C (3:51)

Was it easier to measure the effectiveness of live sports back in 2000 when it was only a couple channels in Nielsen, or with all the precision that we have now with technology, is it actually, are we more precise now that we have so much more plugged in, or was it actually better back in the, the olden days?

A (4:11)

Yeah, well, I think we're going to get into it a little bit. How many marketers do you think back in 2000 were even trying to measure the impact of something like live sports in the marketing ecosystem? We think we're better at measuring marketing in general. Things like television, acr, ip, et cetera, streaming versus linear. But we've also talked about the complexities of that as well. And ensuring incrementality, which is really the name of the game when it comes to live sports, is incrementality.

B (4:39)

Did you happen to look into what platforms own, what we don't have to share? I just think it's crazy like how you've got like Amazon, like it's like the other day trying to watch a football game, Sam and I were like, where is it? Like we checked, I was on Hulu, we checked Peacock and Then finally we found on Amazon prime, like it's all split up. Yes. And that affects advertisers because there's different ways of buying from all these different places.

A (5:03)

You go across the NFL, the NBA, the MLB, the NHL, the MLS. You've got college football, NCAA, Olympics, tennis, golf, NASCAR, et cetera. Before, when you look back 25 years ago, you had maybe three or four major players, but now there's closer to 15 to 20 players. It's hard to even find it to your point, much less buy it. I don't know if you want me to go into like who has everything. It would be extensive.

B (5:35)

It's just complicated. Probably only interesting to us, honestly. But yeah, awesome. So you mentioned Ange, some of streaming changing things and measurement being difficult. But how do you think advertisers should think about that? Like measuring live sports? Do we need new metrics? Like how do we make sure we're measuring the impact when everything's gotten so fragmented?

A (5:55)

Yeah. So streaming has pushed live sports measurement from being panel only estimates to more hybrid kind of log level systems that are trying to resolve people versus devices. Right. And then we need to dedupe linear and CTV too. So currencies are fusing first party streaming logs with big TV data and a calibration panel so that co viewing on the big screen can be modeled in and the market is like I said before, just gone multi currency. You've got Nielsen's MRC accredited big data panel alongside alternatives like I spot video amp comscore for YouTube on CTV specifically Nielsen One Ads includes co viewing so you can compare on a Persona basis. So do we need new metrics? I think so. But frankly, as I was mentioning before, I don't really think that tentpole advertising has had the analytical rigor it's needed possibly ever. Broadly. Anyway, we've talked about this before and why do advertisers pay $70 million for a super bowl spot? How many of those marketers are quantifying the impact to the bottom line? It's hard and it's never exact. But if we're saying yes because we just want to see ourselves next to Doritos and Coors Light, that's not the rigor that marketers should have these days either.

B (7:13)

Well, speaking of this being expensive, thinking about like live sports as an investment in general, they are very expensive, but brands are often really interested in them because it's a big opportunity for a lot of viewership. There's prestige that comes with it. Sometimes it's because your executive team watches sports. So you want them to see your brand. Like there's, I think, this feeling of, yes, it's pricey, but I need to be there. So how do you think brands should think about balancing the premium costs of it compared to the effectiveness that sports delivers, even compared to other programming that might be less expensive, but taken together could have a similar type of reach? How should we think about that?

A (7:51)

So if you're building brand reach, make your North Star that person level, incremental reach across linear and streaming. If you're looking at it from more of a performance angle, then are you getting incremental lift in terms of visits, in terms of sales, and often in order to do this effectively, because these events do have the ability to drive a pretty impactful kind of halo impact to the organization, you're often needing to test into it with either geotest holdouts to better understand. If I go out there and I push some Emmy advertising out there, what happens to my digital marketing? What happens to my direct mail campaigns? We like to look at these events as, okay, there's prestige in it. Maybe, maybe there is. But how are you quantifying that? That's the rigor side of it that I think ahead of doing major sporting events, something like a Super bowl, get a sense of what type of incremental gain. An incremental gain could be a lot of things. It could be sales focus, it could be reach focused, it could be that you're looking for incremental lift in terms of investor awareness. Might make sense depending on what you're trying to do as a business. Are you operating, trying to move towards a sale, but just going into those events without having a sense of what you're going to get in return is to me, too often, I think what happens, I think we need more focus in terms of rigor and measurement.

