Today’s post is courtesy of guest blogger Amy Skiles, SVP of Business Development for Phoenix Design Works.

Branding the building is a process that usually comes after you’ve branded the team, but actually it presents the first point of engagement with your brand for many of the consumers in your various fan bases.  If indeed, you do plan to allocate resources to utilize your facilities in your branding efforts, it just means that you need to allow a little additional time to go through your primary identity process first, and then proceed to apply your branding program to your buildings or arenas.

But it will be well worth the extra effort, and for those of you who already have your core branding program locked down, you’re one step ahead when it comes to branding your building.

Facilities branding also known as outdoor, display, on site, and campus branding, usually consists of banners, video displays, or manipulation of display and construction materials.  Usually there is a hierarchy of usage that dictates the chosen execution.  For example, Banners usually have a promotional or seasonal theme that indicates that they will go up and come down within a certain time frame, while actual manipulation of metal, wood or stone materials would be reserved for a longer lasting purpose, such as delivery of your core logo branding.

Branding for your building can be thought of as the place where your logo meets your ad – it would be a waste of precious marketing resources to produce banners, billboards of any sort of facilities branding program with one and not the other.

Building branding, no pun intended, really is an area that is unique unto itself.  On the one hand, building branding requires more finesse than other lesser, or at least, smaller brand applications, in it’s visibility, and on the other hand, it becomes the largest ad you will ever do –  Eight foot tall type is simply more commanding than eight point tall type.

Although scale is the most obvious and dominant consideration of a branding program for your building, it’s not the only one.  Time would be other major factor – You have to imagine ahead of time what it will be like for your fans to see your branding and promotional campaign over and over when it is, quite literally, the size of the building.  That’s why there is never a substitute for the development of a proper strategy and a savvy deployment of your branding campaign on this level .  If your messaging is “trendy”, or cavalier, your audience will tire of it quickly, and so will you.  You can actually damage your brand perception in the marketplace, in fact, your marketplace, and spend a lot of money doing it.

Which brings us to our next point – While we are all enjoying the digital revolution in our branding applications,  (We are, aren’t we?) a mistake here is harder to get rid of than replacing the web page.  So if you want to avoid really, really big typos, proof, proof and proof again.

Regarding the point of building branding being the place where your logo meets your ad, this is the part of the process of developing your program where you’ll want to allocate the most time and effort to create your new campaign.

When you’re developing your strategy, you’ll want to consider exactly what you want to communicate to your audience – Is it season tickets going on sale?  An anniversary?  Or the return of your marquee event?  Whichever the case may be, this is the time and place for you to think it through.  And in the process of doing so, you will hopefully come to the realization that you need a big idea.

It’s only fair – A Big Idea for a Big Execution.  The benefits of delivering your messaging within the context of a larger, more provocative concept are many.  For starters, a larger concept can deliver your messaging here and now, but also have the legs to deliver additional messaging further down the road.  Also, a bigger idea will underscore your brand recognition in other media like print, broadcast and the web.  Further, you have to consider the way people think, and the way they interact with your brand.

There is nothing terribly sexy about “Tickets Now 9.99″, but under the heading of “Dare to Bring the Thunder”, “It’s Showtime”, or “Minor Entertainment”, it almost seems as if you’re doing me a favor by letting me buy a ticket… “9.99″ is a product benefit.  ”Major Entertainment” is a brand promise.

If you have an existing campaign in place in other media, then your concerns are what we’ve covered so far, in terms of time and space, as well as to what degree the campaign is dominant or subordinate to your identity. But if you really want to have some fun, launching your campaign on a scale the size of your arena is one of the most exciting things you can do, and provides absolutely tremendous potential return for your brand as well.

There is nothing that is as exciting, or provides as much brand potential, as the combined launch of a new identity and a new campaign in your own arena –  Otherwise known as “Branding the Building”.

To learn more about branding your building and other services that Phoenix Design Works offers, visit www.phoenixdesignworks.com.

