Tennis Sponsorship experiment results

A while back I posted a thread under the heading "Tennis Sponsorship"(05-23-2006) with a request for new ideas about sponsoring juniors.
I wanted to see how many players would respond to me and what ideas they would come up with to get sponsored by my FICTITIOUS fruit juice company. (I made it clear in my original letter that I do NOT have such a company and that I'm purely looking for responses and new ideas)

Thank you very much to all of you that e-mailed me!
Sofar I received 6 e-mails from young inspired players. Everyone I got e-mails from were top ranked players and most of them was juniors between ages 10 and 16.
These are players from all over the world and all are asking for financial help.
I greatly enjoyed reading about their accomplishments.
The problem is that all of them said EXACTLY the same things about how they would advertise my business IF I HAD a fruit juice company for example.

Everyone said they would put my name and logo on their bags, clothes, grips, waterbottles even shoes. Few said they would be willing to appear in advertisements for my company. Two players said they have their own website already and my fictitious company can advertise on that for free also.
These are all ideas that are already being used and is nothing new.
So from this experiment of mine no one really came forward with more original ideas....

If there are any big companies out there that are interested in sponsoring juniors they can get into contact with me so I can give them details of juniors (or their parents) that did go out of their way to reply to me through this forum.

I read your hypothetical offer and was mildly amused. As a potential sponsor it is you that have the burden of stating your requirements that this position should fullfill. Original ideas to help market a product should not be the responsibility of a sponsored individual. Sponsorship is about positive exposure of a product to ultimately increase sales or market value. Promoting the product with creative ideas is the job of a marketing proffesional. Its my opinion that this was nothing more than a ruse to help you come up with ideas to help seek sponsorship without really knowing how to word it yourself or know where to start.

Well I did get some reaction from quite a few people. But not really anything that was out of the ordinary.
I DO NOT HAVE A COMPANY THAT GIVE OUT SPONSORSHIPS and don't worry mate, I'm not going to take the kids' ideas and apply for my own sponsorship...
I'm way to old and over the hill for that.

There is one thing I can see from all the people that wrote in.
The only sort of companies that will benefit from sponsoring kids and up and coming players are LOCAL COMPANIES from the area where the kid lives or play his/her tournaments...
The kids want to put names on clothing and bags and stuff and uphold your company name and promote you.
But because the kids are not internationally known, it will not work for big international companies to try and do marketing through sponsorships for youngsters...
Tennis equipment companies may have results by sponsoring young talent because it may influence peers. But your big (non tennis related) company will not get known worldwide by sponsoring the #1 U/14 tennisplayer from Pisco Beach, Nowheresville...

Unless they become the #1 [possibly top ten] player on the men's or women's big tour.

only if your sponsored protoge is not hijacked by bigger companies that pays more money to sponsor him/her...

They Changed It From 10 To 12 But Some 11 Year Olds Slide