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A Look Back

Scott Bartels

AAF Buffalo club achievement awards

As another Ad Club year winds down, it is a perfect time to reflect on the many successes of 2015-16 and to look ahead to the future.

A better Ad Club

Our focus in the past year was to bring new and exciting events to our members as well as enhancing our successful annual events, this included:

  • More guest speakers from out of town including Anthony Shop, Anne Esse and Brokaw.
  • Introduction of member-only Skillshops to help you learn and grow in your career.
  • Brand Hack, an all-day “hack-a-thon” for our creative professionals and students
  • Networking trivia nights
  • Your favorite events, bigger and better: Preview Night, Holiday Bowling Tournament and Uber Bowl

Buffalo Wins National Honors

In June, the AAF honored the winners of the Club Achievement Competition at the “Salute to Achievers Ceremony” at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim.  This competition is designed to recognize outstanding accomplishments of its affiliated advertising clubs, showcasing the programs and projects its professional member clubs undertake each year. It was established to honor significant contributions to the AAF network of professional advertising clubs and to encourage excellence in areas of club operations that strengthen the AAF’s member clubs.

For the first time ever, the Ad Club of Buffalo received awards in the three categories we entered.

As part of AAF Division Two, which includes clubs with 250 to 499 members, we won the following:

  • Advertising Education – 1st place
  • Communications – 1st place
  • Programming – 1st place

American Advertising Awards

What a night it was in March at the 2016 WNY American Advertising Awards show at Statler City, over 420 of the industry’s best gathered to celebrate the achievements of the year.  We had a record of more than 500 professional entries and nearly 50 student entries.  We continued celebrate our region’s great work with an impressive showing at the district awards level as well as a handful of winners at the national show.

On top of all this awesomeness, we were presented the AAF Incentive Award. This award is given to the top 10 clubs nationally that showed the highest increase in entries to the American Advertising Awards.

Saying goodbye…

The summer is always bittersweet as we say farewell to our departing board members and welcome a new group to help guide the club.

Matt Low served five years on the board, including last year as vice president. Not only did he lend his great creative talents and leadership to everything the club did, but Matt was instrumental in improving our academics committee and overseeing the Don Nichols Scholarship Competition.

Corey Crossman served two years on the board as treasurer. Corey brought incredible passion to everything he did for the club, including ensuring the club’s financial success, overseeing the communications committee and leading our efforts in this past year’s Club Achievement Awards.

Sarah DiPofi and Christie Witt Berardi both served two years on the board and took on the difficult role as American Advertising Awards chairs not once, but twice. Their hard work paid off with two successful celebrations of our great industry, setting record attendance each year.

The club is in a great place because of these dedicated individuals and we thank them for their contributions.

Newbies

Our executive board welcomes two second-year board members into new roles, Tim Bouchard as vice president and Kyle Rogers as our new treasurer.

We also welcome five new board members that bring a wide range of experience and skill to the board.

  • Andrew Bevevino – Martin Davison PR
  • Erin Collins – BlueCross BlueShield of WNY
  • Erin Haskell – Crowley Webb
  • Matt LaSota – Outer Harbor Development Corporation
  • Tess Alberts – EMA

Thank You

All of this work would never be possible without a strong team to run the club. I continue to be impressed more and more each year at the talent that makes up our board of directors and volunteers. They put in countless hours and have fun doing it. I thank each one of you for your continued dedication to making the club a huge success.

What’s next?

We are excited about 2016-17 as we take the Ad Club to the next level beginning this August. Join us at The Big Tip-Off on August 25 at Soho Burger Bar to find out more and help support our scholarship fund!

-Scott Bartels, Advertising Club of Buffalo President

AdLab Events Social Media Stuff

The power of your people.

Marcia Rich

At our most recent Ad Lab, we were honored to have Anthony Shop (@afshop) present at The 9th Ward. Anthony cofounded the digital innovation agency Social Driver. It has since been named the seventh fastest growing agency in the U.S. by The Agency 100. As chief strategy officer, Anthony has sparked innovative campaigns for a portfolio of industry-leading clients.