In today’s Sports Business Daily, there was an interesting article about a 2K Sports ad for their tennis video game Top Spin 4 featuring Serena Williams that was supposedly rejected for being too sexy. The ad has ended up on YouTube anyway, so before we discuss further, you can see it for yourself:

The decision on whether or not to use a commercial like this comes down to a conflict between two opposing forces. On one hand, you have the fundamental (albeit cliche) idea that “sex sells,” and on the other hand, you have the debate as to what is and isn’t in good taste. Serena Williams is widely recognized as having tremendous sex appeal, which combined with her tremendous on-the-court success has made her into an iconic figure in sports, fashion and pop culture. So the idea of using a sexy image of her seems like a logical option. But does the combination of revealing outfits, poses and grunting turn sex appeal into something trashy? This is where 2K Sports must have ultimately felt this particular spot went too far.

Now I have three other questions to ponder, and I’d love your thoughts…

1. Would this ad have led to more sales for Top Spin 4 than a more conservative advertising approach?
2. Would running this commercial have adversely affected the brand of 2K Sports? Or for Serena herself?
3. Are ads like this a good or bad thing for women’s tennis overall?

I’m still going back and forth on these myself. I think you can make a good argument that this approach would have sold more copies of this particular game, but that short-term spike may not worth the risk of longer-term brand devaluation.

As for women’s tennis, the idea of using sex appeal to promote women’s sports actually came up at the Women in Sports panel at the Global Sports Forum two weeks ago. Even these distinguished panelists seemed unsure about what’s best in situations like this. Some felt that anything that increases the level of media exposure for women’s sports would be a positive thing in the long-term, whereas others were more concerned about maintaining a positive image. If they can’t decide what the best approach is, it’s not surprising that these decisions are so tough.

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and just like any other holiday, this special occasion can be used as part of a marketing campaign to sell tickets and merchandise. Here are a few examples of Valentine’s Day themed promotions taking place this year that I was able to find. You can see that the offers each have their own unique details, including items like jewelry, dinners, flowers, merchandise and personal delivery.

Phoenix Coyotes (Thanks to the Phoenix Business Journal blog for writing about this one)

Milwaukee Bucks

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Philadelphia Flyers

Houston Astros

Texas Rangers

St. Louis Cardinals

Houston Rockets (Branded as an “UnValentine’s Special” – also running a Valentine’s Day Clutch Gram promotion)

Cleveland Indians

By now, everyone has seen most of the ads from Sunday’s game, either during the broadcast or online (if you haven’t, the best place to go is the AdBlitz page on YouTube – go there now!). Everyone has their own opinions as to which were the best and the worst, so I feel its only logical that I contribute some of my thoughts on the subject.

To me, for a Super Bowl Ad to be a real winner, it needs to:

1. Connect with the consumer in an entertaining or impactful manner
2. Resonate in a way that positively connects to the brand
3. Create a lasting impression that leads to additional brand value over time

It seems like many ads are so focused on #1, that #2 and #3 are overlooked.  Based on these three ideas along with my general thoughts, I’m categorizing many of the ads into one of four buckets: Winners, Losers, Mixed Bag and “Old Faithfuls”:

Winners:

• Audi: A long spot, which can be dangerous, but I felt it was entertaining and held my attention as I wanted to see what they were building up to. The final message of choosing “new luxury” definitely resonates with Audi’s marketing strategy, which is the biggest reason I felt that this was a winner.
• Best Buy: Had a fun mix of celebrities combined with an easy to understand message (technology getting outdated so fast). This fits perfectly with the launch of their “buy-back” program and the ad was unique and funny enough to be memorable.
• Sealy: This was the most “risque” ad of the night, which ends up making it one of the most memorable. A different approach for a large-scale mattress advertisement, but one that I think ends up resonating at least on some level with the viewers.
• HomeAway.com: Just funny enough with the “test baby” and very connected to the message is very clear. It is a bold move for a company that doesn’t typically spend on television to have a Super Bowl ad, but it can be a great way to make a quick impact. I believe this is the 2nd time HomeAway.com has done this, and I think it works for them.
• CareerBuilder and Teleflora: I’m grouping these together because both were simple, funny, had a clear brand connection, and used humor to resonate with the viewer. Sometimes a simple, straightforward approach is best.