B (9:22)

Well, one of the great things about TV is it can do multiple things, so you don't have to be dependent on just one result. You mentioned co viewing in your answer, which is something that comes up a lot when marketers think about the value of live sports. It's actually something that I think makes TV so effective. The fact that when you're watching tv, you're often surrounded by other people. Is that something that you think marketers should actively plan around when they're valuing live sports or when they're planning on like, how much should I spend on live sports?

A (9:51)

I mean, co viewing is a big part of why live sports can be potentially worth a premium. Right. One ad often equals multiple people on a big screen. So your effective person CPM drops and your incremental reach climbs. Especially during the tent poles when something like a watch party. Right. Head counts spike. So that's the upside. The downside is concentration. The same households host the big games sometimes. So you can hit kind of household frequency limits faster even while adding people. In other words, co viewing makes sports both cheaper per person but also sort of riskier per household. So we do need to plan around it price and report on persons, not devices. Insist on co viewing aware currency or apply, you know, a conservative multiplier and optimize to that again cost per incremental reach point. We want to cap frequencies at the household level on 10 poles. Still use that lower CPM shoulder or non sports inventory to be efficient and effective across your entire marketing plan. I think a quick rule of thumb to be thinking of is if we have a $40 household CPM game that maybe averages 1.6 viewers and meets your quality bar, then Your person CPM is 25, which is a lot more manageable for brands if it's adding new people. If it isn't, then shift that budget back to cheaper kind of baseload programming to keep the growth math on your side.

B (11:22)

That makes sense. So co viewing, there's a lot of upsides to it, but a downside might be similar to just you only invest in live sports. You might be hitting the same audiences over and over and over and paying a premium for that.

A (11:33)

Totally. It's like rock if you have. Let's see what's food works for. Rob, a food analogy.

C (11:38)

It does. Food works really well.

A (11:40)

Okay, what's your favorite food that you just like? What's your treat food that you really love to.

C (11:45)

I love Cheez.

A (11:46)

Its okay, I don't know if that one works.

C (11:50)

Is that out of food?

A (11:51)

No, it is a food but it's not really a treat. I know treats are cheap in your house. I was thinking more of like a special chi treat.

C (12:00)

But like say you had a pretty special. To me, you look like a cheese.

B (12:05)

It right now with your orange.

C (12:06)

I do very orange. I mean just that wonderful red box. You know when you get especially the family size, you know where they actually have two bags packed into one box.

A (12:17)

Yeah.

C (12:17)

Just like you have your little backup Cheez it pack built in.

A (12:21)

Yeah, I was thinking more like I know you like the White Castle burgers. On a cost per burger basis they're pretty low because you get the box.

C (12:30)

We get the crave case.

A (12:32)

The crave case, Sorry. Yes, whatever. It's got a handle. Okay. And yet a delicacy burger is also very yummy. But maybe you're willing to pay more infrequently for that delicacy burger, but you don't. That burger might cost $30. You want to go pay $30 for every white Castle burger.

C (12:53)

True, but I actually do pay more for the White Castle, just not with money.

A (12:57)

Oh gosh. Okay. Well, we don't want to go into that.

C (13:01)

Okay.

A (13:02)

All right. I'm not sure I helped us with the food analogy. Honestly, I think we probably lost some, some listeners just in general.

B (13:09)

Well, let's, let's pivot because we've talked a lot about tv. Cause that's our bread and butter. It makes sense. But there's obviously a lot of other ways a brand could work with a sports team. There's different sponsorships. You can be the main team sponsor, you can be on jerseys, you can be in the stadium. You can do experiential activations like fan zones, branded integrations. You could work with athletes like there's so many ways to be involved with life sports. How do we think that stacks up against this traditional 30 second TV spot in terms of effectiveness? I know we're biased, but yeah, try to be a little objective here.

A (13:42)

Yeah, it's an interesting question because people get really connected to these sponsorship opportunities. Sometimes they've been doing them for years and you're sort of like, gosh, what happens if I walk away from something like this? So I think the short answer is from our experience, a well executed 30 second TV campaign is going to win every time. Now how do people get confused in, in the sponsorship versus something like a 30 second campaign and the trade offs between the two. If you're running 30 second TV campaigns already at $30 CPMs, then a you're not buying well, you're leaving a lot of sales on the table and B, that might be the reason that sports sponsorships events look appealing because they're more evenly priced. If you're not today buying efficiently so that you know it's not as big of a cost trade off. We have clients asking us all the time is the sponsorship we've use worth it and have unfortunately never come across a package that felt like it made good investment sense. A 30 second TV spot buys controllable scalable person's level reach at lower knowable costs. You choose the games, you can choose the pod, the flighting, you can cap frequency, you can dedupe sponsorships and fan activations can maybe build meaning connection, perhaps bring Some local love to a brand with a local sponsorship or something like that. And again, there might be other reasons that make sense to do just based on what the business is trying to do. But they are volatile, they're really hard to measure. And on a reach basis, they usually carry kind of a logo tax that, like I said, is typically hard to justify.

