Star Awards Platinum Winners Pasadena ISD by Art Del Barrio Director of Communication and Printing Pasadena ISD How did you come up with the concept for your piece and why did you produce it? Every year, Pasadena Independent School District hosts the McDonald's Texas Invitational Basketball Tournament, which is the largest and most prestigious one in the state. The tournament boasts the slogan, "The road to state starts here,"as many of the contenders end up in the state tournament at the end of the season. Our title sponsor for many, many years has been McDonald's, which always makes a very generous donation. McDonald's hired a new marketing agency, which wanted proof that they were getting their money's worth from the $25,000 title sponsor donation to the tournament. This was the first time we were asked for analytics. We set out to develop a plan to track all advertising and marketing analytics. Following the Research, Planning, Implementation and Evaluation (RPIE) method, we were already working on evaluation methods for our (the communication department's) role in the tournament and had already begun to track the data the year before. So, when McDonald's made their request, we felt like we were already ahead.
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Summer 2021 | www.TSPRA.org
How long did the process take from A to Z? The good thing was that we had begun several improvements to a technology-challenged tournament in 2018. We introduced an app for tournament schedules, brackets, scores and maps to game locations. We introduced live streaming of about 160 of our 196 games. We began a social media challenge to harness engagement. For the first time in the tournament history, we monitored our analytics. We had the data to build on once McDonald's began to ask for data. We were able to attempt to surpass our numbers for 2018 and give McDonald's their analytics. There were many key factors that helped us implement our approach. We knew that the most important thing to McDonald's was their brand recognition. We also had the Texas Invitational brand that needed to be showcased. When we decided to stream 160 games, we ensured the McDonald's and invitational logos were always seen during each broadcast. That gave us a large sum of minutes with the logo displayed. Further, we inserted a 30-second McDonald's commercial during quarters and time-outs. All games were streamed with real-time, hands-on
