We believe that hosting customers, partners and employees at an entertainment or sporting event (especially when your brand is endemic to the event) is an excellent way to connect and build relationships. There are opportunities to build rapport in a non-pressurized and relaxed environment that is hard to come by during regular office hours.
Topics: Sports Business
Read MoreTopics: Sports Business
The explosion of digital platforms in the last ten years has been nothing short of remarkable. The access, reach and lowering of costs that social and digital marketing platforms have developed continue to introduce a host of opportunities for brands to engage their audiences. This has led to a slide for brands that has eroded the human elements that originally put them on the map. We believe that your marketing does not have to be 100% digital…all of the time. Here's why.
Topics: Marketing Strategy
Read MoreTopics: Marketing Strategy
We travel a lot at SD to carry out our work. Our team is scheduled to cover over 130 projects around North America this year (with a couple in Europe also). So let’s say that we have taken this whole “flexible workspace” movement quite seriously. In the last two weeks I have gone from Denver to Italy to Texas to support our clients at different events.
Since this is not exactly your typical 9-5, I thought it would be fun to lay out my EDC (essential daily carry) for working in sports marketing. Let's go!
Topics: Culture
Read MoreTopics: Culture
I have been asking myself this question a lot lately. Our world is increasingly detail-heavy where the smallest things can make the biggest difference. These things are important, and for me personally, mean a lot. I have to catch myself and zoom out to make sure the detailed work I am focusing on still is tied into the larger picture, the original or changing objectives, etc.
Topics: Culture
Read MoreTopics: Culture
Influencer marketing is a category of marketing that focuses on using celebrities or key leaders to drive a brand’s message. It is a tier of social media that utilizes influencers for endorsements and product mentions. Social content creators with niche audiences can add a lot of value to a brand that traditional marketing doesn’t instantly offer. Yet another area of marketing rapidly changing, we have found a new dimension to these arrangements is to look further than influencers and build ambassadors.
Topics: Sponsorship ROI
Read MoreTopics: Sponsorship ROI
The sponsorship world has gotten more and more scrutinized at the same time that competition within sports has never been more fierce. This has created a necessary dynamic for teams, series and venues to be extremely diligent with how they spend their time and money.
Often that plays out to a service-heavy sales and acquisition process for new sponsorship where you may feel very well looked-after, followed by a sometimes tricky “stage 2” where you want to start building and activating.
Topics: Sports Business
Read MoreTopics: Sports Business
We have long been fans of the somewhat cliché idea of 2+2=5. This is what happens when you put together two seemingly similar categories of things and end up with more than the sum of their parts. This strategy becomes available to brands that have assets in multiple different categories, sports, or media types.
Your brand likely falls in that category even if you have to think about things a bit differently. Some partnerships make more sense than others to integrate, like the one we are going to spotlight here, but this concept works across a variety of ways.
Topics: Sponsorship Activation
Read MoreTopics: Sponsorship Activation
Sometimes the biggest challenge of getting started with a new project is fighting the unknown. When you don't know what you need, you don't know how to get started. In sports marketing, this can be especially frustrating for the different parties that come together to make the whole environment work. Fortunately, there are plenty of resources to support your brand and maximize the opportunities to succeed.
Here, we have outlined the differences to provide some guidance on the value two different types of agencies can bring.
Topics: Sponsorship ROI
Read MoreTopics: Sponsorship ROI
It is refreshing to see brands grow their involvement in a sport from a small promotion all the way to the point where they are owning and operating their own teams and unlocking unique brand building opportunities.
To understand what works exactly right for your brand, we encourage you to start small with your investment, experiment with different activation strategies, analyze results, and continually align investment to where you are seeing the results. This will help prevent expensive and high profile pitfalls that often are seen in sports marketing.
Topics: Sponsorship Activation
Read MoreTopics: Sponsorship Activation
We like to get to a few different conferences each year to push our thinking. This also ensures that we don't settle for anything less than remarkable work for our clients. Being in new environments with new series and new thinking allows us to take insights back home and immediately apply them to our work.
Topics: Culture
Read MoreTopics: Culture