C (15:25)

I do love a good activation, though. As you guys know, sports for me is watching the Bachelor. But I was at a major sporting event here in Minnesota recently called the Minnesota State Fair, which is basically a large competitive eating contest of how many deep fried, you know, snicker bars that you can consume. And I was walking down a corner of the fair and there was a line going around the block and they were all going to the State Farm booth. And I'm like, what in the world is State Farm doing to Jerry? Because you never see that kind of excitement for a State Farm booth. I'm sorry, it's just not one of those things you normally think you'd see a big line for. And they were making personalized bobblehead dolls for free. You could go in there, they would make you a bobblehead doll. And then those people were sharing them online, of course, because they're just charming as heck. There was press covering it. There's, you know, just that compound interest that an activation can get. I think it's probably right at the end of the day, Angela's got the data to support it. But it sure is fun to see those activations do their thing when they work and just kind of bring that community together around your brand.

B (16:42)

I agree with you, Rob. I think we've mentioned this before on the pod, but in my mind, if you're a brand that's spending millions upon millions on activations and not on tv, that feels like the wrong order. But if you State farm that TV reach is so important, then like the incremental reach, a different type of connection with the customer, then I think it makes total sense as long as you've got this sort of coverage. Because you're only going to be hitting Minnesota State Fair people versus when State Farm runs in an NFL primetime game, they're hitting the whole country. So it feels like a good thing to add. It can add different value on top of something like tv.

C (17:16)

And let's be real, those bobbleheads are not free. My guess is you gave them your email address. So you paid for that.

B (17:24)

You're going to be getting a call from state from actually one a day for the next 10 years. Well, speaking of things that are expensive. Not every brand, in fact, few brands in reality can afford something like the super bowl for live sports. But Rob, what lessons do you think any brand could still learn from these sort of big campaigns that they can then apply at smaller scales?

C (17:45)

Absolutely. I mean, you know, obviously the super bowl is the Oscars of TV advertising, but there's just those great principles that you can feel in the majority of those commercials. One is the be simple and sticky. You make the idea clear, make it simple. It's a crowded place, is not the time to talk about all your features and benefits. Be simple, be sticky. That's one. Two. This is a, it's a cultural opportunity. Right. When you're on television. So tap into the culture. You know, is it a celebrity cameo if you have the money, or is there just a big trend called trend jacking that you could be tapping into for your campaign? And then of course, using the universal emotion around as well. And then third is just good old fashioned reward the attention. People watch super bowl commercials because they feel like they get something out of it. Right. There's some talk value, there's some humor, there's some emotion. So humor, surprise, winning the heart are all just great, great components that most super bowl spots try to deliver on. I think a really good example is, and it's a classic one, but if you think about the old poo pourri TV spot, not a Super bowl commercial, but it really hit all of those simple and sticky woman in the bathroom, covering up an uncomfortable moment. You're culturally connected to the taboo of talking about the smell of poop. And of course you're rewarding attention because hey, who doesn't want to talk about that commercial? So you can see well done commercials outside of the super bowl that are just are still continuing to hit on those three themes.

B (19:18)

Well, speaking of cultural moments, sports create those times right. Where people are watching them together. It causes conversation. And one thing I've noticed, when you're watching a big sporting event, even think the super bowl, but even just a general NFL game, some brands seem to lean into incorporating the moment. More like I'm thinking about in this fast Super Bowl, Duracell had a really funny spot with Tom Brady where it just was perfectly timed. We've seen that before where it seems like it's really in line with the content you're watching versus other brands like Budweiser, they've stuck with the Clydesdales for years and it's not necessarily related to football or that moment, but they've stayed consistent Rob, how important do you think timing and context is when you're thinking about your creative strategy and you're going to run an ad in live sports? Like should you think about creating something new? Should you stick to your like normal, distinctive, creative. What do you think?