0421161818All that is great, but you know what is even greater? The iconic movie The Goonies from 1985, which is exactly what Anthony used to start off his talk. Hundreds of people each year travel to visit the house featured in the film. No one told them to do this (in fact the home owner did not want visitors), it just happened organically. The point is, you can’t force people to love something. Instead of trying to create a cult following or a viral moment – as so many brands are wishing for daily – tap into existing energy and use that to your advantage. Ask yourself: What do people already care about? Where is the energy already and how can you tap into it?

Very few brands have been able to successfully do this. Anthony gave two great examples in his talk. First was the Ellen DeGeneres selfie of the 2014 Oscars, which was taken on a Samsung phone. Samsung didn’t place its logo on the photo or do anything other than provide the phone, but that selfie ended up being the most retweeted post ever and even broke Twitter for a short period of time. Samsung was able to tap into the existing energy of the Oscars and place its product in an influential place at the right time.

IMG_20160421_182622The second example was “The Dress”: Did you see it as white and gold or black and blue? This argument caused everyone to freak out in 2015, and many brands tried to jump on this bandwagon. Anthony pointed out one company that was able to successfully use The Dress to their advantage in a campaign – Salvation Army. Check out the link to see the campaign designed to raise awareness of domestic abuse, which utilized the preexisting hashtag #StopAbuseAgainstWomen. Which brings us to Anthony’s next point: Don’t try to create your own hashtag and expect it to go viral. Use one that already exists and has some momentum. Embrace the opportunity to give up control and be authentic. Salvation Army was able to successfully innovate instead of imitate, like so many other brands did with The Dress.

Learning the importance of personalization and the benefits of using social media stars to advertise a brand were two other takeaways from Anthony’s talk. The third huge takeaway was how to have a streamline process for social media management. When a hot moment on social media is happening, brands need to be able to jump on it quickly or they miss out. This can seem impossible when you have four levels of approval to get through and it’s a Friday night after office hours, so he suggests a traffic light system: Topics, people, or keywords that are always okay to repost or retweet are green. Some that may still need a level of approval are yellow. And ones that are definitely a no-no are red. Have this system in place before a big event so your social media team can be ready to act at the drop of a hat. And speaking of hats, Anthony gave the example of Pharrell Williams’s hat worn to the 2014 Grammy Awards that coincidentally looked like the Arby’s logo. Arby’s quickly tweeted about it and social media history was made. Talk about flat, fast, and fun – one of Anthony’s mottos.

Read what Ad Lab attendees had to say about Anthony Shop below.

AdLab Blog Events Students

At BrandHack Some Strangers Got Really Creative Really Fast!

Tim Bouchard

I was fortunate enough to be accepted to the Ad Club Board of Directors this past summer of 2015. Prior to that, I was only a member of the club for one year. Both years, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the people I’ve met and the events I’ve attended. One of my goals when I joined the board was to try and help explore how to make events more interactive and fun. Being from the tech side of the creative world, I decided I would try and borrow from my friends in the tech industry and see if I couldn’t take the idea of an all day “hack-a-thon” and marry it with the design world’s creativity.

brandhack-judgesI enlisted the help of some wildly talented and highly regarded creative talent from the Buffalo area. Julie Zack (Designer: BrandEven), Mike LaDuca (Partner: LUMINUS), Monish Bhattacharyya (Creative Director: FourthIdea), and Michael Downey (Art Director: FARM). This crew would serve two very important purposes of helping shape and guide each rapidly compiled campaign idea as well as judge the final products and declare the winning Brand Hack campaign.

We had three main goals for this event:

  1. Encourage team members to get to know each other. The teams were randomly assigned with an even distribution of talent types.
  2. Bring students together with professionals so they can see and participate in the work flow process of a professional.
  3. Make it challenging, but allow for creativity with no limitations other than theme and required deliverables.

brand-hack-awardsOf course we had to make it worthwhile as well. Chelsea Turton, the board’s student liaison, created an amazing graphic of a rocket “idea” breaking through an alarm clock. We decided to build off that and after a few minutes of brainstorming, we googled “Rocket Trophies” and the rest was history.

