With fall sports well underway and winter sports right around the corner, there’s no doubt you’re activating numerous sponsorships. From print materials, to social media to in-venue activations – you’re trying to please a variety of audiences from the sponsor themselves to your coaches, student-athletes and fans.
It’s easy to read a 30 second PA during a timeout or post a sponsor’s ad to your Facebook or Twitter page and get it over, but does that make sense for your department’s voice? Is it enhancing the fan experience in your venues or creating unique content for your social media channels?
In the last year our marketing staff at K-State began meeting bi-weekly with our Learfield staff to spice up our in-game experience and bring new life to our sponsored elements. These meetings have helped us identify sponsored elements that are outdated, stale and do not engage fans.
Out of these meetings we were able to develop a “menu” of features to be pitched to current and potential sponsors rather than showing a commercial on the video board or reading the same 30 second PA read that’s been read for the past five seasons.
In addition to our sponsored element menu, we also revisited a “dream script” that had been created three years ago. This template breaks down the allotment of in-game sponsored elements by the amount of live features, PA reads, taped features and no sound features we run each game to ensure variety.
The Intrust Bank 25 Years of Snyder campaign is a good example of the progress we were able to make. Previously, Intrust Bank had an in-game PA read. This new feature incorporates a social media fan vote as well as an in-game video component. Each week that we have a home football game, fans vote between two of the top victories in Coach Snyder’s first 25 years at K-State – the winning game is shown in-game on Saturday and advances to the next round of the bracket. The fans’ favorite victory will be announced at the final home game of the season.
Through this process we are able to collaborate with our Learfield staff and develop new ways to engage our fans while fulfilling their sponsorships and providing value to the sponsors.
Austin Anderson
aanderson@kstatesports.com
@austin3anderson