Corporate Sponsorship
Our Corporate Partners are an integral part of what we do at Serious. Whether you are interested in building your brand through exclusive sponsorship opportunities at our events, engaging with experience seeking and affluent audiences, creating unique content, or passionate about supporting the next generation of artists to achieve their potential, we will make sure you hit all your business objectives.
If you would like to hear more about the opportunities and impact that working with Serious can bring to your business, please contact us directly at [email protected]
Brand Sponsorship Opportunities
Sponsorship opportunities at Serious are multi-faceted and we can help you reinforce brand awareness, reward customer loyalty, or increase sales. We pride ourselves on building long-standing relationships that achieve goals and targets. Many of these partnerships are built on year-round support with various touchpoints across the year. Others are built around a single moments, events or activations in the calendar year. Either way, we have the ability to build a bespoke package that hones in on an experiential activation, delivers on your CSR strategy or aligns your brand to fit mutually beneficial objectives.
Whilst some of our sponsorship opportunities are listed below, our dedicated Development Team are on hand to talk you through all the opportunities available to you and your business.
The EFG London Jazz Festival: Widely regarded as one of the best Jazz Festivals in the world. You can invest in direct sponsorship, access pouring rights or create activations to increase your brand awareness or reward loyal and new customers with exclusive access and high-end hospitality events.
The Summer Series: Offering a programme of exciting Jazz artists in central venues in the peak summer months, you can reach new audiences and offer an alternative seasonable activation to build strong connections with potential new audiences.
Freestage and Community Partnership: Alongside ticketed concerts we programme a range of free-to-access music events, from live performances to participatory workshops. Show your cultural and community credentials by sponsoring our free activity to enrich communities across London and attract diverse family audiences.
Take Five Programme: Every year Take Five gives eight of the most talented creative jazz artists in the UK the opportunity to take their careers to the next level. Sponsorship will position your brand as a key supporter of talent development in the UK.
Milestones: Our professional development programme for young people, offering them skills and experiences to build a career behind the scenes in event production. Align your brand with a project that particularly aims to reach those who face additional barriers to the music industry.
Community Tickets Initiative: Allow your actions to speak for themselves as you throw open the doors to culture by removing the financial barrier to music often felt by certain communities that are often excluded from the arts.
Sponsor our standalone Festivals: Align your brand as a key supporter of experimentation and innovation or a champion of women and genre-defying artists as culture-lovers immerse themselves in the dynamism of London's creative scene.
- Between The Lines is a genre-transcending festival showcasing artists, labels and collectives pushing the boundaries of music since 2019. A home for experimental and leftfield artists the festival presents interdisciplinary performances, with DJs, performance art, and more.
- Higher Ground is a one-day festival which boasts an all-female line-up of singer-songwriters, genre defying acts and contemporary sounds.
International Collaborations: Our extensive experience of producing events combined with our history of collaborating with international cultural institutes, music producers and promoters, festivals and embassies means we can confidently produce wide-ranging bespoke events to suit your needs.
Ticket Advertisement: Position your brand on our ticket stock as our Headline Ticket Advertisement Sponsor. Your logo and messaging can be included in many variations across tickets sold for Serious shows via our internal ticketing platforms.
Our wide portfolio of events offers our Corporate partners the ability to own specific projects that resonate with their own brand identity. We can help you maximise your association with one of the biggest Jazz festivals on the planet, reinforce your brand as a champion of arts and culture or help you realise your CSR strategy as a supporter of future generations.
With so many different options, our Development and Programming Teams would be delighted to co-create a sponsorship plan that works for you. Please contact us directly at [email protected]
Current Sponsors & Funders
Title Partner:
Global private banking group EFG has a worldwide relationship with music and EFG London Jazz Festival is the centrepiece of this commitment. EFG has been the headline sponsor of the Festival since 2013 and continues to play a fundamental role in supporting the Festival programme and enabling its artistic ambitions.
EFG has been supporting the Festival since 2008, and together with Serious has co-created the EFG Elements Series, an annual collection of shows with broad appeal designed to showcase the breadth and diversity of the Festival programme and contemporary jazz.
Case Study
The EFG Elements Series: In partnership with our headline sponsor, EFG Private Bank, we select four shows within the festival that represent our mutual values of excellence, innovation and collaboration. This is activated with bespoke branding across all marketing channels and on-site.
