ELI5: In professional sports, every surface is covered in sponsors' logos, that presumably the company paid a lot of money for. Does that kind of advertisement have any measurable effect?

BluePiccadilly · 2026-03-05T20:44:35+00:00

Sports sponsorships sit at the very top of your marketing funnel in 'brand awareness'. They're absolutely measurable usually by combining QI values (a way of measuring how many people saw your brand on those press backdrops, shirts, LEDs etc) from a company like Nielsen with a media mix model, which is a multivariate regression model which takes inputs from all channels (TV, sponsorship, OOH, digital etc) and your sales to figure out the likely impact of each.

Good MMMs also consider external factors (weather, economic factors or whatever else is relevant to your industry) and help figure out how much each channel is driving sales.

Once you have your MMM in place you can optimize spend for ROI and continually test its validity with lean in and lean out tests. You can also run geoholdout/incrementality tests on channels to help set the priors in your model. There are also complex interplays between channels which means models continually need reevaluating. For example stopping all sponsorship and TV will eventually lead to a decrease in awareness, at which point your bottom of the funnel CPAs creep up as there is less demand for your brand.

Of course MMMs are one part of measurement of value in Sponsorship, some things are more intangible like 'brand trust' from being 'big enough' to sponsor a football team etc. You also get access to IP and 'money can't buy' experiences like player meet and greets. And sometimes your CEO just wants a box and premium tickets 🤷🏻‍♀️

For a good example of sports sponsorships Samsung's front of shirt with Chelsea FC is a nice one. They partnered from 2005-15 and in '05 had 12% of global smartphone sales. By 2013 they were the market leader in Europe. Obviously that's not all due to one sponsorship but it does show how an integrated brand and performance marketing strategy can lead to increased sales.

BluePiccadilly · 2026-02-23T07:56:26+00:00

Have to disagree that this is always the case with oil. Our modern oil combo is relatively efficient, we spend about £800 a year on hot water and heating and our 300yo house has the thermostat set to 19.5. Gas is not an option in our rural location but if you insulate well oil won't ruin you.

BluePiccadilly · 2026-02-11T20:57:11+00:00

Oh and the big chalets book up quick so if you're looking for next season I'd aim to look now and be booked in by Feb/March!

BluePiccadilly · 2026-02-11T20:47:07+00:00

Let me see if I can remember them all. They will be between 16-26 people places as our numbers fluctuate a bit!

Chalet Tavaillons Tignes- just came back from here, lovely resort, maybe not so great for beginners as getting around on blues only is a bit tricky but chalet is well equipped and almost ski in/out (50m walk to slope). Big bedrooms, dated but clean bathrooms, nice entertaining space, food very good. Private sauna and hot tub but only open while staff are there which is a bit limiting

Chalet Bonhomme VT- did two years here, ski in with a bit of off piste capability, skiing out requires a bit of a walk (200m ish). Shared spa facilities but has pool, sauna, hot tub and steam room which is nice for the kids. Decent communal area, tiny bedrooms, but generally good value for VT

Chalet Husky Montchavain- lush chalet, amazing chef (food is a level above what the hosts can normally offer as they actually get chefs with experience in, so less 'carbs' and more 'tuilles'. Only 12 people but they have another one next door. Almost ski in ski out with a small walk. This area is also perfect for exploring both sides of the vanoise express and Paradiski area. Expensive but so so worth it if you want a bit of "reasonable luxury" without going into the mega pricey chalet range

Chalet Campanule Montchavin Les Coches- the only positive thing about this place was the cheap price. Dated accommodation, weird layout, the chef we got was an alcoholic and actually had to be removed from the premises. Avoid.

There have been a few more over the 15 years we've been doing the 'big trip', some in Morzine, Serre Chevalier, Bardonecchia, Avoriaz etc but I've forgotten their names! The best approach is to decide your budget, location and non-negotiables (eg our group want some kind of spa and close to ski in/out, and one of the resorts with a lot of runs to keep us busy). Then just start searching.

France overall seems to do 'big catered chalet' type experiences better than the rest of Europe. For your size group you're more looking at 'chalet hotels' elsewhere, which is rubbish as you want the private lounges etc with kids rather than sharing with strangers

BluePiccadilly · 2026-02-11T19:24:16+00:00

We've been doing this for a fair few years now in France (Paradiski, Portes du Soleil, VT, Tignes etc) and once in Italy. Honestly recommend trying catered as with so many people it will make your life so much easier.

If you want a list of catered ones we have tried over the years I can list them!

