Phew. It turns out endurance challenges are expensive.
Entry fees. Travel. Accommodation. Kit. Nutrition. Training. Recovery.
And apparently, once you finish one Tough Mudder, the sensible response is to enter several more and eventually decide that running around an obstacle course for 24 hours sounds like a good idea.
That is where partnerships and sponsorship can help.
Tough Smudge is still at the beginning of its journey. I am not going to pretend I am a household name, an elite athlete or somebody with millions of followers.
I am an ordinary Yorkshire bloke seeing just how far I can take this.
The road ahead includes Tough Mudder events, longer endurance challenges and ultimately World’s Toughest Mudder.
Along the way I am documenting the training, events, kit, mistakes, successes and occasional questionable life choices, while using the journey to raise money and awareness for charity.
If your business, brand or organisation would like to become part of that journey, I would be very happy to talk.
Let’s talk about a partnership
Ways we could work together
Fancy putting Tough Smudge on a start line?
You could sponsor some or all of the costs associated with a particular event, including an entry fee, travel, accommodation or other event expenses.
Depending on the partnership and the rules of the event, that could include me wearing or carrying your branding, talking about your support through Tough Smudge content and recognising your involvement before and after the event.
It could be one event.
It could be a series of events.
Or perhaps you have a particularly ridiculous endurance challenge in mind and simply need somebody daft enough to say yes.
I am prepared to consider applications for that position.
Not every partnership needs to involve sending me off on my own.
If your business is entering a Tough Mudder, Spartan, obstacle race, charity challenge or another endurance event and needs another person on the team, get in touch.
Perhaps you need to make the numbers up.
Perhaps you want somebody with some obstacle-event experience in the group.
Perhaps you have clients, employees or suppliers taking part and want somebody there who is comfortable with the event.
Or perhaps somebody in the office confidently volunteered six months ago and has subsequently discovered an urgent diary clash.
I am happy to discuss joining corporate and charity teams where the event fits with the Tough Smudge journey.
Prostate Cancer UK is the charity closest to the heart of Tough Smudge and the principal cause behind my own fundraising.
That connection is personal and will remain an important part of the project.
However, I am also open to taking part in a particular event or corporate challenge in support of another registered charity where there is a genuine reason for us to work together.
That might mean joining a charity team, undertaking a sponsored challenge or helping a company support its chosen charity through an endurance event.
Any fundraising arrangement would be made clear so there is no confusion between money being raised for a charity and commercial support being provided to Tough Smudge.
A little publicity. A good story. Plenty of mud.
You do not need to be an endurance brand to sponsor Tough Smudge.
A local business, professional firm, manufacturer, technology company, retailer or completely unrelated organisation might simply like the idea of being associated with an ambitious endurance journey and the charitable purpose behind it.
I am open to both one-off sponsorship and longer-term relationships.
What a partnership looks like should depend on what you are trying to achieve rather than forcing everybody into a standard gold, silver or bronze sponsorship package.
Potential partnerships could include event sponsorship, branded clothing, website recognition, social content, event reports, photographs and video, charity activations, corporate-team participation and other ideas we agree make sense.
I am a chartered accountant, so I could make a joke here about keeping money away from the Treasurer.
I probably shouldn’t.
Whether sponsorship represents an appropriate business expense for your organisation is something for you and your advisers to decide. What I can provide is a genuine commercial partnership with clearly agreed benefits.
Want Tough Smudge to try something?
I use an increasing amount of equipment while training and taking part in events.
Running kit, obstacle-racing clothing, footwear, nutrition, hydration, recovery products, training equipment, technology and plenty of other things are all potentially relevant.
If you manufacture, sell or provide something that genuinely fits the Tough Smudge journey and would like me to try it, I am happy to hear from you.
I am not going to spend my time contacting every manufacturer asking for freebies.
If I need something, I am perfectly prepared to buy it.
But equally, if you think your product would be useful and would like to supply something for me to test, I am very happy to consider it.
There is one important condition.
You are not buying my opinion.
If something is supplied free of charge, I will clearly say that it was supplied.
If it is sponsored, I will say it is sponsored.
If an affiliate relationship exists, I will disclose it.
And if I talk about the product, I will give my genuine experience of using it.
If I think it is brilliant, I will say so.
If I think it is all right but has some weaknesses, I will say that too.
And if it simply does not work for me, receiving it free will not magically make it the greatest product ever created.
That might not be the easiest route to a guaranteed five-star review.
It is, however, a much better basis for building trust.
What can Tough Smudge offer?
Tough Smudge is growing, so the precise value of a partnership will change as the project develops.
Depending on the relationship, I can potentially offer:
- use of branded kit or equipment at relevant events, subject to event rules;
- recognition on the Tough Smudge website;
- inclusion on the Supporters & Partners page;
- links to your organisation;
- acknowledgement in relevant event previews and reports;
- social-media mentions and content;
- photographs and video from events and training where practical;
- genuine product or service testing;
- longer-term equipment reviews after real use rather than ten minutes out of a box;
- affiliate or discount-code partnerships where appropriate;
- participation in corporate or charity teams;
- bespoke sponsored challenges;
- collaboration around fundraising campaigns;
- and the opportunity to become involved while Tough Smudge is still at the beginning of its journey.
I would rather agree something useful for both sides than sell a pre-written sponsorship package containing benefits nobody actually wants.
Why get involved now?
Tough Smudge is not a finished media brand looking for another logo to squeeze onto a sponsor wall.
It is being built now.
That means an early partner is not simply buying exposure to an existing audience.
You have the opportunity to become part of the story while that audience, the challenge programme and the platform are developing.
The ambition is substantial.
More events.
Bigger endurance challenges.
World’s Toughest Mudder.
More video and written content.
A growing community around the journey.
Greater charity fundraising and awareness.
And ultimately the possibility of developing Tough Smudge into a sustainable endurance, content and fundraising platform supported by the people and organisations that believe in what it is trying to do.
I cannot promise where that journey will end.
That is rather the point.
A partnership has to fit
I am open to ideas.
I am not open to absolutely anything.
A Tough Smudge partnership should make reasonable sense for the project, the audience or the endurance journey.
- I will not recommend something simply because somebody has paid me.
- I will not disguise sponsorship as an independent recommendation.
- I will not pretend a commercial payment is a charitable donation.
- And I would rather turn down a partnership than promote something I do not feel comfortable putting my name behind.
The aim is not to collect as many sponsors as possible.
It is to build relationships with businesses and organisations that are happy to come along for the journey.
Not ready for sponsorship?
That is absolutely fine.
If you would like to support Tough Smudge personally rather than enter into a commercial partnership, Patreon is probably the better route.
Joining the Tough Smudge Pit Crew helps support the costs of events, travel, equipment and developing the project without requiring a larger sponsorship commitment.
Fancy doing something together?
You might already know exactly what you want.
You might have a product you think I should test.
You might need somebody for an event team.
You might want to sponsor a particular challenge.
You might want Tough Smudge to raise money for your chosen charity.
Or you might simply have an idea and want to find out whether it could work.
Get in touch.
Tell me who you are, what you have in mind and what you would like the partnership to achieve.
If it sounds like a good fit, we can take it from there.
No enormous sponsorship brochure.
No twelve-stage procurement exercise.
Just start with a conversation.
Endure. Overcome. Make it count.