The Elements Series includes our opening night Gala, Jazz Voice, which
features a dazzling line up of soloists accompanied by the EFG London
Jazz Festival Orchestra and led by conductor Guy Barker.
Hospitality and Access to Talent: EFG invited over 250 global clients and key guests to four hospitality events alongside their EFG branded Elements Series. These events provided an opportunity for EFG to wine and dine their clients and mingle with the stars at the Jazz Voice after-party. We provided a stage for their Global CEO to give a speech to these valued clients and network with their guests. EFG also provided gift bags to guests at the end of the evening, all managed via the Serious hospitality event team.
Further activation and brand touch points included:
- An internal gig at the EFG offices, bringing live music to their foyer and an evening social event for staff.
- EFG clients and staff availed of over 500 tickets to the 2023 festival
- Their 15th year partnership anniversary was celebrated with a dedicated video, in our marketing campaigns and in host speeches at gigs, raising a round of applause at the sold out Emeli Sandé show
Major Sponsor:
Case Study
Working with Appleton Estate, we handpicked three concerts from across the festival to create an exclusive concert series that celebrated the ongoing influence of Afro-Caribbean music on the international Jazz scene and our shared commitment to platforming this.
Further activation and brand touchpoints included:
- Connection with the three artists to film Behind-The-Scenes content which was then collaboratively posted across our social media, reaching a digital audience beyond the live shows and ensuring the partnership story lives on beyond the festival.
- Bar activations and product placement at the Appleton Estate Jazz Sessions and our September launch party at Lafayette.
- Venue brand activations that reached over 700 live audiences, with logo projections, physical branding and bespoke decoration.
Supporters:
We love our association with our Official Hotel Partner Edwardian Group. We share with the Edwardian Group a commitment to culture, creativity and innovation; one that manifests itself in the wide-ranging Festival programme as well as in Edwardian’s forward-thinking hotels.
Case Study
- Performance Activations: Noemi Nuti and her pianist Rupert Cox performed at Edwardian’s Scoff & Banter in South Kensington during the festival. Hotel guests and audiences enjoyed live original jazz and interpretations of romantic Jazz standards alongside dinner and drinks.
- Artist Accommodation: 16 artists and their groups stayed at Edwardian Hotels throughout the festival.
- Tickets: Edwardian guests, staff and clients availed of 50 complimentary tickets throughout the festival.
- Marketing: The EFG London Jazz Festival 2023 launch film was filmed at The Londoner, which acted as the perfect backdrop to our primary campaign content. The film was screened to guests at the launch party and amplified online.
We are delighted to be working with Champagne Thiénot, because of our common passion for the arts and culture. A modern family-run Champagne house favouring quality over quantity, creativity over traditionalism, Champagne Thiénot has a youthful approach, focusing on originality amongst older counterparts. These principles resonate throughout the artistic excellence of our programming.
Case Study
- Hospitality: Champagne Thiénot supported the VIP Hospitality Receptions for the Festival’s Opening Night Gala Jazz Voice in the Royal Festival Hall as well as Marcus Miller in the same venue. These high-end networking events had over 400 attendees, with Champage Thiénot centrally positioned and the Brut NV enjoyed by all those in attendance.
- Tickets: Champagne Thiénot guests, staff and clients availed of 22 tickets throughout the festival, from Jazz Voice to Norah Jones, RIOPY and London Brew.
- Marketing: To ring in the New Year, we ran a successful competition to win a bottle of Champagne Thiénot Brut NV signed by Marcus Miller via our Social Media and Newsletter channels.
Institutional Sponsors:
Each year, the EFG London Jazz Festival demonstrates its commitment to diversity, access and artistic excellence through its innovative and dynamic programme. As we emerge from a period of global adversity and we look ahead to an evolving cultural landscape, the Festival seeks to thrive at the forefront of British culture.
Serious, who produce the Festival, work nationally and internationally to develop the next generation of artists and young producers through Talent Development schemes, to break barriers to music through Creative Engagement programmes, and to shape a musical future which challenges inequality and reflects the diversity of jazz and of the UK.
This commitment forms a crucial part of the Festival’s ethos as well as underpinning the vision of live music producer Serious. Arts Council England is proud to continue supporting this work, via National Portfolio Organisation funding through Serious.
Media Partners:
