WUWM has been serving the Milwaukee area for more than 60 years, providing important updates both nationally and locally. But we couldn’t do the work we do without the critical support of our corporate sponsors.
In fact, it’s so important that we have an entire team dedicated to establishing and maintaining those relationships. The four-person group is led by our director of corporate sponsorship, Erin Frank.
And for this segment of our Get to Know WUWM series, we sat down with Erin to learn how she got into this field, how her team operates and what keeps her so motivated to do this work.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
At some point, there was something that motivated you to pursue corporate sponsorship and corporate sales, and specifically, you wanted to pursue WUWM. Can you speak to that aspect a little bit?
Definitely. So, I started my career — we’ll call it media ad sales. That’s certainly not what we call it here; it’s corporate sponsorship. But I started at the print edition of The Onion, first in Chicago and then made my way to Milwaukee to lead a small team of ad sales professionals. And I’m going to preface this by saying I got very lucky. But I said to myself, “I loved working for The Onion. I loved the product. Where can I go? What can I do that I will have that same feeling?” And the first thing that came to mind was WUWM or NPR public media. And I lucked out — they were hiring. I want to be somewhere that I love and feel proud of and seek to find corporate sponsors who feel the same, because it has to be something I feel strongly and passionately and excited about.
From a technical standpoint, you and the rest of your team is employed through Market Enginuity and works with us. Can you explain that relationship a little bit?
So, essentially, Market Enginuity is based out of Phoenix. Before they rebranded themselves as Market Enginuity, they were called Public Media Partners. So, their organization has always been there to support public media in corporate sponsorship and building revenue with a dedicated team of sales professionals with best practices from around the country.
Member stations’ focus needs to be on hiring great talent like you, Rob, or raising funds from members or building a trusted news team. They can’t really give the focus they need to train and hire salespeople who know how to go to market and get businesses on board. So, the idea of working together with Market Enginuity is to have an organization that is training, hiring and providing resources. And it’s really a wonderful marriage — especially here at WUWM.
I might get a little bit of a glimpse into how other stations work. It’s different everywhere. But here, we feel one billion percent part of this station. We sit here, we come to community engagement events. I was at Juneteenth with you, Rob. We sit here and engage as members of WUWM’s team.
So, with that, can you describe a little bit about your approach and philosophy to maintaining those connections?
The philosophy is really about trust — it’s aligning with trusted content and aligning your brand with trusted content. There’s so much disinformation out there right now. It’s a really powerful thing to say, “You are aligning with trusted content that is there to inform our community, to keep them safe, to keep them well informed, to empower them to make change. And if that is meaningful to your business, then you should become a sponsor.”
And we talk also about how their message is read in this dynamic reading — and it’s read in the voice of this trusted voice. So, maybe it’s Rob Larry, who you trust from listening to All Things Considered. Maybe it’s Rachel Owens, who tells you the news and information every morning. You trust that voice, and now that voice is reading your sponsor message. It’s emotionally true, but there are metrics to back it up. When there’s trust, and when your brand is aligned with that trust, it elevates the likelihood of an audience to support you.
