JDScreative

Lowest Hanging Fruit = The Right Solution

2010-09-13T22:14:00.000-07:00

After completing my previous entry entitled “Cooperation in the world of Sports Entertainment”, and then having a few days to consider the next topic, I thought it better to provide a successful example where Sponsorship reached out for a solution, and Game Entertainment provided a slam dunk, aka: home run, touchdown, goal, or ______(insert sports analogy here).

When I worked for the Seattle Sonics (now the Oklahoma City Thunder) as the Manager for Events & Entertainment, I was approached by a Sponsorship representative regarding Microsoft, one of our longtime partners.

Keeping in mind the ultimate goal of creating fan-centric promotions which address a partners needs, it’s important to ask as many questions as possible. The more you know about a partner, their message, and their goals, the easier your job will be. With XBOX, here’s what I learned:

XBOX was the presenting sponsor for our Student Rush Nights, where a dedicated number of tickets in designated sections where set aside at a special “Student Rush” price for student who presented a valid Student I.D. for college or high school.

107.7 The End (FM Radio) was also involved and would assist with on-air and local community promotions for Student Rush Nights.

XBOX wanted a promotion which highlighted the newly released Guitar Hero III Legends Of Rock game for the XBOX 360.

Armed with the above information, I mapped out a list of objectives for the future XBOX promotion, and kept in mind first and foremost: Entertainment!

1) The Promotion must drive the sale of Student Rush ticketing.

2) The Promotion must engage the entire audience and allow fans to interact, and to participate.

3) The Promotion must activate and highlight the XBOX brand and also the product.

During a select time out or quarter break, We’d run a standard ‘fan cam’ where fans would perform the best air guitar, in hopes of getting onto the big screen where the best performance would win an XBOX 360 and a Guitar Hero III video game.

Result: Resounding success. Rather than engage only the selected fans, who would attempt half court shots to win an XBOX 360, every fan in attendance could participate and have an equal chance at being selected the winner.

Right now – I can hear some of you (naysayers), “But that’s just a simple fan cam. It’s nothing new and innovative.” First – I never said this idea would be new and innovative. I said it was an example of cooperation between Sponsorship and Game Entertainment. Second – All too often the Sports Entertainment industry tries so hard to think outside the box that we lose sight of what’s really important… making the fans and the sponsor happy. So what if a fan cam is the lowest hanging fruit?! So what if it’s been done before?!

As for the earlier mapped-out objectives:

Drive Ticket Sales
107.7 The End was present at several on-campus events at the University of Washington, Seattle University, Pacific Lutheran, the local Community Colleges, and several High School events, and was armed with magnet schedules which listed all 12 Student Rush Night, and a portable XBOX 360 with the Guitar Hero game. Quite Frankly – nothing in the world draws the targeted demographic of teenagers and college students as fast as the promise playing free video games. Sale for Student Rush Night tickets increased 17% from the previous year’s XBOX 360 promotion, with no additional marketing dollars spent.

Engage the entire audience
This promotion was a simple ‘fan cam’ where any fan engaged in performing the air guitar would have an opportunity to be spotted by our cameras and could be selected to win. Given the prize of an XBOX 360 has a high perceived value, the audience participation was incredibly high and due to the antics of many wanting to win, the entertainment result was fan-centric hilarity.

Activate the XBOX brand and the XBOX product
The XBOX 360 marks where prominent throughout the entire promotion. XBOX received branding on an animated LED on our 360° LED board, on the main screen lower 3rd during the promotion, and product placement with the team’s mascot (Squatch) would lead off using the actual guitar controller from the video game.

Here - Check it out: Sonics XBOX 360 promotion

Cooperation in the world of Sports Entertainment

2010-09-10T15:23:00.000-07:00

In the world of Sports Entertainment - entertainment value is driven by two primary contributing factors.

1) The play of a team on the field, court, ice, etc…

2) The communication a team’s organization chooses to relay to the guests in attendance.

As for how well a team plays…. Sports Entertainment can only roll with the punches. If a team is in the bottom their division or conference (aka: handed a bunch of lemons), then Sports Entertainment must do their very best to make extremely tasty lemonade.

As for the second contributing factor - that is the subject of this article.

Communication with those in attendance is completely controllable, and can be shaped in whichever form needed, eg: scoreboard, video screens, LED’s, in-house feed, and audio. Everyone in the industry of Sports Entertainment knows the message a team sends to the fans in attendance can accomplish two KEY goals:

1) Provide a winning atmosphere and establish the home team advantage

2) Generate revenue

Would you believe these two goals are not mutually exclusive? It’s true! A winning atmosphere can generate revenue and generating revenue can be a way to provide a winning atmosphere. A team can sell compelling and entertaining features to fill their breaks and show relevant crowd prompts to evoke a reaction from the fans, thereby providing a winning atmosphere and home team advantage.

