Boston Sports Marketing Case Study

Rhetorical Analysis of “As Bad as They Wanna Be” In a world of commercialization and advertisement, college sports usually provide a welcomed oasis from the furnace of money-hungry advertisers. This, however, may not be true forever. In the past few years, an increase in advertisements and deals between colleges and corporations has become noticeable. In the article “As Bad as They Wanna Be,” the author and speaker Thad Williamson effectively describes his concern for the UNC Tar Heels and the amount of commercialism and advertisement that is appearing around college sports.

This session focused on the Toronto FC and how they market with a focus on the risks they recently took in their marketing campaign. To begin, Chris Shewfelt spoke about the history of the Toronto FC, from their 8 year slump without making it to the playoffs, to their most recent win. The Toronto FC has always tried to market in very different ways to make themselves stand out. At the very first soccer game, the ticket was a Toronto FC scarf which the crowd then held up during the national anthem. This became pivotal to Toronto FC games, because to this day people still wear scarves to the game and hold those scarves up high. Additionally, their most recent marketing campaign was pretty risky as it was based on the assumption that the soccer team would make it to the finals, which was not definite. The Toronto FC began with feeding content across all channels such as TSN. They then leveraged their partners for marketing purposes. Budweiser was the primary partner utilized, aiding in the creation of the Red Anthem commercial which connected the fans to the players and the game. TFC then had a viewing party, and although it was cold outside people still showed up. They then made sure that their players

This article continues to explain that once a sports marketer creates a product and advertises it on a small scale, “Sports marketers get ahead by gradually representing bigger, more important and more prestigious sports teams, companies, associations, and athletes.” In other words, sports marketers need to have a plan of action to promote their product on a larger scale over time. Also, sports marketers spend much of their planning on the aspect of promotion. Mihai verifies that the category of promotion serves to prove that the product is desirable through advertising, sales, sponsorship and public relations. If a sports marketer follows these planning steps, his/her work will lead to a successful product with a large margin of profit.

Professional sports has become one of the most popular industries in the world today. The media spends billions of dollars on advertisements and teams spend millions of dollars on professional athletes all for one reason, the fans. The fans ticket sales and merchandise purchases are what keeps all the sport teams around and prevents professional athletes from losing their jobs. There are three types of fans in the sports world, average fans, fanatics, and fair-weather fans.

Commercial companies use many different methods to sell products to the public. They use commercials and logos to manipulate the ways people think. While using public figures or sports icons to connect with the general public emotionally. In this paper I will be writing about two sports drink giants and how they use credibility, emotion, and logic to sell their product.

| * Endorsing Athletes * Sponsoring Sports events * City based advertisements * Banners & Billboards * Themes on

     Baseball is considered to be America’s favorite pastime and has become popular all over the world. This sport is watched by millions of people every time there is a game played. People will go to the stadiums to watch and a lot of fans will watch the game on television. Since there are so many people watching these games, advertising has become more and more apart of every baseball stadium due to the amount of exposure a company can receive by using the many types of ads found in a baseball stadium. The stadiums use billboards, fences, green screens, merchandise, airplanes, names of stadiums, and scoreboards as all different ways to advertise a company’s product.

Branding is about establishing an image of how you would like to be seen and thought of by others. In business, for instance, those people are usually consumers. In other words, companies want clients to think of them in a positive light so they purchase their products.

Traditional marketing and Sport Marketing have similarities and differences. Being able to understand the similarities and differences would help someone comprehend both principles. Both principles share the Marketing Mix or 4P’s of marketing. The 4P’s are product (or service), place, price, and promotion. As defined by McCarthy and Perreault (1988), the marketing mix refers to the controllable variables the company puts together to satisfy a target group. I will explain the differences of the 4ps in traditional marketing and sports marketing.

If the athletes didn’t exploit their fame in the commercials then people would just know them for what they do in their profession. Instead when these athletes go out and label themselves with items like Gatorade and Nike and so on then those people with the obsessions then think they must get those items as well. With that it then contributes to the $213 billion that is spent every year on sports. Another suggestion that the article gives is for promotional campaigns to focus on the team instead of just one player (Hyman and Sierra 3). This way it keeps those obsessive fans from being able to cling to just one player instead they will like the entire team. All of these ways are aimed to try and keep the fans from forming those unhealthy relationships that can form from excessive athlete worship.

The price that we pay is the value that we associate to any product, whether it is a good or service. It is the compensation given to a person or authority to purchase an object or service. The greater the value associated to the product, the greater the price.

Marketing plans and strategies are an important part of almost any business today. One of the biggest industries marketing plans have benefited and changed in a number of different ways is the sports industry. The development of the sports marketing industry has led companies to invest millions of dollars to have their product associated with specific teams, players, and sporting events attempting to connect with consumer and create profit for both parties involved. The money involved in sports marketing calls for these sponsorships and endorsement decisions to be made both strategically and confidently. After researching the sports industry from a business perspective the importance of marketing decisions is

“For a promotion to be successful, it must be profitable. And to be profitable, it must enhance some, if not all, of the following goals: 1. Paid attendance, 2. Corporate tie-ins, 3. Sponsor value, and 4. Media coverage” (Helitzer 317). Promotions must increase the number of people at the event, or paid attendance, it also must enhance corporate tie-ins, which are signs or give-a-ways at the stadium. Sponsor value, or the value perceived by the sponsor must also be enhanced along with media coverage. Media coverage is enhanced by sending the local or national media sources bulletins about the events or by having press conferences. A strategy that a sports marketer must use is to stagger the promotional gimmicks throughout the event. If one staggers the promotion, then the audience is always aware of the event and looking out for the promotions.

The career of a sport management professional offers a large number of various positions. One such career is that of a director who specializes in promotion and development. “Promotion and development directors are hired by sports teams and school athletic programs to design and implement promotional campaigns that will increase ticket sales” (Sports Management 1). The biggest part of their job is to provide a profit for the organization they are working for. Directors set up opportunities for the sports team to make money off of sponsors. They also set up deals with advertisers to pay a sum of money in exchange for their ads or products to be listed or shown at their sporting event (Sports Management 1). Good advertising and production of cash flow go hand in hand while promotion directors try to help them to succeed. Development and promotion directors play an important role in developing a profit for their organizations.

Sports marketing are one of the most vital uses in the field of marketing nowadays. Many companies have a trend to use sports and sports celebrity in developing their marketing campaign because they have the ability to influence others and they already are role models for a wide share of consumers in the marketplace. So, companies benefit from their popularity and reputation for its brand awareness. Especially some companies in the food and beverages industry which are concentrated on the marketing campaign and make a huge number of expenditure and its budget. Pepsi have many product lines, it introduces a product line for soda which includes many versions such as Pepsi, Mirnda, Seven Up, and other version of Mirinda like Orange and Apple. The second product line is related to the juice. The third category is related to Aquafina mineral water. There are width of every line and versions for every product.