Sports Design Marketing Plan

WINNING SPORTS FACILITY DESIGN:

DEVELOPING A STRATEGIC INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION PLAN

Johnny Durant University of Southern California May 2015

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This document will provide a framework, standards, and foundation for design and architecture firms to establish integrated st–rategic marketing communication plans, specifically in the sports facility design marketplace.

In order for architects to remain relevant and competitive they must engage in strategic business and marketing planning. An imperative consideration often overlooked in strategic planning for architectural design firms is the need for integrated marketing communication (Pearson, Lavigne, & Wolff, 2014).

According to Dr. Rebecca Weintraub, the communication-planning puzzle she designed provides a path to develop a strategic integrated marketing plan. This paper will use her approach to strategic integrated marketing planning as a framework to design the planning handbook.

The planning puzzle provides a direction for marketers to follow as they develop strategic communication plans. The final deliverable for this paper will be a plan based on this puzzle but adapted based on research conducted for this project.

The data gathered will support the content of a best practices approach to strategic planning in this industry (Weintraub, R., Strategic Planning Puzzle, personal collection, 2015).

STRATEGIC INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION Communication planning is not a linear process. It is a complex puzzle that involves feedback loops, strategic ambiguity, stakeholder analysis, environmental factors, and metrics (Weintruab, 2015).

Relationship marketing is paramount to the success of a firm— most firms gain significant revenue from repeat business, as high as 60 percent (Livingston, 2014).

Firms need to address both needs in order to deliver successful strategic integrated marketing plans. Create marketing plans that address complex needs while continuing to build long-term client relantiohships.

STRATEGIC PLANNING

Architectural firms are also faced with the need to develop business proposals that use visual and written communication techniques to explain design ideas, process of design, technical skills, professional staff credibility and experience, and other related requirements (Robben, 2014).

STEP 1: DEVELOP STRATEGY Strategic ambiguity is the first element to consider in communication strategy.

While collecting data, analyzing stakeholders, and developing messages, it will be imperative to consider that few messages will be interpreted the same by all listeners (Weintraub, 2014).

Developing marketing strategy takes key a close examnination of several distinct factors in archtiectural design.

According to Andrew Leeson strategy is often overlooked or ignored in the industry resulting in a fragmentated, effective pursuit plan (A. Leeson, personal communication, February 15, 2015). If firms follow a strategic communicaiton plan they will increase revenue and ensure long-term growth (Cox, 2014).

Using a SWOT analysis will provide an understanding of your firm’s strenghts, weaknessess, opportunities, and threats. When you fully understand the position of your firm within the marketplace it will be easier to conduct the process and develop your own integrated plan.

In order to deliver efficient plans, you must understand the channels, messages, and themes associated with your clients.

A sample SWOT analysis and Channels, Messages, and Themes chart follow this page.

SWOT ANALYSIS

(EXAMPLE ONLY)

STRENGHTS

OPPORTUNITIES

• Depth and breath of experience • Prior experience with client • Design quality versus technical rigor

• Partnering with external companies and consultancies • Strategic, long-term partnerships with contractors and suppliers • Reduce design costs through collaboration • Collaboration with sponsors and donors

SWOT WEAKNESSES • Lack of market experience • Access to technology/expertise • Perception of company

THREATS • Competitors • Cost to enter the market is low • Financial budget constraints/profit margin is low • Competition is high

CHANNELS, MESSAGES & THEMES

(EXAMPLE ONLY)

CHANNEL

MESSAGE

THEME

Clients

Direct communication

Passion and authentic interest in project design.

Design experts/efficient design approach.

Devlier projects cost effectively.

Technical expertise, high-quality design, design with the client in mind.

Team Operations

Website/Social Media

We design facilities to support winning teams.

Design for winning teams.

Sponsors

Direct communication

Integration of sponsor and donor influence.

Elegant, simple integration that positiviely highlights your brand awareness.

Cities/Counties

Direct communication

Jurisdictional approavals, communicate with neighborhoods, transparent communication.

We work with local and regional governments to ensure projects meet guidelines and are successful.

Investors

Website/Social Media

Efficient use of investment dollars.

More for less.

Professional Leagues

Direct communication

Designs meet guidelines, standards, and Responsible for players, teams, and fans health, needs. safety, and quality of experience.

NCAA/NAIA

Direct communication

Designs meet guidelines, standards, and Responsible for players, teams, and fans health, needs. safety, and quality of experience.

Website/Social

Students/Alumni/Fans Media

We design facilities that help your team’s Quality of the experience is imperative to the long-term win. Amenities and services to meet your sucess of your team. needs.

