The word today is sponsorship.

(You screamed, right? Good.)

Cultish Creative is sponsoring an event - Spooky Summer 2026: Saturday, August 15 at the Circle Drive-In in Scranton, PA - and I'm thinking about that word and why it matters to my wife and me to be behind something like this.

Is it like sponsoring a little league team? Or buying an ad on a radio? And how are those things related, exactly?

I know there's power in words - so: spondere. To promise. As in a surety, a bondsman, a guarantor.

It's a pledge to guide and protect.

But that's not a corporate sponso... oh, so get this - in the 1930s, as radio became more and more of a thing, the word changed its meaning.

Broadcasting flipped sponsorship into a transactional mode. The word's meaning forks here.

Which makes me think of sponsorship like being a godparent. Metaphorically, it makes me think of The Godfather. Yes, there's a pledge to guide and protect a child that's not your own - but there's also "make him an offer he can't refuse." Coercion enters the definition here.

So one version of a sponsor protects, and another version preys on.

One keeps everything in. The other takes something out.

I'm into the prior version. That's what we're after with Spooky Summer.

And the test for figuring out whether you should sponsor something in that same spirit - I think I now know how to reduce the information down to a decision: would I be doing this anyway?

I don't need to be the godparent to my nieces or nephews to guide and protect them. I would do it anyway.

If we weren't sponsoring this event, we'd be going anyway.

Because sponsorship where you're keeping everything in is all about community. It's about the people and the place and the purpose - above everything else. Yes, there's some money involved. But you're looking for ways to grow the whole pie by keeping the whole intention at the focus of the attention.

Not the other way around. More attention isn’t the sole intention here. We’re after a specific kind.

So here’s what else I’m doing to help explain what I mean.

I recorded a video talking through all of this, and I'll share it here. I drew on things I heard from Bobby Keller (who is running the event), Keith Morris (Circle Jerks, Black Flag, OFF!), and Danielle Strachman (charter school founder turned venture capitalist, now at 1517 Fund).

All of them point toward the same thing: the intangible value of spreading goodwill with good people.

No coercion. No mob hits.

Just taking care of your people and making cool stuff. That's the code. And a man must have a code.

See you August 15th. Circle Drive-In. Cultish Creative is proud to sponsor another NEPA Horror event. Share this video somewhere - and I shared the full episode on Twitter and a a shorter cut on LinkedIn I'd love for you to boost too if you can!