We had 6 hours to fit in a creative briefing, production, presentations, and judging. The pressure was almost on me as much as the teams attending. We broke the day like this; 30 minutes for team introductions & creative brief, 4.5 hours for production, 45 minutes for 5 minute presentations (everyone went a few minutes over but it was ok), and 15 minutes for judging. Surprisingly, it actually worked really well!

brand-hack-teamsThe fluctuations in the day were amazing to observe. Early on before the briefing it was as loud as a high school lunch room. Everyone was chatting up a storm getting to know each other. Then after a moment of silence for the creative briefing, came the flurry of conversations as the teams started talking out concept ideas. Then, after Michael proclaimed around noon “You should definitely be into designing by now, 3 hours left!” the room went silent, like a good Thanksgiving dinner when everyone starts eating. It was pretty entertaining to watch as an outsider. Everyone gave great presentations and each team was very supportive of the others while they presented.

The challenge was to develop an awareness campaign that would help the fictional “Urban Food Bank” solicit donations year-round, rather than just the popular November & December Holiday months. A bonus would be to create an urgency for donating or funding toiletries which are an often overlooked aspect of the care provided by the bank.

I’m biased, but I think the event was awesome. Nobody seemed bored, everyone was engaged, and there was some really great work that came out of this.

And now I’m happy to share the campaigns that were dreamt up in 4.5 hours on a random Saturday in January by complete strangers. Starting with the winning campaign, the runner up, and the other great campaigns in no particular order. It really was amazing was great work came out of just 4.5 hours.

WINNER: “Roll Reversal”

brandhack-roll-reversal

randhack-winnersTeam Two’s campaign, “Roll Reversal”, is focused on increasing donations of toilet paper to the Urban Food Bank. This campaign is designed to target people when they are in a position to empathize with those in need of toilet paper, and usually have a mobile device in-hand.

We created vinyl wraps for use inside of public bathroom stalls to cover the full toilet paper rolls, making them appear empty, hopefully giving people that “Oh Shit” feeling of being out of toilet paper.

The ultimate goal of this campaign is to drive people to a landing page for the Urban Food Bank that is optimized for mobile conversions and provides an quick button to donate an amount of money equivalent to one roll of toilet paper.

Runner Up: “One More”

brandhack-just-1-more

brandhack-runners-upBy giving just “one more”, you can change lives. “One more” is easy and is something everyone can do, but it makes a big impact. You’re filling a gap in your community by giving “one more” dollar or donation. Really show WHO the donations are going to by telling the stories of the people in need. Guarantee donations are doing good for your friends and neighbors. Make it fun, and something people want to do over and over. We would provide free bags that can be filled with donations and conveniently emptied at numerous drop off locations. We would utilize a number of tactics including a mobile app.

“Feed The Hunger Monster”

brandhack-hunger-monster

The goal of the “Feed the Hunger Monster” campaign is to increase food, toiletry, and monetary donations specifically in the spring to prepare for school being out in summer.

It’s tough to focus when you’re hungry or don’t feel your best. The monster is a physical representation of those feelings. “Feed the Hunger Monster” aims to show parents what kids can accomplish when they’re not worried where their next meal will come from, or if their classmates will mock them for their clothes or hygiene.

“Treats to Meals”

brandhack-treats-to-meals

While you enjoy the delights of the season the Anderson family needs your help. Turn your extra money into meals for them by donating to the Urban Food Bank.Visit treatstomeals.com to help and donate.

“Metro Market”

brandhack-metro-market

MetroMarket makes it easier than ever to grow your community.

The MetroMarket truck stops by your home once a month to exchange food and toiletries for fresh fruits and vegetables grown in Buffalo’s own urban gardens.

We donate an equal shipment of fresh foods to Urban Food Bank.

It really is that simple.

AdLab AdWeek Blog Stuff

We Got Cultured at Adtoberfest.

