Promotion Potential p.

By: Debra Gersh

Event and promotion marketing can bring in big revenue
SPORTS EVENT PROMOTIONS and opportunity marketing are great sources of potential revenue for newspapers.
The sports promotion industry is huge and growing, according to Don Dixon, chairman of the Lifestyle Marketing Group, New York.
These promoters, he explained, are looking to reach a very narrow, specific audience, one that cannot be reached through network television.
One of the biggest trends is for a retailer and medium to control an event, such as NBC's ownership of beach volleyball events, Dixon noted.
For newspapers looking to get into this kind of promotion, Dixon said, a great resource is the International Events Group Directory of Sponsorship Marketing, which lists every event, its sponsors, how long it has been going on and other information.
Dixon suggested seeking out sponsors of events and looking for unexploited opportunities.
The 1996 Olympics in Atlanta will provide a great opportunity. More than 350 companies already have a link to the games, he said.
The games are only a part of it, though. There also are various festivals in the interim and Olympic training centers all over the country, he continued.
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution have done a variety of sports and event promotions, explained John C. Williams, national advertising manager.
Williams said that to take advantage of what he dubbed opportunity marketing, newspapers must be alert to untapped opportunities, instill in their ad departments thinking that isolates and seizes opportunity, and react quickly.
Using examples from the Journal and Constitution, Williams broke the strategy into categories.
They included listening while you work, since an offhand comment could lead to a big idea; congratulating a hometown, such as when Atlanta got the Olympics, or a home team, such as the Braves and their playoff and World Series games; selling special news event sections and offering guaranteed positioning, such as opposite team rosters, baseball camp and poster pages and interactive pages with contests.
Williams also suggested using extra distribution and events to sell ads, stealing ideas from the competition, allowing advertisers to "own" an event as the sole sponsor and selling ancillary products such as T-shirts, mugs, books and calendars.
To seize the opportunity, Williams said, managers should keep their eyes and ears open, gather information from all sources and think about that information from a marketing perspective, involve departments other than advertising, act immediately, offer discounts, commit the resources required, keep the staff informed and enthused, present ideas clearly and with style, use connection, prepare a calendar and measure the results.
"That we've done well at opportunity marketing at the Journal-Constitution is due in part to the availability of considerable opportunity," Williams said. "But even more important, I feel, is the thinking that we've layered throughout the organization to foster the seizing of opportunities as they present themselves."