That said – why is there not more cooperation between the two departments whose role it is to generate revenue; Sponsorship (aka: Business Development, Partnership, etc…) and to Entertainment (Game Ops aka: Marketing, Promotions, Events, etc…).

I can hear the voices of confusion now, “What is this word cooperation you speak of, and what is it’s meaning?” Well – from a Sports Entertainment perspective it means working together to achieve your common goals (listed above).

It’s amazing how two groups within an organization can benefit so much from working together, and yet (all too often) they hardly speak at all.

If you can’t figure out ‘how’ to work together then here is a simple template:

Sponsorship: provide your Entertainment team with a client’s information, (their demographic, their targeted audience, their message, their goals, and anything else relevant which would help develop a plan of action)

Entertainment: using the information provided by sponsorship, devise 2 or 3 elements which engage the audience and speaks to the needs of your team’s business partner.

Both: discuss, review, and refine the concepts before presenting to the client.

End Result = Happy clients & entertained fans.

Sports Entertainment - A definition

2010-09-06T13:14:00.000-07:00

I recently Googled (then Binged) the words Sports Entertainment. The first hit was Wikipedia, where I learned the phrase was coined by the (then titled) World Wrestling Federation, during the 1980’s. Kudos to you Vince McMahon, for birthing a phrase which according to Wikipedia, is broad enough in its interpretation to include pretty much every form of sports-related entertainment under the sun. Dancing With The Stars? Really?...
Wikipedia defines Sports Entertainment as:

"a type of spectacle which presents an ostensibly competitive event using a high level of theatrical flourish and extravagant presentation, with the purpose of entertaining an audience. Unlike typical athletics and games, which are conducted for competition, sportsmanship, exercise or personal recreation, the primary product of sports entertainment is performance for an audience's benefit, thus they are never practiced privately."

Agreed.

Uh… Kinda.

When one opens the dictionary to learn the definition of a word, they can also learn the root word, its etymology, and how the word is conjugated. Also, provided are multiple definitions for the word, depending on its intended use.

However, after much searching on the internet, I wasn’t able to find a definition for Sports Entertainment which clearly describes it as a sub-industry within sports as a combination of Sports Marketing, Promotions, Corporate Sponsorship, Ticket Sales, and Game Production. What’s more, having attended MLB events, NBA Entertainment meetings, and IDEA conferences, I find it odd that we (those who attend and are within the industry) commonly use the phrase Sports Entertainment to describe our roles. Yet the use of these words have not been clearly defined anywhere.

Therefore, since the words Sports Entertainment are that which is used to identify my industry, and insofar as I’ve looked for a more relevant definition with zero results, I feel it’s time for an updated definition, or… at the very least, another definition.

That said – I’m not so pretentious to assume I am the voice for everyone who works within Sports Entertainment, so I’ll throw in the caveat that the following definition is open for debate, refinement, inclusion, and even grammatical editing or spell check.
So without further ado, here is the JDScreative definition for Sports Entertainment.

“An industry within professional and collegiate sports which combines the marketing messaging for a team and that team’s partners, through the use of state of the art technology to produce and deliver fan-centric entertainment, engage and incites a response, and provide the home team advantage.”

Now before anyone’s feathers get ruffled or calls foul… I am completely aware that there are those in the industry who do not work for a specific team nor have a need to provide a home team advantage (eg: X-Games, Olympics, Supercross, et al…). For those, you may omit the the “provide the home team advantage” portion of the definition and it also applies to you.

2009-06-22T10:13:00.000-07:00

Thank you to everyone who visited JDScreative over the past few days. The campaign (launched via email, Linked’in, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and TXT message) was extremely successful and generated some interesting initial results, with which I am extremely pleased. Prior to the launch campaign, a search for Damian Shepard would not show the website for JDScreative in any results. With that in mind, my goal with this launch was to have my name Damian Shepard result with JDScreative receiving ranking on the three major search engines (Google, Bing (MSN), and Yahoo).

= 1st page, 8th listing
= 1st page, 1st listing
= 3rd page, 2nd listing

Further, Any search for Damian Shepard produces multiple sites (all linked to me). This is a direct result of working to implement my networking strategy and broaden my web presence using current web 2.0 and networking websites. My sites on, Linked’in, Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter, all produce results in the top 10 accompanied by Whitepages.com, Classmates.com and the Auburn University Alumni Association.

Moving forward:
SEO: Focus energy towards pushing JDScreative into the top 5 results on Google when searching Damian Shepard. As for Yahoo – I am weighing the value of focusing efforts towards improving that ranking versus their share of the search engine market. I’d be very excited to hear from any SEO colleagues or specialists on this topic.

Relaunch of JDScreative

2009-06-16T13:59:00.000-07:00

The new look/design is up. It's been a few months in the making, trying to determin which direction to go with graphics and content and then pulling it all together in a webpage.