Dan Nesselbush

Workplace culture is incredibly important. It’s the difference between having a team full of Gary Go-Getters or a team full of Debbie Downers. That’s why we brought in Aaron McBride and Mark McKenzie from Brokaw, a Cleveland-based ad agency, to speak during Adtoberfest, our 2015 Buffalo Ad Week. Brokaw was named Ad Age Small Agency of the Year for Culture in 2013 and they also lay claim to being the world’s greatest ad agency, a title attributed to their sense of humor and SEO capabilities.

So what’s the secret to a small ad agency in Cleveland (practically Buffalo, just with LeBron James) getting recognized for their culture? According to Mark and Aaron it’s a simple two step approach.

Hire talented, self-motivated people who happen to be nice.

Let them create the culture.

Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? The beauty of that approach is that it isn’t complex and everyone has the opportunity to create a rockin’ culture. You want to be part of a team that wakes up every morning forgetting there is a snooze button on the alarm, don’t you?

The crutches

Of course their trip to Buffalo was more than dropping a two-sentence nugget of wisdom and a stop at their favorite rest area on the New York State Thruway (highlight video below).

Their story illustrated a simplified approach that arrived after the agency overcomplicated things and they caught themselves relying on some crutches many companies rely on such as:

  • FPAs (fancy-pants acronyms)
  • Gobbledygook phrases
  • Razzmatazz numbers (that video that got 4 million views from eastern Europe with no likes or comments – not truly a viral campaign!)

Known as a creative agency first and foremost, the overcomplicated approach wasn’t good for business. They took a step back and decided they needed to get back to the basics of what they knew and were good at. They focused on their creative approach rather than gimmicky pitches, fancy terminology, and a futuristic logo.

Build around the work

A fresh approach where they didn’t try to be all things to all people, which is something we’ve all done at some point, helped them create a culture that draws like-minded people looking to create great work and clients that want the kind of work they do. You know, probably the reason we all got into this field in the first place. By defining their strength and drawing a line in the sand of what they stand for, they turned things around. They got an award from Ad Age. They got great clients. They got projects they wanted to work on. They got a free trip to Buffalo. See, being true to yourself pays off!

A ping pong table and pictures of office dogs will only get you so far with your employees and customers. At the end of the day it’s about the work and the people creating the work. You know, the culture.

12063490_10153240022925678_626218843734215535_nBonus Materials

Missed the presentation and the post-talk shirt toss from the guys?

You can read more about Brokaw’s approach by downloading the handy guide they created to keep themselves in-check called How To Brokaw, or follow them on social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram).

Also, Mark and Aaron make up 50% of the sketch comedy group Last Call Cleveland – check out some of their work on YouTube.

AdLab AdWeek Blog

The Branding of the Bulls

Ad Club Of Buffalo 2 Comments on The Branding of the Bulls

Blog post by Kyle Rogers

“Who do we want to be?”

That is a question UB’s Athletic Director Danny White has been trying to answer in his three years with our region’s largest university and a question he addressed in front of dozens of advertising pros at our Adtoberfest kick-off event.

You’ve likely heard about Danny’s strategic vision for the University at Buffalo, coined the “New York Bulls Initiative.” The vision, as explained by the AD, is to become the premier athletic department for the state of New York and bring big-time college athletics to the WNY community and the state at large.

Sure, some may see this as an attempt to rip UB’s deep roots from our community (a few joined us last night). But this is no deterrent for an innovative and progressive athletics director like Danny, who saw the potential in telling UB’s story on a national scale.

But what is UB’s story? What’s there to get recruits, fans, and donors excited?

How about:

  • Member of AAU (alongside big-time programs like UCLA, Michigan, Florida, Ohio State)
  • Largest/highest rated public university in the Northeast
  • Law, medical, dental, business and engineering schools all ranked Top 100 nationally
  • Over 220,000 alumni nationwide
  • $1.7 billion economic impact
  • Large market size with a regional population (WNY) over 2.5 million people

Danny White presents to Ad Club of Buffalo guests

Okay, that is pretty impressive. But how are you going to communicate that? And what are you trying to accomplish?