STEP 1: DEVELOP STRATEGY Strategic integrated marketing communication for architectural firms will need to include stakeholder centered messages directed at all potential project stakeholders (Lewis, 2011). Channels will need to include traditional and digital media (Cheney, 2007). Design firms will need to leverage organizational communication to setup marketing teams that are nimble, efficient, and effective (Argenti et al., 2005; Pearson et al., 2014; Holm, 2006).

Experts suggest that a firm’s marketing professionals will need to leverage proven strategic, stakeholder centric messaging and develop innovative social media campaigns, architecture firm brand community building techniques, and thought leadership to continually engage clients (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001; Lewis, 2011).

Experts suggest that online content are particularly helpful for architectural marketers because of their great potential to share ideas, stories, engage directly with companies, and develop dialogue about design quality and the importance of products and services (Heath & Heath, 2008; Barksdale & Clopton, 1991; Cox, 2014). Research shows that strategic integrated marketing communication can lead to significant positive outcomes for professional service organizations such as architecture. Moreover, architects that choose sport facility design as a professional challenge need to understand the complex nature of marketing communication and prepare to engage sports clients on their field.

STEP 2: IDENTIFY STAKEHOLDERS

Identifying stakeholders at the onset of the strategic planning process ensures that messages and channels are appropriate to reach the audience. Stakeholders include college athletic directors and campus architects, sports team coaches, professional team owners, capital planning and construction departments, venue managers, and venue consultant firms such as concessions and operations analyzers (Leeson, personal correspondance; Young, 2012).

Each firm needs to examine their potential projects and leverage existing relationships to grow their networks. In person meetings and networking are the most effective means to win new work.

• Clients/Owners • Coaching Staff/Team • Sponsors • Cities/Counties • Investors • Professional Leagues • NCAA (collegiate projects) • Students/Alumni (collegiate projects) • Fans

STEP 3: ANALYZE ENVIRONMENT

The environment surrounding athletic facility projects can be quite volatile and vary from region to region and even project to project. For example, collegiate clients in the PAC 12 have different needs than those in the Big 10. The same is true for NFL clients versus NBA or MLB clients. Women’s sports to recreation facilities to community recreation centers to Olympic competition venues have different environments.

Firms need to research the environment of their prospective clients with attention to economic conditions, regional culture, and the tradition and history of a given sports team. Firms also need to benchmark competitive venues in the region of a potential project or in the case of a professional team, within the professional league (A. Leeson, personal communication, February 2015).

STEP 3: ANALYZE ENVIRONMENT Architectural firms that service sports facility clients at the collegiate and professional level vary in size, market share, and design reputation (Frank, 2014). While most large-scale firms with revenues in excess of $50 million annually have some form of deliberate sports market service line, many small-scale firms will often opportunistically design collegiate sport facilities for institutions of learning where they have designed other buildings on campus (Livingston, 2014). For example, regional firms that may have designed an administration building for a regional college that are later retained to design that campus’ arena or stadium. While occasionally these regional firms are direct competition to large-scale firms, generally these regional firms form joint ventures with large-scale, dedicated architectural sports facility design experts.

With both large-scale, nationally dedicated sports practices and regional, opportunity based sports practices, the competition to win prestigious design commissions and sustain long-term marketing goals is highly competitive (Leeson, personal correspondence, 2015). Competing at this level also poses serious financial risk for firms that can include cost for preparation of marketing materials and staff to significant design costs to prepare design proposals, visual graphics, design renderings, and design animations (Haverson, personal correspondence, 2015).

STEP 4: IMPLEMENTATION

Inclusion is the most imperative part of this implementation plan. Architecture firms should address the needs of each stakeholder group and include all employees in the communication strategy. To include all firm employees, architecture firms could create plans through an open, collaborative process that not only includes the views of senior staff but also includes the views and opinions of all firm employees who want to be involved in the communication strategy. Allowing firm members to write blog posts, share social media content, and be a part of the longterm communication planning process to ensure authentic messages are part of the implementation process.

STEP 4: IMPLEMENTATION For architectural design firms, strong marketing collateral, lead generation tools, and organizational tools are essential to ensuring long-term success (Pearson et al., 2014). While most retail and consumer industries find these parts of regular business practice, this is not so in architecture. In fact, prior to 1970, marketing in architecture was not only highly discouraged, it would actually lead to censure by the American Institute of Architects (Kolleeny & Linn, 2002). Kolleeny and Linn (2002) go on to point out that practicing architects were forbidden from any advertising, including signage at construction sites, press releases about projects, or self-congratulatory speech. Over the last fifty years, marketing in the profession has seen a significant shift from one that censured marketing activity to one that has reluctantly embraced it.

