The professional association for design. Boston Chapter

Partnering with AIGA National

Why sponsorship?

Today, with ever more information and choice, designers—like all consumers—make decisions and influence clients based on their relationship to a brand. A company can affect purchasing decisions and strengthen its competitive edge by developing strong bonds with designers through affinity marketing.

Why should I sponsor AIGA?

When you sponsor professional design activities through AIGA, you are able to reach designers by leveraging their relationship with an organization that is trusted and is their own.

AIGA is committed to building this affinity for companies through partnerships that are truly mutually beneficial and resonate with your target audience. AIGA sponsorships are crafted to be:

  • Meaningful to AIGA members who represent your most profitable customers;
  • Experiential, providing opportunities for those customers to interact with your products and services in the context of an AIGA experience;
  • Highly visible and layered throughout AIGA collateral, at AIGA national conferences and on AIGA's website.

Why are AIGA designers important?

AIGA members include designers in all design disciplines and at all phases of their careers, yet consistently they represent the designers most interested in advancing the profession and leading the profession to new levels of influence. These are the opinion leaders of the design profession, in all of its disciplines.

Designers are consumers.

In their role as consultants on strategic communication to business, designers influence corporate selection of products and services, specifying the paper, print, software and hardware purchases for their clients.

As clients, AIGA members alone specify or purchase:

  • $9.1 billion in printing and paper
  • $650 million in photography and film
  • $463 million in computer products
  • $585 million in copywriting
  • $364 million in type services
  • $344 million in illustration

Designers are influencers.

As innovators and trendsetters, this audience can help to position your company, product or service among a leading demographic that impacts business and consumer styles, taste and practice. The nation's leading designers develop solutions that will be followed by others in business, providing demand for supporting goods and services that will multiply.

AIGA membership reflects the best demographics of the profession.

As leaders in the profession, their position is more influential than the typical designer and they include more project decision makers than the profession as a whole.

  • 55 percent are female, 45 percent male.
  • 22 percent are 25-30 years old.
  • 39 percent are 31-40 years old.
  • 25 percent are 41-50 years old.
  • 90 percent have completed 4+ years of college.

How is sponsorship valuable to me?

A partnership with AIGA provides your company with an opportunity to leverage sales through affinity marketing and targeted sampling, and offers a vehicle to reach a wide spectrum of designers as well as the important industry influencers.

Affinity

By establishing a firm link between your company and the premier association of professional designers, you have linked yourself with an interest in the highest professional standards for design through an organization that designers trust. This keeps your brand top-of-mind within the profession.

Sampling

By placing your product or service in the hands of a large, pre-qualified, influential client group through joint mailings or sanctioned promotions, attention is brought to your product or service and is supported by an objective third party, AIGA. There is no other way to reach AIGA membership in this way, since AIGA member and mailing lists are not available for either sale or trade.

Reach

AIGA membership includes both younger innovators and seasoned design leaders. AIGA programming is planned to help sponsors reach those who are leading change as well as those whose work is admired for its refinement, excellence and proven design sensibilities. Sponsors can target their product or service line appropriately.

Access

The use of a product or service expands geometrically and follows a tried and true course. It begins with access to a small group of influencers. It is validated by this group and then transmitted to others. True adoption is only achieved through sustained visibility and use. AIGA provides the influencers; facilitates the transmission of knowledge through sampling; then assists in adoption by sustained recognition of a sponsor's contribution.

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National Sponsorship Opportunities

Corporations may partner with AIGA as long-term or short-term sponsors. Opportunities for corporate involvement with this influential audience include the following:

Official sponsorships
Official sponsorships are multiyear and tailored to your company's marketing positioning, providing you with visibility and integration with numerous AIGA activities. A national official sponsorship with AIGA offers your company the opportunity to secure the official sanction of the organization that your target audience turns to in the pursuit of excellence and professional success. AIGA will have no more than six national official sponsors in any given year, so that there is distinctive and valuable recognition for its key partners.

Conference sponsorships
Conference and event sponsorships are available for all companies that desire high-impact visibility and direct access to targeted audiences of designers. Audiences range from 300 for educational seminars and symposiums, to 500 attendees at our niche conferences on new media and film and television design, to upwards of 800 sttendees at the biennial national business conference and more than 3,000 attendees at AIGA's biennial national design conference.

Competition sponsorships
AIGA offers an opportunity for designers to strive for design excellence through "365: AIGA Annual Design Competition." Selected entries from competition categories are exhibited in AIGA's National Design Center on Fifth Avenue in New York. Each exhibition is then available to travel to all AIGA chapters and communities of interest across the country.

Publication sponsorships
AIGA publications include print and web periodicals that address not only issues of form and content, but also context. Annual publications, journals, critical publications, and supporting publications for exhibitions are available for sponsorship. Publication sponsorship is particularly effective in providing a vehicle for paper and printing companies to place their products in the hands of designers and demonstrate their services to the reader.

Sponsorship costs
AIGA's assessment of the value of official national sponsorships was confirmed in 2001 by a special survey completed by IEG, the leading independent provider of sponsorship information and analysis. IEG Valuation Service provides an objective, accurate determination of what sponsorship is worth, and has been used by more than 300 clients to appraise the value of local, national and international opportunities in sports, arts, entertainment, events, venues and causes.