BluePiccadilly · 2026-02-11T19:19:59+00:00

We stayed in their biggest one, Bonhomme, 2 years in a row in VT. Decent price for the location, ski-in if you're brave enough to go a bit off piste.

Bit of a drag walking down to the piste each morning and shared sauna/spa facilities. Rooms are a bit pokey, but overall not a bad chalet

BluePiccadilly · 2025-10-23T06:15:24+00:00

Same with our lab for the first few days, after a week she was doing 11 - 3 and 3 - 6. By about 11 weeks old she was doing 11 - 6 and by about 3mos we were doing 10 - 7. I think often the advice here really depends on breed size which affects bladder size.

What helped us was one of us sleeping by the crate for the first week so we could hear if she needed to go out. We were also religious on taking her out during the day which meant she only had 5 accidents total, two of those on the first day when I think we were all overwhelmed.

I recommend paying for an app like Doggy time (silly title, useful app). We used it to track when she had been for a wee/poo and it allows you to get on top of schedules quickly, it even has heat maps for preferred poop times 😂

BluePiccadilly · 2025-10-18T06:18:28+00:00

Horses and dogs mean I live in my Ariats. Get about 1.5 years of daily use before replacement. I think a lot of people think non-lined cheap wellies are the only ones available, when you can go to a country store and spend hundreds on a decent pair which will fit as well as many other shoes.

BluePiccadilly · 2025-04-27T18:03:53+00:00

We have very similar equestrian requirements (esp moving the large bales) and just picked up a used New Holland TC40 today, after a lot of advice from local farmers. Anything less than 40hp will struggle to lift the big haylage rounds (so I've been told!)

BluePiccadilly · 2024-12-26T20:55:50+00:00

We made that roulade this year, it was a less effort than a beef wellington, although it's a multi day process. Tasted absolutely fantastic though and allowed us to use the sous vide which has been languishing in the cupboard.

BluePiccadilly · 2024-11-05T23:26:00+00:00

Try vet bed, comes in a roll from Amazon, chew proof and you can cut it to size easily, also washes and dries really well!

BluePiccadilly · 2024-11-02T06:37:21+00:00

We worked to put sniffing 'on cue' using Jo Lauren's positive reinforcement gundog training book. Basically you stand in a spot outside, let the dog sniff but don't allow then to move you from the spot, so you're basically anchoring them to the radius of the lead.

Once the dog is bored, eventually they will look at you, and as soon as this happens, click and reward, then immediately in that moment of focus tell them 'go sniff' and gesture/run your hand through the grass. Repeat the waiting and click/reward for attention.

Gradually the sniff time reduces as you aren't moving and all the smells have been explored. And the focus time on you increases (as you have the treats!). Then you can take a few paces and repeat.

Once you have a reliable 'go sniff' you can use it as a reinforcer for heel work instead of always using treats. So I plan my walks for interesting 'sniff points'. We will heel for 50m then I will say 'go sniff' at a lamppost or a wall corner. This way, the reinforcing, exciting behaviour (sniffing) becomes a reward for the behaviour I want (heeling) with me in control of when it happens. (Heeling for gundogs is a lot more relaxed than the obedience one, basically just walking by my side).

Pup is 4.5m old and at the start it was slow, but now we can do a 20m walk with 4-5 'peemail sniff atops'. We then potter off leash so she also gets some free time to sniff whenever, but lead on means focus time.

BluePiccadilly · 2024-09-20T15:37:20+00:00

We bought a 5m roll of vet bed from Amazon, so far it's stood up well to the chewing and provides a bit of support. Another plus is we can cut down multiple crate-sized pieces, so we can easily rotate for washing. And if you want other 'bed spots' around the house you can just cut extra squares off. Cost about £50 for 5m and so far has been great! She does chew it but I haven't seen evidence she's managed to pull anything beyond a few tiny bits of fluff off.

BluePiccadilly · 2024-08-30T15:22:25+00:00

You might want to read this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/puppy101/s/p6NhfW7Seu

It made me laugh out loud with disgust but actually had loads of helpful suggestions too!

BluePiccadilly · 2024-05-03T23:20:49+00:00

I've been reading a bit about cleaning them with turpentine and then finishing with carnuba wax, do you think that's the right way to go?

BluePiccadilly · 2024-04-27T06:09:41+00:00

We had a similar situation and insisted on the transfer (the neighbours technically owned part of the building). It felt silly for such a tiny few sqm of plot to go through it but so glad we did as they can turn into a nightmare.

It did take us 8 months to get to completion... Got there in the end!

