A look around the American sports landscape the last few days showed some good examples of how and when some “second tier” sports are able to find ways to break through the clutter. Let's take a look at a few examples.
Women's sports…First of all we have always felt that labeling a sport by gender if you are trying to promote or sell it to a male audience is a disservice.Danica Patrick.well marketed and promoted athletes in history never to win an eventAnna Kournikova a close second), Patrick's win vaulted her into a new level of exposure for ANY athlete, which was captured well in an LA Times piece by Greg Johnson this week.Now the timing of the win (and the fact that it was in Japan) makes her global jaunts for promotion even more impressive. Still, we still believe one reason why certain women's sports and athletes fail to sustain is becuase the marketers and pr staff pitch them as “women” athletes. Less “women” and more “athlete” or personality regardless of gender…making sure that its a good story…may help get the male in the mainstream to notice.?Patrick's story had been told countless times…but the retelling of it the past seve.days with the cache of the win made it more special.
Track and Lacrosse…with th.NCAA lacrosse season (and the NLL season as well) both winding down, this sport that is growing on the grassroots and participation sides (but still struggles to find mainstream coverage and sponsors) landed a nice piece this week with .human interest SPIN in the New York Times on Lynchburg College junior Tyler Tolson, Finding the story, and making the pitch, got not only the athlete space but probably awakened the casual interest in the sport by some fans (and maybe newsmakers and business partners) as well.Penn Relays, annually one of the best (and underrated) sporting events on the American sports calendar. This year the Relays fell on the same weekend of the NFL Draft, and the Phantoms, Flyers and Sixers postseason runs, relegating the grand event to below second tier coverage in its own city, and even lower nationally. Still, one of the best human interest pieces in recently emerged from the Philly Inquirer, when columnist Sam Carchidi told the story of former high school and college track star Daren Deiter, who attended the relays in a wheelchair afte.surviving being shot four times (but being left a parapalegic) last fall. Like the lacrosse story, this was someone taking the time to find the columnist to tell the story to make it through the clutter of a very busy, very unfortunatel.timed mega-sporting event. It got the sport, and the Penn Relays, a story that may attract more casual fans in a very busy space.
On to some other quick topics…Darren Rovell had a nice piece on the marketing of college football players coming out of the draft, with a look at the first set of draft football cards he received…more on the branding and marketing of the top players will come this week…another great college football stor.in the LA Times this week was on UCLA lineman Chris Joseph, who passed on the Draft to pursue a Rhodes Scholarship, a great insight into his choice and what path that may lead him on…the Schenectady Gazette (courtesy of Fang's Bites) had a good piece this week on AHL radio broadcaster Owen Newkirk, who called all of the longest AHL game in history this past week between the Philadelphia Phantoms and the Albany River Rats…and two non-sports pieces that should be read also caught our eye…one was a Media Post story about KFC's continued cutting edge branding techniques (now embedding “secret.images in POP and TV ads)CNET piece on the added value of posting stories and releases on PR newswire and similar blasting sites, and how and why those sites, which were sometimes thought as wasteful, are now becoming more valuable to tell stories and garner coverage.(Thanks to Terry Lyons for pointing that out on his blog). Both pieces have huge value in the sports marketing and PR landscape as we try to find new ways to tell stories and increase ROI with partners….?
