If you want to identify brands to sponsor, Pinterest is a great example of how monitoring the news can help identify when big brands could be considering their first deal

There are many huge brands who haven’t done sponsorship (but get pitched heavily) so rights holders (or their agencies) want to know when the best time may be to approach them about doing their first one.

Pinterest was a signature example of this back in late 2023. At that point it was a household name and was on track to hit $3bn in annual revenue.

However, caytoo identified it for a client after a particularly strong cluster of signals in a 5-week period that suggested it had a high propensity to do its first deal.

After all, timing is everything in sales.

These included:

1. Senior person hire: available in full article
2. Partnership: available in full article
3. Product launch: available in full article
4. Campaign launch: available in full article
5. Expansion: available in full article

So it turned out to be. Just four months later, Pinterest undertook its first sponsorship, choosing the US music and arts festival Coachella.

Over the next 16 months Pinterest continued to emit various signals (see buying signals timeline below) before undertaking its first ever sports sponsorship deal, choosing WNBA Champions the New York Liberty.

These included marketing campaigns, senior hires, product launches and significant growth/performance metrics.

It’s not just Pinterest. Look at how the timelines of other first time or serial sponsors such as Coreweave, Crypto.com, Cazoo and cinch played out in terms of multiple news signals emitted in the lead up to their first (big) sponsorship.

These are all examples of what we call news-based lead generation, what caytoo is based on.

It’s monitoring news publications large and small around the world to find stories (or signals) that gives organisations selling sponsorship a relevant hook to approach that company.

This relevance and timeliness of this method is why our clients have such high response rates to their sales outreach. But don’t take our word for it. If you want to identify brands to sponsor, see for yourself by taking a test drive of the platform.