so that brands know that if they wish to attend the game they will be obliged to take a full sponsorship package
4. Concentrating on servicing existing sponsors first and making the sourcing of new partners a secondary priority
5. Understanding that nobody’s budgets are increasing and thinking of new ways to keep your assets fresh

1. Retailer Activation – Combining Your In-store And Video Game Opportunities
2. Building a partnership with a major product sold in your store and leading gaming company
3. Benefiting from the game’s existing association with a league
4. For a limited time, selling sport-associated merchandise in-store for fans
1. Eg soft drink, coolers, beer, ice
5. Activating where possible on your local team partnerships
1. Eg associating a player’s name with a specific product being sold
6. Continually striving to improve this process

1. Activating In The Green Room – Showcasing Brands Backstage As Teenage Athletes Prepare For Competition
2. Understanding that if the market of amateur athletes has a brand experience that results in associating their passion for their favorite sport with that brand, they will carry this powerful message to their friends
3. Realizing that sponsors are looking for an interactive lifestyle experience and, rather than simply handing out samples to competitors, prefer to engage with them to profile their product in a more meaningful way
4. Creating a village-like atmosphere in which, during down time between trainings, competitors can visit a select number of brand lounges
5. Making sure not to over-expose athletes to unbeneficial engagement and working with brands to build an exciting experience
6. Conducting market research with your adolescent competitors to add value and substance to your sponsorship proposals

1. Activation For Business-To-Business – Helping Brands Get In Front Of Potential Clients
2. Understanding that your sport is of direct interest to businesses offering services to C-level executives
3. Making the distinction between luxury activities that appeal to wealthy individuals (eg sailing) and those that are firmly associated with business, hospitality and the corporate lifestyle (eg Formula One, golf, horseracing)
4. Providing comprehensive hospitality options so that B2B brands can offer a variety of social activities and optimal networking opportunities
5. Leveraging relationships with players to add value to the package, eg inviting them for a cocktail with clients at day's end

RESEARCH

1. Identifying The Kinds Of Information You Should Be Providing To Teams – What Is The Research Role Of National Leagues?
2. Hiring an in-house expert to source data from both marketing and commercial perspectives, depending on the story to be told to corporate partners
3. Pinpointing specific members of your office to liaise with teams and to ensure best practices are shared league-wide
4. Collecting information on demographics on-line, in the stadium and in the community, as well as ratings and segment trends
5. Providing data on local, regional, national and international attendance trends where relevant
6. Using third-party research firms to quantify the market value of your league’s assets and provide un-skewed information for you to pass to teams and prospects

1. In-House Research And Consumer Need – Demonstrating To Brands That Your Ticketholders Are Ready To Purchase
2. Conducting research to show that your consumers are also the consumers of your sponsor’s brand
3. Tracking awareness and appropriateness of the sponsor to your fans to accurately portray your consumer landscape
4. Measuring the key drivers of brand loyalty to help your sponsor grow their business
5. Exploring ways to measure new media and technology, such as DVR usage and the consequences for a sponsor’s television exposure

1. Who Should Own Your Research? Outsourcing vs. In-House: Panel Discussion
2. What is the benefit to completely outsourcing the research behind your sports sponsorship?
3. What is the benefit of keeping your research in-house?
4. How can you benefit from a hybrid approach?
   What is the potential optimal structure of a hybrid approach for your specific brand?
   What do you need to do now to optimize your in-house sponsorship team to exploit your internal resources in delivering on your bottom line?

BETTER APPROACHES TO RETURN ON OBJECTIVE

1. Leveraging The Assets Of Your Sponsorship To Fully Integrate Your Brand With The Property
2. Knowing from the outset of the partnership your brand’s goals and anticipated results for the sponsorship
1. Eg business-to-business and internal exposure within your own company
3. Showing leadership in delivering on those objectives and looking for opportunities in a landscape in which there are not many assets lying around
4. Developing your strategy prior to embarking on negotiations with the property
5. Sharing responsibility for the partnership equally between your in-house and trusted agency teams
6. Reviewing the benefits and drawbacks of outsourcing the activation aspect to the agency
7. Understanding without a personal approach you risk missing out on success
1. Having confidence in your staff and the partnership’s stakeholders
2. Ensuring your staff are able to experience the sporting event to really understand the potential
8. Defining clear metrics to assess the viability of the partnership moving forward

1. Yawning At Success – Strategically Building A Long-Term Partnership
2. Identifying the specific business-to-business objective of your sponsorship strategy
1. Eg convincing distributors to sell your product
3. Understanding that if your business is comprised of brokered dealers it can be difficult to measure the new business generated by your sponsorship
4. Working with agencies to measure your brand exposure and potential for purchase in the marketplace
5. Receiving independent analysis from your property’s agency to accurately portray the value for your sponsorship
6. Including in your contract that other sponsors must use your brand’s naming rights in all displays and in-store transactions
7. Encouraging your employee base to get involved in the sport to further activate the sponsorship

• Sponsorship And The Big Stage – Lessons Learned
• Understanding that more could be done for US Olympic sales and marketing activities
• Adapting in the final countdown as everyone is in “fire drill” mode
• Knowing the client’s business and keeping up-to-date on company developments
• Investing time and resources in servicing and activating on that relationship
• Finding an expert (either in-house or through an agency) who understands both worlds and can look at the relationship through the client’s filter
• Developing a tool to check on the objectives and returns of the sponsor and knowing which clients require which analytics
• Understanding that a successful sponsorship is all about relationships