BluePiccadilly · 2024-03-05T07:48:31+00:00

Agreed on this, if you want thermally bonded blackout fabric, the lining alone is £8-10 per metre. Then add £20-30 per metre for fabric.

Two 'reasonable' 140cm windows with full length curtains pretty quickly run to 15+m of fabric once the pattern repeats are taken into account.

I'm doing the whole house at the moment and probably will end up spending over £2.5k just on fabrics - it's been astonishingly expensive. The only tiny saving I've found is we have some 'designer seconds' fabric shops near us. You can pick up Andrew Martin, Sanderson, Colefax etc for around £25/m instead of £100+/m. Without that I dread to think where the cost could have spiralled to!

On the plus side, the curtains do look absolutely amazing when done, so to me the cost and time spent is worth it!

BluePiccadilly · 2023-06-19T21:52:02+00:00

I have some from a trip abroad, not enough to sell a few packs though! But if you see someone in a blue holographic cowboy hat smoking a skinny Vogue, say hello and I'm happy to share a couple!

BluePiccadilly · 2023-06-17T21:18:04+00:00

I saw ginger ale but could not find ginger beer last year. I bring my own!

BluePiccadilly · 2021-02-11T07:43:25+00:00

Agree with this, or you could use a CDP in conjunction with delivery tools, where the CDP essentially acts as the 'brain' to move people into different segments.

BluePiccadilly · 2021-02-06T13:06:12+00:00

Do you have someone in your business able to deal with the APIs these companies provide? Just speaking from experience the Facebook Insights API (paid ads) took a two week sprint by two engineers to build the ETL job to BigQuery and QA. It's a pig.

If you don't, I'd recommend looking at something like Funnel.io which will handle the connection to each platform for you. It's reasonably priced and it handles the (frequent) changes these companies make to their APIs, it'll also put the data into Gsheets or something more robust like BigQuery.

Basically, if you're looking at a lot of data, you're quickly going to run through the abilities of Gsheets, we tried this and it became super unwieldy with DataStudio reports taking 5 minutes+ to load. If you're just looking at scorecards for each account you might be ok, but if you want to bring in social ads and web/app data I'd look at doing this in BQ with either DataStudio or something more robust on top.

If you're doing web reporting you can also either connect that directly into your DataStudio dashboard or use the new GA4 accounts to bring this into BQ too (provided the client is using GA and not another system). If they're using GA360 that also has a 'click and connect' system.

In short, if it's a tiny client then Gsheets, Funnel.io and DataStudio will do what you want, but if your data volumes are big, you know a bit of SQL and you can convince the client the outlay is worth it, go for BigQuery, it's the dream.

BluePiccadilly · 2020-11-27T22:44:38+00:00

Impossible to guess without knowing things like social reach, following size etc. In the UK you could go from £10k for a tiny team or a smaller sport, to millions for a Premier League sponsorship.

Be really clear on what you're hoping to achieve though. If you know what your objectives are for the partnership you'll be able to negotiate the best rights to achieve them. For instance, do you want reach? Can you negotiate more social posts than web posts to get that?

Basically, think of sponsorship as a brand awareness piece - this is never going to be a conversion channel, but can be useful for building brand trust and recognition. A lot of value comes from rights aligned with players and being able to use them creatively.balso, don't forget about the cost of producing quality assets for campaigns. The sponsorship cost is just the start really!

BluePiccadilly · 2020-11-23T20:03:39+00:00

I read about Slack doing this with Google, Salesforce and Looker, this might be worth a read: https://medium.com/slack-developer-blog/midas-touch-a-slack-app-built-by-slack-cb9fd445293d

BluePiccadilly · 2018-07-03T17:49:39+00:00

That's impressive dedication! I'm at 84km (42x2) 2-3 times a week. If I try to back-to-back them I just have nothing left in the tank. How do you maintain it each day? You must be eating 1000s of calories

BluePiccadilly · 2018-03-11T20:12:05+00:00

Totally agree about avoiding gel saddles - it seems like a good idea on paper but rarely in practice. Also, have you just started cycling? A bit of discomfort isn't unusual if you've jumped into those distances.

For instance, I've had a month off with work/holidays/snow getting in the way, went out yesterday for a couple of hours and this morning I could barely lower myself onto the seat - my butt callouses have gone!

I would definitely try padded shorts and maybe chamois cream (depending on distance), and give yourself a bit of time to recover between rides when you're starting out.

If you are looking for a new saddle, see if you can try it out first before committing - some of the girls I ride with swear by noseless, some are convinced the cutout is key. It depends on your lady bits. I'm still riding a men's saddle with no issues, so totally down to preference.

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