Shaken or stirred? Olive or twist? As Jon Bonné, wine editor of The San Francisco Chronicle writes, "the gin martini is about the courtship between two complex ingredients. That deceptive minimalism makes it a triumph of technique."

Similarly, the courtship of emotional connection is critical to the makeup of the triangle between the brand/sponsor, the venue/property, and their (hopefully 'shared') audience.

The venue may reach with its audience by default through a pre-established following generated via the event and/or the talent. The venue, event, and talent also can easily work out a mutually beneficial arrangement with their sponsor. That leaves only the sponsor/brand and its emotional connection with the audience as the last piece of the puzzle for a perfect activation.

The sponsoring brand is usually the one picking up the tab, in exchange for using the venue/event as a vehicle to reach its intended audience. But it needs to establish its own emotional connection with the audience in order for the 'reach' to resonate into engagement, and continued courtship culminating in a lasting marriage.

And as with the gin martini, not the 'pretend' cocktails that borrow the martini name, there is no 'perfect' recipe. However, the brand should employ proper techniques for establishing emotional connection with its consumer. The brand should encourage frequent, habit-forming but voluntary interaction, and find various methods to build cumulative value for its customers based on that interaction. Positive shared experiences only add to the mix. Relevant brand association and admirable brand representation are keys to a successful campaign. Of course without a saying, the product has to be good too.

Woo (or court) your sponsors accordingly, and provide them opportunities for positive brand association and emotional connection with the audience, yours and theirs.

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Watch what you only want to watch, or browse through the best of the best, and be able to share it online, including Twitter. Thanks to movieclips, you can search over 12,000 two-minute clips of your favorite movies. So far six studios (Universal, Paramount, Fox, Sony, MGM, Warner Bros.) have signed up.

Soon anyclip will be launched, also offering similar services. You can follow both @anyclip and @movieclips on Twitter.

I see this concept utilized in various ways besides the obvious. I think it may become an effective tool in business communications. It's definitely an interactive way to get the message across to your business partners/clients. Just attach the 'right' movie clip conveying what your point is and voila. Both entertaining and effective. And you don't have to spend thousands to create and develop your own content. Let Robert DeNiro or Al Pacino say it for you. Now, "I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore" can have a whole new meaning.

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You all have come across party crashers. Most recent and popular among them are the so-called 'White House Party Crashers.' Vinu Joseph of @IEG, based on an article in The Washington Post, now claims "the couple staged an international polo match which ended up with dissatisfied attendees, unpaid vendors and charities getting far less than what might have been expected."

Have you also come across such irregularities in the sponsorship space you might have been involved with? Were things promised and not delivered? But most importantly, was the party crashed? What does all this do to your sponsor's reputation?

Speaking of party crashing and the White House embarrassment and Sponsor/Brand reputation, why is all the emphasis on the couple who made their way into the party due to apparent and obvious weaknesses in the system?

I've been involved with many high-profile events, among them the Golden Globe Awards for the past few years. As you can imagine we are often faced with celebrities with big egos, and their entourage some of whom not on any guest list. But security is airtight; and no one is allowed on the red carpet (never mind the list) if their credentials/badges embedded with microchips displaying their digital images on a computer monitor do not match the faces and the IDs of their rightful owners wearing those lanyards, all the while they are being poked and prodded and sniffed along the way.

Why can't digital identification replace analog lists, which frankly more often than not lead to the opposite outcome than the one at the White House, getting in the way of people who in fact are invited but not able to get in because of some clerical mishap.

Welcome to the Now! Bring your clients/sponsors along for the ride! Go Interactive!

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Jeff Blackman's article subtitled creative 'back door' strategies to find new customers is worth a second look.

Sponsorship allows you to capitalize on and leverage OPR: other people's relationships. First, let's define what a 'sponsor' is. A sponsor is an individual, company, organization or association that pursues and benefits from the same or similar target market(s) or target customer(s) as you. While your products and services are non-competitive, they're likely to be complementary.

Often times, sponsor seekers don't keep in mind the prerequisite alignment between themselves and their sponsor prospect(s). Rather than ask a sponsor to spend money, by offering among other things a link to the sponsor's website for example, while not recognizing that sometimes the sponsors are much bigger/larger with a wider audience than those seeking them, a 'partnership' benefiting all parties including the intended audience should be proposed. Just think of it as a threesome of sorts.

Creative sponsorship is a wide open space. Build your own solution, but do it with the sponsor in mind. And approach the sponsor before the campaign is developed. This way, in the end, you'll be able to ask the sponsor to 'contribute' their share of what they helped create. While all along keeping the audience updated on what to expect, as well as encourage their participation in the process, via social media.

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John Chow is not shy about making around $3,000 a month on Twitter for getting "paid for pushing a button." According to the NYT article, "a friend's tweet could be an ad."

I see no problem with Twitter 'faux celebs' pushing vendor products and getting paid for them. I am troubled, however, with the 'covert' pretense of most among them. Just as some full-page articles in prominent newspapers/magazines have a disclaimer 'this is an advertisement,' 'sponsored' tweets should be regulated to post such disclosure.

Otherwise, the fine line between a true recommendation of a brand/product and a sponsored one becomes too blurred. As Pete Cashmore writes, "I posted on Facebook about my new MacBook Pro. I'm very pleased with it. Today a friend posted that he's ordered a new MacBook Pro based on my purchase. Do I expect Apple to pay me? Heck no: my payment is knowing that people trust my recommendations. That builds more trust." But how would we know Pete's or anyone's honest intentions if such a disclaimer was not forced onto the Twitterers who actually get paid to tweet something similar, regardless whether they actually do in fact love the product they are 'endorsing.'

Every time I post a tweet about a brand or a product, I get nervous too. I sometimes wonder if my followers would assume I was getting paid. Knowing that even if I was I would only promote items that I really do enjoy/endorse, is not enough to build credibility and trust. But if I was to mention that particular tweet was 'sponsored' and if I only do so on some occasions (as some do), and not on very single tweet (as some others do), I wouldn't be ostracized as much I would think.

In the end, I do wholeheartedly agree with Pete (@Mashable) when he writes, "that's the exact same outdated model of interruption-based advertising that we've been trying to block out with a TiVo or an internet ad blocker." I also think it is quite important to read/find out the recommendations of the 'people I look up to' as some of you (those whom I follow) are. I just want to know if you're sincere or getting paid for it even if you are.

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No one would argue brands should know their audience; but simply having an audience versus engaging that audience is where strategy meets content, and brands better start paying attention.

Content sharing strategy should be the prerequisite to content development strategy. And not only do we need to think of satisfying our intended audience, but we must also excite the influencers with whom we want to share our content, to reach more of our audience.

Does your content appeal to this intermediary audience? Would it make them more relevant? What would they get out of sharing your content with their followers? These are some of the questions you must ask of your strategy planners.

As is true with sponsors and brands, even in individual cases within social media, numbers aren't everything if the audience is not relevant, and worse if the message is not being shared. It all comes back to the 'quality versus quantity' question says @jenkettlewell of Moxie Maven. It's great to have a huge following, but it doesn't make any difference if the audience doesn't care about what we are saying.

Welcome feedback, in fact encourage it. Don't forget the strategy/campaign needs to be aimed at the audience, not adored by your marketing department.

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