Today many firms hire marketing personnel such as graphic designers, proposal managers, and technical writers, dedicate 15% or more of annual costs to marketing spend, hire business development consultants such as networking professionals and strategists, and engage marketing as a significant part of the business organization of a practice, something that has grown since the early 1990’s (Frank, 2014; Kolleeny & Linn, 2002).

The addition of these new roles advanced the industry creating

new competitive markets and underscored a sense of marketing competition previously unknown in architecture. Marketing in architecture began as part of the procurement process for public institutions and governments and has expanded into a large niche market for professionals (Kolleeny & Linn, 2002).

Today clients hire project management consultants to run architecture proposal processes that may include development of complex proposal documents and in person interviews. These documents and presentations are the primary responsibility of a firm’s marketing department and staff (Kolleeny & Linn, 2002). Some clients use international design competitions as a procurement method while others research and sole source work—this is especially true of firms with high reputation and brand awareness.

Although marketing was initially not well received among professionals in architecture, marketing spend and an understanding of the need for more formal strategic marketing planning are on the rise (Frank, 2014). Although some firms continue to struggle with the marketing role in professional services, it is often seen as a necessary part of the practice.

HNTB is a multidisciplinary architecture/engineering/planning firm, known and respected as a national leader in architecture, transportation, bridges, aviation, urban design and planning, environmental engineering, water and construction services. As such, the firm consistently ranks among Engineering News Record’s top design firms. For more than 100 years, we have taken pride in serving our clients with integrity, technical excellence and a commitment to outstanding performance – quality work, on time, on budget and to the client’s satisfaction – on every project.

HNTB Corporation collaborates with municipal governments, institutional organizations, and private clients to build more dynamic cities through the power of architecture and infrastructure. As a client focused pratice, we design to meet the clients’ needs. HNTB’s sports practice integrates its capabilities across all areas of expertise to provide a full range of sports related architecture services. These capabilities range from planning, feasibility studies and programming to design, documentation and construction administration.

HNTB Architecture is a national leader in the planning and design of major sports facilities. Since the surge of major sports in the early 1960’s, HNTB has been in the forefront of facility planning, design and consulting. HNTB has a dedicated group of specialists in athletic training facilities, football stadiums, collegiate arenas, and major sporting and spectator facilities.

®

Contact us: HNTB Corporation www.hntb.com

HNTB Architecture

Los Angeles 601 W. 5th Street Suite 1000 Los Angeles, CA 90071 t. 213.403.1000

|

Los Angeles

Kansas City 715 Kirk Drive Kansas City, MO 64105 t. 816.472.1201

|

Courtesy: HNTB

Kansas City

|

New York

SPORTS

MESSAGING: EXAMPLES OF PRINTED BROCHURES

“Winning!� is the most imperative aspect for sports facility owners. They are concerned with winning championships and your design considerations must support that position. Messaging should address well-designed locker rooms, weight rooms, and training rooms that support coaches and players.

-Andrew Leeson, personal communicaiton, February 15, 2015

MESSAGING Populous’ channel on Issuu.com demonstrates a best practices approach for sports facility designer collateral.

Messages are focused on client’s needs and their interests with stories about architectural design weaved in to the larger narratives.

This client-focused approach to marketing provides clients with a periodical that focuses on ideas they are interested in while also including human stories about architecture (Cox, 2014).

An example of best practices in sports marketing collateral from the issuu.com/populous site follows this page.

Courtesy: Issuu.com/populous

Courtesy: Issuu.com/populous

MESSAGING ZGF and NBBJ, the other two firms with online material on issuu.com and examined for this study, focused on messages about architecture and design. While some of their messages resonated with clients, it was clear that the messages were not focused on the clients objective.

MESSAGING On one hand, marketing collateral from ZGF and NBBJ revealed a focus on architecture related messages that may or may not resonate with end users. Populous, on the other hand, used popular stories and narratives to resonate with readers while introducing architectural design stories that underscored their athlete stories. Using a mix of both types of stories resonates with readers and demonstrates an appreciation for their services as sports facility designers and their compassion for the client’s needs.

STEP 5: METRICS

Architecture firms have several options to measure the success of the plan. These include using Google analytics to measure website and social media traffic, monitor quarterly reports on new lead generation and revenue, measure the amount of brand awareness in the marketplace, and measuring opportunities for press and public speaking.

TROJANS SPORT FACILITY BASKETBALL DESIGN MLS

FOOTBALL

SOCCER GOLF

OLYMPICS