As White explained, “That’s the easy part. It took over 150 years to establish the University as a nationally-recognized research university and AAU member. Getting the word out? I’d say that’s a lot easier.”

White’s first moves were to establish a strategic vision including 4 pillars: Image, Partnerships, Resources and Facilities. Working with an impressive board of advisors and New Era Cap, the department developed a marketing and branding platform that included a new mark, a temporary signal of where the program is heading.

Content, Content, Content

UB’s creative department, built like a Big Ten school, ran with it and developed a brand that was exciting and sexy. The department developed professional level production facilities so the school can create its own video and web content to help tell the stories of UB student athletes while forming strategic partnerships with ESPN3 and media outlets across New York.  A fully integrated approach that included paid, owned, earned and social media made waves across the region and across the alumni base.

Some of the early successes include shattering attendance records, record-breaking fundraising, 9,306 media mentions (ad value of $25.7 million), and three NCAA tournament appearances (UB had one before. Ever.) One of White’s proudest accomplishments? “We were the only school to go to Columbus for the NCAA regional and have the alumni pre-game party shutdown,” due to capacity attendance from excited fans that made the trip. Way to go Buffalo!

The Cal of the East

Despite these big wins, the #NYBI is still a work in progress. A great deal of question marks still remain about the long-term sustainability of the current mark, a unique game-day experience, and what the UB Bulls will ultimately be called. One interesting comment was about UB striving to become the “Cal of the East,” as a reference to the Berkeley campus of the University of California which is also the flagship of a comprehensive university system where the brands are essentially separated – academics often referred to as UC Berkeley while athletics are known as Cal.

On behalf of the Ad Club, we’d like to thank Danny for giving our club a peek at what it takes to elevate the brand of a major college athletics program as well as taking part in a great question and answer session!

“Branding the Bulls” was the kick-off to Adtoberfest: 2015 Buffalo Ad Week and continues with events Wednesday and Thursday: Adtoberfest: 2015 Buffalo Ad Week

AdLab Stuff

Anne Esse and the Art of Embracing Being “Stuck”

Teresa Carosa

As a recent board member, I have been excited to move into this year and really embrace all that the Ad Club has to offer. After attending Anne Esse’s talk last Tuesday about “The Shift,” I was surprised to walk away with a new appreciation for perspective.

Passion comes in many different packages, and when you are a creative professional, that can manifest into many different emotions. Whether you are facing confusion, frustration or elation, there always seems to be a time when you just feel “stuck.” As a creative turned digital marketer, this is something that I experience on a daily basis. Gone are the days where I would spin my wheels for an innovative graphic solution for clients; my day to day is now centered around strategic concepting in the digital arena. My “stuck” is now figuring out how to boost organic search results, enhance the user’s experience, and the daunting task of making something “trend.” As the digital space has continued to evolve rapidly in the last few years, the adaptability of digital strategy has become imperative for businesses to adopt. It isn’t as simple as just building a website anymore – it is important that businesses have a comprehensive digital strategy across multiple digital platforms. Not only do I not have time to be “stuck,” but my job is to make sure I plan to not get “stuck” in the future. A simple 5 letter word became my work day’s worst nightmare.

I understand that could come off a little dramatic, but the reality is I needed a little perspective – enter Anne Esse. As a veteran Art Director in Western New York and certified coach, I definitely walked in with the expectation that Esse would have something useful to say, but I didn’t expect it to resonate so much. Esse’s anecdotal approach at coaching about moving forward both personally and professionally was a refreshing take on my own professional experiences. Her talk touched on many different topics, but all centered around the theme of learning how to move past the “stuck” feeling and onto your next big idea. For the first time, I started to look at “stuck” as just a part of the creative problem solving process. Bumps in the road are apart of the learning process, and as a creative professional I know that I signed up for the exciting off road adventure.

As the hour long discussion wound down and Esse began to answer questions, I realized that I wasn’t alone in this new found perspective. Creative or not, challenges are apart of the professional world. It is important to embrace new perspectives to continue to grow both personally and professionally.

