Why Are We Friends?

 You can read this post in Spanish here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/por-qué-somos-amigos-catalina-villegas-mba-ms/?published=t 

Why are the authors of this post friends? The answer is “sports.”

Rush’s version: “It’s because I let Catalina defeat me at tennis.”

Catalina’s version: “Rush appreciates that I let him drag his old slow butt around the same court with me.”

OK, neither of those are really true, although we have played tennis together (and yes, Catalina is the better player). We did meet through sports, though. Rush formerly worked for the Texas Rangers and when he wanted to work on a documentary film about Iván “Pudge” Rodríguez, his contacts there introduced him to Catalina, who works with Pudge.

We’ve been diligently working on that project, and as we’ve done so, other opportunities for collaboration have surfaced. And as we’ve worked on those projects, we’ve learned more about each other – learned, for one, that we have very different backgrounds.

Rush: blonde, of English and Nordic descent, lifelong Texan, early 50s, straight, single

Catalina: dark-haired, originally from Colombia, early 30s, gay, married

But despite those differences, we get along. In fact, more than just getting along, we’ve become good friends. We think sports is a big reason why.

First, it’s something to talk about. We can discuss professional tennis, soccer, or any number of other sports that interest both of us. Second, and more importantly, we draw on the lessons sport teaches.

We like the way You Can Play (an organization on whose board Catalina serves) puts it: if you can play, you can play. When you want to win in a team sport, you find that prioritizing a teammate’s ability over pedigree maximizes your chances of realizing that goal. We have seen how each other’s talents can make a difference on projects, and the result has been mutual respect.

Our sports backgrounds have no doubt contributed to the development of some of the qualities we find compelling. We both value effort, teamwork, and tolerance.

This isn’t unusual. Sports readily provides the common ground that is a necessary precursor to growing a friendship. Its qualities often help that relationship blossom.

And along the way, you often discover you have more in common than just sports. It turns out we both also like dogs, Pink Floyd, and whiskey cleverly poured (ask us about that story sometime). We look forward to finding more shared interests as we go along – it’s part our natures, thanks to sports.

This is the first in a series of blog posts by Rush Olson and Catalina Villegas on the intersection of sports and diversity.

Why Curiosity Matters For Sponsorship

Success in the sponsorship game hinges on a few factors.

You should have a basic knowledge of the sponsorable property (don’t let someone sell you fourth quarter rotational signage in an ice hockey game).

Like we see in the Progressive Insurance commercial, you should master the skill of opening a PDF document.

And in a non-virtual world, it probably doesn’t hurt to own a business suit that fits reasonably well.

But in the course of discussions with some valued colleagues yesterday, I identified another crucial, yet perhaps undervalued, quality that enhances sponsorship for brands, properties, media, and all others.

Curiosity.

While on a Zoom call with Chris Baylis of the Sponsorship Collective and Heather Clifford of the Vertical Challenge, I suggested that one thing I enjoyed about speaking with Chris was that he was curious. He always wants to know how to make things better and why something worked or didn’t. He then suggested the quality has merit in sponsorship seekers, because you need to desperately want to discover how to create a package that works superbly for a potential client.

I do a lot of interviewing in the course of my work, a task for which curiosity becomes a basic prerequisite. Those skills matter in sales, too (including selling sponsorships). You need to understand your customer’s businesses as deeply as possible to solve their problems for them.

In sponsorship, it wasn’t always that way. In my early days working for the Texas Rangers, I remember a sponsorship executive telling me that the customers who tended to sponsor the club were those who had executives who loved the team or the sport. He didn’t have to dig into audience data. He just had to find Rangers fans in a nice suit.

The process in media was a little more rigorous, but still not great by modern standards. In another of Tuesday’s conversations, Lauren Allison of MVP reminisced with me about the old measurements of TV viewership via Nielsen diaries. I recalled buying billboards in neighborhoods we knew hosted an oversampling of Nielsen families. As a TV station promotion director, I was trying to game the system.

Curious people like Chris and Lauren make it harder to unload sponsorships based on imprecise reasoning. They do valuations to enable inquisitive brands to determine the actual value of that baseball package they just bought that included a sign in the bullpen, title sponsorship of the manager’s radio show, and a dozen baseballs autographed by José Guzmán.

Curiosity comes in handy on the brand side, too, not just the sales side. You’ve got to think about all the ways your company can benefit from attributes associated with the property. Can your sales team use hospitality assets? Could sports content built around DEI help your Chief Diversity Offer in her mission? How can you use specific activations to microtarget important audience segments? Lauren and I discussed silos within companies. Silos are the enemies of curiosity. And of maximally effective sponsorships.

For sponsorships to grow as a part of marketing mixes, the industry has to continue to seek new ways to implement and measure them. While I didn’t get to actually speak with my friend Sophie Morris yesterday, a post on her LinkedIn page brought me to a recent survey by the European Sponsorship Association. Their work indicated that confidence in the industry is rising as we (hopefully) begin to emerge from the pandemic, and noted “a significant majority of those surveyed acknowledged that sponsorship needs to evolve.” You don’t evolve or innovate without the desire – indeed, the drive - to actively do so. Sophie and her partner at Millharbour Marketing, Manu Cendron, have mad curiosity skills and it shows in their research and sponsorship consulting work.

As a matter of fact, when I’m in London, Manu and I tend to be especially curious about pint glasses filled with different varieties of stout.

So curiosity matters in the planning and evaluation stages of sponsorships (and also at the pub, apparently). But it’s also at the heart of what makes sponsorship work, because a huge part of the job of sponsorship is to develop curiosity in the people most important to all of us in the industry: the audience. Whether it’s a logo on a press conference backdrop that drives someone to wonder what that brand is that they’ve never heard of or the video about DEI in sport that gets someone interested in the brand’s values regarding that subject, effective sponsorship makes fans want to explore and perhaps discover what’s at the bottom of that sales funnel. At that point, basic curiosity benefits the bottom line.

Thanks for reading this. I’d like to note that I would heartily recommend assuaging your own curiosity about all the people I namechecked in this article. They’re all really good at what they do and could make your sponsorship efforts better whether you work with a brand, property, media outlet, agency, or otherwise.

Rush Olson has spent more than two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports, Mint Farm Films, and FourNine Productions.

MintFarmFilms.com

Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports