INDUSTRY MARKETING
SPECIALTY PUBLIC RELATIONS
SPORTS ADVERTISERS ARE DEMANDING MORE THAN AWARENESS, AND YOU SHOULD TOO MIKE SCHAFFER Founder & CEO Echo-Factory Pasadena, CA
Definitive action trumps the noise of mere visibility CSA - Schaffer
Mike Schaffer is founder and CEO at Echo-Factory, a Digital Agency headquartered in Pasadena, California. Echo-Factory works with a range of clients, including MagLite, Tabasco, and CedarsSinai, as well as startups and local companies that are investing in rapid growth. The agency just celebrated its 10-year anniversary and has been awarded many times for its work, including two “Best in Show” ADDY® awards.
PHONE 626/993.3770 WEBSITE echo-factory.com EMAIL michael@echo-factory.com ADDRESS 36 W. Colorado Boulevard Suite 200 Pasadena, CA 91105
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C-SUITE ADVISORY
Let me tell you a secret from the marketing industry: “building awareness” is the absolute easiest assignment you could give an agency. That’s because when you ask an agency to build awareness of your brand or product, what you’re really saying is: “I just want you to get my message to people, and you’re not accountable for making those people do anything.” Telling people something is easy. Getting people to do something is much harder. For decades, the vast majority of sports marketing has revolved around awareness. No one expects you to immediately go and buy printer paper because you went to a concert at Staples Center, or to buy a pack of razors because you watched the Patriots play at Gillette Stadium. Kia doesn’t expect you to rush out and buy a Sportage when you learn that they’re the official automotive partner of the NBA. There’s even some pretty strong evidence that this type of marketing doesn’t help a company’s bottom line. A paper from 2016 analyzed the
financial performance of companies that sponsored top European soccer teams, and found that this type of sports “sponsorship is more charity than commercial investment.” Despite this evidence, awareness marketing still has a big place in sports. But it’s not what’s driving growth in that industry. That growth is coming from sports sponsorships that can be tied to trackable results that have a direct, measurable impact on the advertiser’s bottom line. In Moneyball, Jonah Hill’s character says, “Your goal shouldn’t be to buy players. Your goal should be to buy wins.” Replace “players” with “awareness,” and you’ve gotten to the crux of what’s driving the growth in sports marketing today. Take, for example, Anheuser-Busch InBev’s contract with the Minnesota Timberwolves. Instead of just paying for exposure, the beverage giant executed a carefully structured, incentive-laden contract that rewards the Timberwolves for delivering sales and fan interaction to