Bottom Line – Embrace being “stuck.” It means you are just ready to move forward!

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AdLab Events

February Ad Lab with Bing’s Jason Dailey

Ad Club Of Buffalo

To kick off Ad Lab’s big move to its new location, the Saturn Club, the Ad Club wanted to bring something special that would appeal to a large audience. They delivered, and were able to bring in Bing Evangelist Jason Dailey to discuss “Connected Experiences in a Multi-Screen World”. And no, he’s not that type of evangelist.

photo (1)

With a large, wide-ranging audience filling the room, the new venue felt like an old home, and the crowd was excited.

Jason took the stage and immediately dove right into the history of screens in our lives, including a fun fact about the first search engine in 1945. The goal of the talk was to understand a few main points of multi-screen usage and how marketers can utilize this information to reach users.

First, there are a number of different devices and each one is being used for a different reason. Whether it’s social interaction, investigative research, or brain dead facebooking, marketers need to be aware of what people are looking for. Also, Jason showed that time of day matters too when using multiple devices.  As the day goes on, people become less serious.  Mornings are productive, evenings are for entertainment and exploration.

Now that we know the answer to the problem, a new one arises. An issue a lot of marketers will share is customizing four or more different experiences on a limited budget.

It was a solid showing for the first Ad Lab at the Saturn Club, and great to have prominent figure from a digital powerhouse like Microsoft at our disposal. Along with the new location, the club pumped some new technology into Ad Lab by adding the ability to text or tweet your questions during the show. The experiment was a success and helped fuel the discussion following Jason’s presentation.

Keep the discussion rolling below or tweet us at @adclubofbuffalo and look for the next Ad Lab, March 25th at the Saturn Club.

AdLab Blog

AdLab: Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations: What’s the difference?

Ad Club Of Buffalo

AdLab: Advertising, PR & Marketing

At last night’s AdLab “Advertising, PR and Marketing – what the heck is the difference?” attendees got to reflect upon these areas and listen to the star panel listed below.

Virginia Bates (Partner & Director of Promotion Planning, Eric Mower + Associates), Lisa Hackett (Vice President/Senior Marketing Communications Manager, First Niagara), Katie McKenna (Communications/Public Relations Manager, Tops Markets) and moderating Carolyn Human (Public Relations & Media Relations at Carolyn Human Communications)

The panel discussed the nitty gritty differences between Advertising, PR and Marketing and how to employ each to your benefit. One of our members, Liam O’MaHony, recapped the event perfectly on his blog.

Buffalo Ad Club ~ MarComm Interdisciplinary Panel Summary
By Member Liam O’MaHony @LiamTOMahony

I attended my first Buffalo Ad Club event last night at Templeton Landing near the Naval Park in downtown. It was great to see the waterfront before sunset after seeing brown terrain and whirling dust storms in the desert of the Southeast Valley of Phoenix Metro for the last several years. There were about 52 attendees to observe a three-member panel (Lisa Hackett from First Niagara, Katie McKenna from Tops and Virginia Batesfrom Eric Mower + Associates) discussion moderated by Carolyn Human, who was sharp and maintained an efficient flow for the 90-minute program.

Incoming Ad Club president Charlie Fashana kicked off the event by announcing the upcoming Ad Weekfestivities, including the Aaron Draplin address on October 11 and a presentation on copyright by Jim Cavanaugh on October 12. I served on the Phoenix Ad Club board for two years, so I was curious to learn more about my hometown chapter.