Losers:

• Stella Artois: Long ad, very slow-developing and I didn’t feel like it did anything to be memorable or distinguish Stella Artois. It’s always nice to have a celebrity involved, but I don’t see how that added much value in this case. In addition, consumers tend to expect humor from their Super Bowl beer commercials. While Stella clearly has a different value proposition than Budweiser, I don’t think this was the right channel for them.
• Groupon: The entire Tibet-themed build-up seemed too disconnected, almost to the point of being uncomfortable. Then to tie it back to discounted Tibetan food just felt wrong. For a new entrant like Groupon that has what for most consumers is still a new business model, I thought they could have used the time to sell their concept better.
• Chatter.com (SalesForce): In general, it’s a bit surprising to see a B2B ad in the Super Bowl mix (let alone two from the same company), but I don’t think most folks understood what the point of these ads even was. Sometimes that can be good, if there’s enough reason to go online and learn more, but in this case, I don’t feel there was enough to make people do that.

Mixed Bag:

• Motorola: Their 60 second spot had great visuals and an effective, easy-to-follow plot line that featured a tablet device. My problem is that it too so long to learn that it was a Motorola Xoom tablet that I wouldn’t be surprised if most people thought the device being shown was a iPad. Does the “surprise” that it’s not an iPad leave more or less of an impact? I’m not sure, but I’m leaning towards no.
• Volkswagen: I know that the common perception is that VW’s “Darth Vader” might have been the most positively-received ad of the night, but I don’t see the connection to the brand. You can install a remote starter to any car (side note: wouldn’t be surprised if this ad generates a spike in sales for remote starters), and the ad itself felt different than most other VW campaigns, so I’m unsure if there will be a lasting impact.
• Bridgestone: This is another ad that people found to be quite funny, since most of us can relate to the accidental “reply-all” email. The problem is that viewers can connect so much to the humor that we didn’t end up connecting to the brand. There were only a couple of brief clips showing car tires during tight turns, with most of the time focused on the crazy guy grabbing computers and cell phones. Without the three-second Bridgestone tag at the end, I would have had no idea what type of product, let alone company, was being promoted.
• BMW, Mercedes, Hyundai, Kia, Mini, Chevy, Chrysler, Suzuki, Cars.com, Carmax: This seemed to be a very car-heavy year for Super Bowl ads, which unfortunately has the effect of making them all blend together. I think most of these ads were generally pretty good (among these, the Chrysler “Detroit” and Chevy “Glee” ads stood out most), but because of the clutter, I’m unsure about what impact they ended up having.

“Old Faithfuls”:

• Budweiser, Snickers, E-Trade, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Doritos, Go Daddy: Nothing too surprising with these brands, which all seemed to go with their usual approaches (humor, talking babies, user-generated content, and “see the unrated version online”). I almost feel like these brands are so entrenched as part of the Super Bowl experience, the only impact left would be if any of them decided not to advertise. This is the approach Coors took, which probably made Bud’s advertising more effective.
• Movie trailers: Blockbuster movies continued to have a big presence in the commercials. For a product like this, where the films aren’t being released for several months and large scale ad campaigns are most likely on the way, I still wonder about the impact that a single Super Bowl ad can have for a film.

I know there were many more ads than this, but these were the ones that most clearly stood out as being part of these categories and its hard to review all of them. Most others were generally pretty good, with a mixed level of brand effectiveness. If there was anything else that really stood out to you, please share your comments below.

One final thought – in the days leading up to the game, I felt there was some buzz related to how this year’s advertisements would have a deeper social media connection as a way to engage viewers beyond the ad itself. Other than several videos being “leaked” online ahead of time, I didn’t notice any significant social media promotion or utilization in this year’s ads. Considering the cost and the different approaches of television (mass advertising) vs. social media (individual engagement), maybe the advertisers didn’t see much additional value in it, although that is still surprising to me.

Today’s post is courtesy of guest blogger Emily Huddell from Turnkey Sports and Entertainment.

In November 2010, Turnkey invited representatives from all 138 teams in MLB, MLS, the NBA, the NFL, and the NHL to participate in an email-based survey regarding database management in the sports industry.  CRM, ticketing systems, and list purchasing were the study’s primary topics; however, additional aspects of database management and segmented marketing were also addressed.

