Ebo Whyte has posited “as Ghanaians, we have lost Corporate Ghana,” therefore, creative arts players struggle to secure sponsorship.

“Ghanaians don’t run the companies that operate in Ghana,” he explained.

The theatre superstar spoke as a panelist exploring the bottlenecks and, on the flipside, aids for securing sponsorship in the creative arts during the 2024 Annual Conference of the Performing Arts (ACPA), organised and hosted by the National Theatre, Accra.

“We’ve lost our economy. From banking to telecommunications companies. There aren’t too many sectors in our economy that are still owned and managed by Ghanaians. Quite often, a Ghanaian is put in the office with a title but he understands that he’s there only for public relations purposes. The real power, and those who take the decisions, come from way out there.”

These outsiders, he bemoaned, “don’t know your [Ghana's] system and in fact, they don’t really care about it”.

2. “Our economy is in trouble” 

“And when things get tight in the economy, the first item to go or be slashed is the company’s marketing budget, and for individuals it is the discretionary money for entertainment,” he underlined.

3. “The market in Ghana is too small for the international brands to be too bother about it”

In explaining, Ebo Whyte recalled when he used to sell cars for a multinational company dealing in VW, Audi, and Skoda.

“When we sold 30 cars a month, it was a good month for us. Our colleague in South Africa was doing 2000 cars a month. Our colleague in Dubai was doing 20,000 cars a month. Now if Ghana, South Africa and Dubai wrote for permission from Germany to put a car on sponsorship, which of us would be permitted to do so?” he cited.

4. “A lot of people in the arts have not learned the language of the sponsor”

The Roverman Productions founder and CEO admonished: “It means nothing to a marketing manager to tell him you do a good show so he needs to sponsor you. We miss the point as creatives. Companies are not charity organisations. They want returns for every investment they make, especially when control of the company comes from outside and you need to go and defend your budget with somebody in South or East Africa, or the Middle East, you’d need to show results for every pesewa you put in.”

“If we don’t understand this, we’ll have problems and the market [in Ghana] will get smaller and smaller and smaller,” the creative entrepreneur cautioned.

The aforementioned challenges, Ebo Whyte noted, however, presented “opportunities,” also. Therefore, he encouraged players in the creative arts with 10 tips on prospecting, securing and maintaining sponsorship:

1.       Don’t always ask for money, when you can also ask for products and services.

2.       Deliver on the contract signed, mentioning sponsors, for example, as often as you promised.

3.       Learn to massage the ego of your sponsor, by making they and their guests feel good at the event.

4.       Don’t sign with a sponsor and promote a competitor.

5.       Research the company’s needs and offer a solution via your art.

6.       Develop friendship with potential sponsors.

7.       Don’t speak badly about a sponsor publicly.

8.       Have pre-event and post-event conversations or reviews with sponsor.

9.       Don’t burn bridges with sponsors or their representatives, no matter what.

10.     Deliver more value than you promise.

“The arts cannot flourish without sponsorship, especially in Ghana,” Ebo Whyte emphasised. “We haven’t gotten to the point where the arts can pay for itself.”