Talking Marketing & Sponsorship with Todd Stein of The Marketing Arm

I am pursuing a degree in Entertainment Business and Sports Management; this month’s course is Sports Marketing and Sponsorship Sales. 

The operative word is “leverage” and the phrase is “create a buzz”.  Great marketing leverages a business or a product among competitors.  Enacting a successful marketing campaign will bring traffic to your business and social media sites resulting in increase in sales. 

In this interview, the topic of discussion is on various ways of how to promote a product and engage fans.  Who better to advise on such a topic than from an experiential marketing expert, who works for one of the largest promotion firms in the business, The Marketing Arm?

The Marketing Arm handles marketing and promotion for big accounts (i.e., ATT, Pepsi, etc.).  Todd has been in the business for over 15 years now and continues to love what he does.  Todd and I discussed various areas of his responsibilities:  marketing, sponsorship, and promotions

Todd remarks that promotions are a way to bring awareness or to move the needle of a product, whether to get more shelf space, talk about the product, to  “create a buzz” on social media, and to make a product more relevant.  An example of this is AT&T and the game day (football) experience.

What are the main objectives for promotion of a product at an event?  We want to enhance the game day experience and to create a deeper engagement with fans. We look for ways to engage fans that is intrinsic to AT&T in a natural environment for fans.  We put AT&T in the center of what fans do. 

Taking ownership of the event, we coined the phrase “Techgating” with college football games.  AT&T products, such as, AT&T U-verse are apart of tailgating that enhances game day experience, by providing Wi-Fi capabilities to allow fans to post photos, look at other football games, and communicate through social media sites about their experience.

Do you get apps created for an event?  We have a micro-site to monitor information, that comes through uploads; the information is displayed on the fan board at AT&T stadium.  The fan board is a large digital display for everyone in the stadium to see. We create an app for a program for those who are frequent game goers.  People will not download an app for one time use.  We just launched an app that allows people to hit a button and their phone will display a light, it creates a strobe effect of a virtual cheering of light, seen on the fan board. Things are displayed on the fan board, game stats, post-a-pic, and brain messages, like “it can wait campaign, don’t text and drive”.

How would you know if your efforts are successful? 

We look at number 1, how many apps were downloaded, number 2, how many people are utilizing different parts of the apps, and number 3, conduct a research of a control group of people, who come to the game and use the product and those who live in Dallas; they will give the input on the product and services.

Can you shed some light on the AT&T and Dallas Cowboys business relationship?

We are not trying to make the Dallas Cowboys more popular; we are taking advantage of the Cowboy’s popularity, by increasing the awareness of the sponsor, AT&T’s product from the nationwide recognition.

When we look for the right sponsorship relationship, there are many things to consider. We have to filter the sponsorship requests for AT&T, to see what makes strategic sense and see which would be a good fit.  Take Dallas Cowboys for instance; Dallas Cowboys are known nationally, they are a future-thinking brand.  The Dallas Cowboys stadium is one of the most advanced in technology, so it makes sense for AT&T, a technological company to be associated with the Dallas Cowboys Stadium.

What is Buzz Marketing?

Buzz marketing is using influencers, which could be fans of teams, bloggers, and celebrities to spread the word.

Do you have a social platform that you prefer? Depending on the target audience, for example, if the target is the 40 year old stay at home moms, we may use mommy bloggers or Pinterest or if we target college kids, we would use Vine or Instagram.

The millennials are no longer watching television, social media is such an intricate part of their lives and to reach them, we have to go where they are.

Advice to Me:

Get internship, multiple internships, it is a tough business to get into, it is really about who you know.  Be the best intern, work the hardest and get to know people.

 Todd Stein, the pleasure was all mine.  Thanks for sharing your wisdom.