Respondent Profile:

• 55 individuals completed the entire survey; an additional 15 finished some of the questions but did not proceed through the entire questionnaire.
• All of the “Big 5” leagues were well-represented in the study results. MLB teams led the pack, accounting for 29% of all respondents, while the NFL (26%) and NHL (21%) followed close behind.  The remainder of respondents hailed from the NBA (16%) and MLS (10%).
• 84% of respondents identified themselves as being involved with CRM at their respective organizations, and 80% reported involvement in ticketing.
• Most respondents’ jobs were classified within their organization’s Marketing, Ticketing, or Database Management divisions, though several respondents reported to other departments (IT, Corporate Sales, etc.).

Key Findings from the Study:

- 82% of respondents reported that CRM/database management is perceived as “extremely” or “very” valuable within their respective organizations.

• NFL respondents were more than twice as likely as respondents from MLB to identify CRM/database management as “extremely valuable”: 67% did, vs. just 28% of MLB respondents.

- CRM initiatives support literally every area of business at some teams; however, they’re utilized most frequently by the Ticket Sales, Premium Sales & Service, Marketing, and Sponsorship/Corporate Sales Departments.

- Teams who have CRM currently invest an average of $73,076* annually in CRM hardware, software, service, and consultation, and have official “Database Management” departments of fewer than five people. (*Note: this figure does not include any salaries or expenses associated with internal staff.)

- When asked what most influenced their satisfaction/dissatisfaction with a particular CRM system or database, respondents cited “flexibility”, “customization options”, “integration capabilities”, “reporting capabilities”, and “ease of use”.

- Nearly 6 of every 10 respondents identified Microsoft Dynamics CRM as the best CRM system in the industry.

• Their feelings on VARs (Value Added Resellers) weren’t as clear: 76% of respondents had no opinion regarding which VAR is the leader in the sports space.

- When asked to rate their own CRM systems on various aspects of performance and use, SalesForce.com users gave their platform the highest scores while Archtics users rated their systems lowest

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM users’ scores fell in the middle, slightly below SalesForce’s.

- Respondents cited the Philadelphia Flyers as the professional sports team with the most sophisticated CRM/database management initiatives, followed by the Dallas Cowboys, Phoenix Suns, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Seattle Mariners (all tied with the second most-votes).

- 84% of Tickets.com clients identified Ticketmaster as the best ticketing company in the industry.

- Teams don’t have preferred list vendors/sources; however, they are more than three times more likely to name Acxiom as the industry leader in appends/reverse appends than all other companies combined.

If you’d like to view the raw data associated collected via this study, please contact Emily Huddell, SVP of Client Sales & Service at Turnkey Intelligence, at emilyhuddell@turnkeyse.com or 856.685.1450.

Emily Huddell has spent the previous five years employed at Turnkey Sports & Entertainment working with all three of the company’s core products and overseeing all team sports business. She is a graduate of the UMass Sport Management MS program.

I love getting fun holiday messages from the teams I support, but I have to say that this video message from the Arizona Diamondbacks might be the best one I’ve gotten.  The video is up on the team website, was sent via email to all subscribers, and posted on the MLB YouTube account.

You can watch the video below, and if you have other fun examples, please share links in the comments.

Update 1: Just received another fun take on the team holiday video.  Check out www.warriorsholiday.com for a fun, interactive holiday message from the Golden State Warriors and Row 27.

Update 2: This video from San Jose Sports & Entertainment featuring the San Jose Sharks might be the funniest one yet!

A couple of weeks back, I noticed that American Express was running a hashtag-based promotion via Twitter. New York sports fans that were tweeting with the hashtag #AmexSports had the chance to win some pretty nice prizes. I looked into this, and via the @AmericanExpress Twitter account, I was able to connect with Shari Forman, their Director of Online Communications & Social Media. Shari was nice enough to answer a few questions about their campaign:

First, can you give us a quick overview of the #AmexSports campaign?

