Jack Morton Launches Sponsorship Consulting Practice Jack 39

Global brand experience agency Jack Morton announces the launch of Jack 39, a dedicated sponsorship consulting practice for brands. Jack 39’s purpose is to connect brands to properties and talent that are the best fit to drive business. Jack 39 applies a unique experience lens to the process resulting in an optimal brand-fan fit.

Today, brands spend billions of dollars on sponsorships. Sports, which takes up the largest portion, is up 107% in the last year, and the market is expected to surpass $89 billion by 2027. However, new properties, options, fragmentation, and competition have made sponsorships harder to navigate. In contrast, shifts in the way rights holders sell sponsorship, and the ways brands buy and activate them have become more complex. Jack 39 aims to help brands navigate the often murky and staid world of sponsorships with certainty and transparency. The agency currently works with families of brands in automotive, beverage, fitness, technology, banking, and more.

“Our roots are in building partnerships between personalities, properties and brands. We invented corporate talent partnerships in 1939, so we’ve been plugged into the sponsorship world for decades but never beholden to it,” explains Jack Morton global co-president Craig Millon who leads growth initiatives for the agency.

“Our sponsorship marketing offering was born from our experience with activations and expanded to provide a holistic approach for brands - identifying, evaluating, and negotiating sponsorship deals. Creating a stand-alone practice is the next step in our evolution so clients can come to us exclusively for consulting needs.”

Jack 39 appoints Pat Heffernan and Ashley Brantman as co-leaders. Heffernan a strategist, and veteran sponsorship executive has been with Jack Morton for nearly 12 years, leading sports marketing, entertainment, and cultural partnerships for blue-chip clients including GM and its family of brands. His experience spans work at agencies including Momentum and McCann.

Ashley joins Jack 39 from NYDIG, a Bitcoin company where she developed and led their partnership strategy, focusing on maximising sponsorship and entertainment investments. She also spent six years at Intersport, where she refined, evolved, and grew their sponsorship discipline. Ashley’s expertise spans work with Heineken, Enterprise, Oatly, Capital One, the James Beard Foundation, and more.

“I’m thrilled to be a part of the growth and development of Jack 39,” says Heffernan, SVP, strategy and co-head, Jack 39. “Brands need to keep building strong connections with their audiences. Reaching your fans through the people and properties they care about is critical if you want to prove your brand promise authentically. What’s unique about Jack 39 is that we don’t represent talent or own or sell properties. That makes us neutral by design and allows us to be more creative in exploring every avenue of a possible partnership. We challenge industry conventions and put a brand’s best interest first.”

Comments Ashley, SVP, partnerships and co-head, Jack 39, “Clients need clarity when it comes to sponsorships and using impartial data to demystify the process, drive the negotiation and optimise the investment is at the heart of Jack 39. Our forward-thinking teams not only possess the right relationships, but they also understand shifting trends. We position brands to capitalise on what is happening in the market to create meaningful, authentic, and innovative partnerships that deliver ROI.”

Jack 39’s sponsorship consulting involves identifying properties, evaluating sponsorship assets, negotiation, strategic planning, and partnership management. As consulting and activation are often linked, Jack 39’s services can be packaged with Jack Morton’s brand experience offering, which delivers creative and activation execution, including integrating innovative technologies for engagement opportunities or performance metrics. When operating as an integrated team, sponsorship strategy and analytics are actively connected to ensure that strategy is pulled through to activation, assets are fully utilised and KPIs measured, delivering the greatest possible value to clients.

Supporting Pat and Ashley are a team of talented sponsorship marketing professionals with experience building partnerships for some of the world’s leading companies, including GM, Molson Coors, UPS, and CB2, and working with nearly every major sport and entertainment property.