Per my M.O. of recapping professional development programs I attend, a synthesized summary of my takeaway notes from the panel follows:

  1. The primary guiding topic for the panel was “Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations: What’s the difference?” It is apparent that most of us in these ultimately inter-related industries are fairly clear on the accepted definitions and normal functions of each of the these three core areas of practice. Yet, the digital demands of online communications continue to alter the de jure definitions, as illustrated by PRSA’s recent effort to streamline the elevator answer to the commonplace layman query of “What is PR?”
  2. Another fact that many of us have faced is that the pre-digital era of working within strictly silo-enforced roles and functions is mostly an antiquated notion in many sectors. The days of the various in-house disciplines operating on an island or in a regimented assembly line process to producing company collateral, promotions and messaging to stakeholders evaporated with interoffice memos, dial-up and faxing. Many people need to not only be aware of how the other side of the house operate, but also mustdevelop a working knowledge of different services to be versatile and transferable for the benefits of bringing greater value to their organizations and augment their own career progression.
  3. Last summer I attempted to breakdown the alphabet soup of the disciplinary spectrum that I called the MarComm Matrix when speaking with the Arizona State University PRSSA Chapter. Here is that recap.
  4. It is not an excuse to say that you don’t know or aren’t really aware what the other service groups are doing. Find out. Collaborate a little more. Contribute to plans and campaigns earlier where feasible.
  5. With the overlapping and convergence of these disciplines, comes the ongoing territorial battle over which department should manage social media application. Bates noted that the platform space can and must be shared in a fashion that the varied messages and content can occupy different areas of applications. Just as in the editorial and advertising balance that you see in print, a wall, blog, feed, board or channel can effectively accommodate a contest, earned media link and ad message. It comes down to efficient project management and assessing priorities to ensure the strategy, aesthetics and objectives are aligned with the potentially overwhelming content queue.

Check out the rest of the recap on Liam’s blog.

AdLab Blog

AdLab: Sports Marketing and Sports Entertainment

Ad Club Of Buffalo

Re-Cap
AdLab Sport Marketing Panel

There was a lot of great insight looking into the strategy of what it takes to pull off perfect execution in sports marketing.

Here’s a sampling of the key points discussed:

– Fan experience is the top priority for teams. Fans will support a team that genuinely supports its fans.

– Sponsors are now viewed as partners.

– Finding ways to improve the in-game experience is key.

– Gathering feedback whether it is surveys, social media or sitting in the stands. It’s all relevant.

– Team-run media, TV and radio, will continue to be a trend.

– Citizen journalists are welcomed.  They help spread the word.

– Lower tier, sustained sponsorships are better than top tier, one-time deals.

If interested in future AdLab events you can learn more here.

AdLab: Sports Marketing and Sports Entertainment
Today the Advertising Club of Buffalo is offering up a unique sports marketing speaking event through our monthly AdLab at Templeton Landing (on the patio weather permitting). We champion our sports teams, whether they’re up or down, and we love to see them represented in profound, inspiring and creative ways.

If you ever wondered what makes the whole operation work, the strategy behind it and what pulling off perfect execution takes, you won’t want to miss it. This month’s professional panel is sure to provide insight into the hard work that brings sports marketing and entertainment to life. The panel will include Vic Carucci (Cleveland Browns Senior Editor, former NFL.com/NFL Network Senior Columnist) an award-winning writer who has covered the NFL for more than 30 years, Brent Rossi (Buffalo Sabres, Vice President of Brand Strategy and Marketing) and John Cimperman (CENERGY Activating Brands, Principal) with the conversation moderated by WGR550 morning show host Jeremy White (Entercom Communications, Talk Show Host).

Attendees will learn just what it takes to be successful in the sports ad business and the opportunities that exist for brands, products and services. The audience will get to hear the panelist discuss a diverse range of sports marketing channels such as sponsorship, corporate events and boxes, licensed merchandise, endorsements, broadcast, ground/clothing/equipment advertising, in-game activation, as well have the opportunity to ask questions on the topics.

Sports Marketing and Sports Entertainment: The Real Play Happens Off the Field
With Special Guest Vic Carucci

July 17 | Templeton Landing on the patio (weather permitting)
2 Templeton Terrace, Buffalo
Cash Bar & Hors D’oeuvres @ 5:15 p.m. | Presentation @ 6 p.m.

Pay Ahead Online: Student Members $5  |  Members $10  |  Non-Members $25
Pay at the Door: Add $5 

More details and tickets can be purchased here.