#AmexSports is an initiative we created to drive excitement for the great access and experiences American Express provides. We launched a Twitter-exclusive campaign that included “surprising” our followers tweeting with the hashtag #AmexSports with exclusive VIP access to sporting events, team merchandise and memorabelia. Our first initiative for this campaign was around the NY Rangers Heritage Night (11/17 game), in which we surprised our followers tweeting with #AmexSports with suite access to the special event, a chance to meet the players and more. Then, on game night we continued the fun on Twitter by surprising more followers tweeting with #AmexSports with tickets to future home games, throwback jerseys and more throughout the night. Our next initiative will be around the NY Knicks Night of Greatness on December 17. We’ll start our suprises next week with access to the game.

How did you come up with the idea?

We know our Cardmembers are passionate about sports and through this campaign we were able to provide amazing access to some of the teams they love, as well as some keepsakes and memorabilia that will last much longer than the game itself. We constantly see fans tweeting about the games and their favorite players, so we wanted to tap into that passion and use it as a way to interact and engage with our Cardmembers and fellow sports fans.

I noticed that you were working with the teams at MSG (Knicks and Rangers). What did they think of the campaign?

The Rangers and Knicks have both been very supportive and have helped to drive awareness to the campaign by using their own Twitter handles (@TheNYRangers and @TheNYKnicks) to send out Tweets of support and to Retweet announcements from the @AmericanExpress handle. We have also received support from Madison Square Garden’s Twitter handle (@MSGnyc) through Retweets of our messages to their fans.

Any plans to expand to other teams and locations?

Our efforts will continue starting next week, highlighting our partnership with the Knicks and the great access American Express provides with a ticket giveaway to an upcoming Knicks event. We have seen a strong level of engagement and support of this campaign from our Twitter fans, so we are going to continue to explore other teams and events to work with in order to keep the campaign going.

What were you able to learn from this?

The fans are devoted and very excited at the prospect of being able to sample the great access that American Express provides, which is what made this campaign so successful. It is important to focus on initiatives that our Cardmembers are passionate about and for this social campaign, it was important to choose a team and event that our Cardmembers and fans were already chatting about through their social networks.

Thanks again to Shari Forman from American Express for answering my questions. I hope this gives all of you some ideas on how to develop and run similar campaigns for your organization!

We are at the tail end of the busiest retail shopping period of the year! Your customers and fans are spending money left and right. How has your team gotten into the buying frenzy? I’ve included several email marketing examples that I have seen this year. You can see that teams and leagues are leveraging this shopping weekend to move tickets and merchandise (granted, merchandise offers seem to be more common). Tactics range from simple discounts to holiday packages to free shipping.

Black Friday – Atlanta Thrashers:

Holiday Savings – Oakland Raiders / The Raider Image:

Cyber Monday – Orlando Magic:

continue reading "Black Friday and Cyber Monday"

I received an email today from one of the teams that I follow with a special ticket offer. I always open these emails to see what types of discounts and packages teams create for their fans, but this one was a bit different than normal.  Instead of promoting a home game, which helps sell your own ticket inventory, this was a discount offer for tickets to a road game. And it’s not like the opponent is playing right around the corner – the other team plays about 2,000 miles away.

The content of the email went something like this (team names removed for anonymity):

Special Offer for LOCAL-TEAM Fans

Stay warm this winter by heading south for LOCAL-TEAM action!

OPPOSING-TEAM is offering YOU the opportunity to purchase discounted tickets to cheer on your team in OPPOSING-TEAM-STATE.

- DATE OPTION 1
- DATE OPTION 2

Don’t miss this HOT deal! Click here to purchase.

So why run a special offer like this? Let’s look at it from the both team’s perspectives:

LOCAL-TEAM

• In a way, the team is passing on a potentially valuable opportunity to any of their fans that reside in the OPPOSING-TEAM’s state or who might be traveling that way in the future. I think the first situation is the best audience for this offer, so this type email should probably be geo-targeted to just those fans in that state. For local fans that do not travel to road games, this email offers little value and could generate opt-outs.
• Also, we don’t know how many tickets the LOCAL-TEAM still has to sell to their own home games. If they are regularly sending their own sales emails, this road game offer can add to “email noise,” making it less likely that a customer will notice a future email offer that does interest them.
• Finally, sending this email can be a nice act of goodwill towards the OPPOSING-TEAM, if that team is having trouble selling tickets. You would assume that they would be willing to return the favor if the LOCAL-TEAM needs assistance as well.

OPPOSING-TEAM

• Generally, a team wants to market to their own fans as much as possible and continue to build their own customer base. Maybe additional resources need to be dedicated to local fan development or local media.
• The decision to openly market to the opposing team’s fan base represents a significant trade-off. Do you potentially sacrifice the game environment for your current fans and customers in order to sell a few more tickets? For teams in certain smaller markets, you can definitely make the argument that marketing to this audience is essential to reaching sales targets.
• If your fans realize that the team is marketing to the opposition, could there be backlash? This happened to the Washington Nationals when they sold large quantities of tickets to this year’s home opener to groups of Phillies fans.

I believe there can be value to this particular approach, but both teams need to weigh the relative value and decide if the benefits outweigh the risks.

One of the most fundamental aspects of selling tickets is identifying the people that are most likely to purchase (the “Glengarry” leads, for those Glengarry Glen Ross fans out there). You want your sales staff to have the best leads possible in order to increase the chance that they will be able to close sales. This seems pretty straightforward, but making sure you have the best leads is not as simple as it seems.  In many situations, your list of current and former customers isn’t large enough to reach your sales goals, and purchased lead lists can be a mixed bag in terms of quality, accuracy and relevance. So what does it take for an individual to be a top sales prospect?

To make this easy to remember, I’m taking a page from “bond ratings.” If you’re familiar with finance, you probably know that AAA is the highest rating that a bond can have. Well, in order to identify the best leads, you also want to shoot for an “AAA” rating. In our case, the three A’s you need to focus on are:

1. AFFINITY
2. ABILITY
3. ACTION

Let’s break this down one “A” at a time:

Affinity: This is the most fundamental element of the three A’s – clearly, your best sales prospects tend to be consumers that are already fans of your team. The degree of their affinity usually correlates with their purchase behavior. Putting aside the other A’s for a moment, the more affinity you have for a team, the more you tend to spend on tickets, either in quantity, quality or both. A more casual fan with only moderate affinity can still be a customer, but their purchases will be smaller or less frequent.

Ability: Being a fan doesn’t mean you are going to buy tickets. Unfortunately, for many die-hard fans, tickets are simply too expensive to purchase, at least with any regularity.  So having the ability to buy, meaning the prospect has the financial resources to afford tickets, is critical to identifying top leads. You can also think of this “A” in terms of “affluence,” especially when selling high-value items such as club seats and premium season tickets.

Action: This third “A” is often overlooked, but is still quite critical in identifying the best leads. Action is all about prospects that have shown a willingness to purchase your product, or a comparable product.  For example, you could have a very affluent individual that has been a fan of team X for his entire life. However, he prefers to watch his team on his 80″ super-HD TV in his “private theater” room.  In this case, he’s missing the third A since he’s never shown an interest in the act of attending a game in-person. In addition, action does not limit you to your own previous customers. Any related purchasing action (concert tickets, merchandise, etc.) can improve their quality as a prospect.

The other nice thing about this “model” is that it breaks down into components very well. We know the best prospects fit into all three categories, but you don’t always have the luxury of knowing about all three A’s.  As a rule, three A’s are better than two A’s, which are better than just one A. For example, you might know that someone is a fan and has purchased tickets, but you don’t know what they can truly afford. Or your organization might be able purchase a lead list of high-income individuals who spend money on entertainment, but you don’t know if they are fans of your team.  You should always strive to have information on all three A’s, but when that’s not possible, you can try to manage with two of the three. In these scenarios, your conversion rate will be lower, but with more quantity and time, you can still achieve your sales goals.

By the way, technically there is a 4th “A” that I haven’t mentioned, but it should go without saying – AREA.  You should always focus on the  most logical geographic area, usually a 50 to 75 mile radius around your stadium location. It is not worth the time and financial resources to extend your sales efforts beyond this area, as the likelihood of sales drops dramatically. I’ve written a bit about this before when reviewing a team’s direct mail campaign.

In future posts, I will go into more detail on each of the three A’s and show you ways to obtain the information you need to identify and qualify your best sales prospects.