C (20:09)

Yeah, gosh, this is one where I'm an expert in my opinion, because I think you can make a compelling case for both. You know, do you lean into the timing, into the context, especially if you have the money to create unique assets, or should you stick to your guns and really just focus on, on the strategy that you already have in play? My personal opinion is to stick to your guns and really double down on the distinctive assets that you've already generated for your brand. I saw that. And this is obviously research you guys already know about, but Nielsen talking about how live sporting events have 20 to 30% higher recall than your average programming. Okay, well that's your opportunity to put your distinctive assets in front of people and burn the calories that you're asking people to consume on your brand versus, you know, trend jacking something that might be super relevant and fun in the moment, but not necessarily as connected to your brand.

B (21:05)

So we love live sports because we're a TV agency and a lot of viewership goes to live sports. But sometimes I think we see some brands who when they go to invest in tv, they're actually only looking at live sports. It kind of makes sense. Prestige moment, lots of viewerships. But we just talked about there's all these benefits to being there. But are there risks leaning too heavily into sports as a channel? How could a brand prevent themselves from over concentrating their spend there or maybe missing other opportunities?

A (21:32)

Yeah, I think the risk is you're going to overpay to hit the same households. Right. You run into scarcity and price spikes and miss that cheaper. Cheap is a bad word. More efficient reach sitting in the rest of the TV environment. We watch a lot as TV viewers, so just being smart about how we get in front of the right eyeballs. Those big games also concentrate risk schedule shifts. Maybe ratings variants and co viewing can kind of mask household over frequency. Even as a person, reach might look good. You can spend a lot without adding enough new people. I think the fix is to make sports the seasoning, not the meal. I think we've used that before, I can't remember in what context, but building that weekly reach with low CPM baseload programming across the ecosystem and then use these temp pole events to, to attain those light TV viewers and that's really the smart way to think about it.

C (22:36)

I am a salesperson's dream. I will buy anything and everything and I'll usually buy two of them. I am not watching sports. So while you might be double downing on all of your television stuff, you're not reaching me. And my guess is I am not the only person in the United States that does not watch sports. Yeah, lean too heavily in there and you're not going to get me to buy your product three times.

B (23:03)

You're missing the Rob opportunity, which is a big opportunity.

C (23:07)

The robertunity.

B (23:11)

Oh my gosh. The article that we opened with, it talked about how we're in this golden era for live sports. I would agree. Annually we have big sporting events. Obviously the super bowl comes around every year. We talked about stuff like the US Open. However, there's also big events coming up. We've got the Olympics here in the United States in 2028. The World cup is going to be one of the games that's hosted here next year. And there's this ongoing popularity of these sports leagues. So what do we think marketers should do now to plan for long term effectiveness in their live sports purchases?

A (23:42)

Yeah, I would say how do you just take a minute and zoom out before we zoom in and go, oh, I want this buy or that buy and I want this rate or that rate. Let's zoom out and think about marketing effectiveness. Okay. Mental availability, physical availability, we'll set that one aside. Distinctive assets, light buyers, all major principles for growth. And if we're going to invest in something like the Olympics or the World cup, certainly we're trying to drive growth. So when we think about light buyers and light viewers, these are great opportunities. When we think about mental availability, you probably have, if you're thinking about doing something like the Olympics or the World cup, you probably have mental availability. With a set of consumers already, they know who you are, who are maybe the segments or the fringe audiences, secondary tertiary audiences that really represent some growth opportunity that you don't have mental availability with. Otherwise, I think we end up doing things like, gosh, we're a brand that targets men 25 to 54, so we go by the NASCAR. Okay, maybe. But are there fringe opportunities with audiences that we think have growth potential that might push us towards something maybe more us generation gymnastics, I don't know. But let's think of the most efficient ways and who we want to be targeting before we go into planning season. Then I think we need to plan like a cost first reach machine. Talked about this a little bit Already. But you know how to use this type of programming on an ongoing basis. Let's get some data now using incremental GEO tests around tent poles and shoulder windows to quantify that direct and that halo impact across site, app search, retail, etc, so that when we get into decision making mode on events that are going to potentially cost millions and millions of dollars, we're operating from a proven playbook or at least some data in that playbook. Let's go. Let's go there. Maybe it's not proven yet.

C (25:46)

That was incredible. I have nothing to add except for maybe think about what advertising on the Bachelor too. Live finale, Temple Live. Live finale. Live sports.

B (25:59)

That's your contribution.

C (26:00)

That's literally all I got.

B (26:03)

I knew this episode was going to be tough for Rob, so I'm just.

C (26:05)

Glad it was so freaking good. Whatever Angela just said there was awesome.

B (26:10)

All right, let's wrap up with something kind of fun. What is our most contrarian sports take? And you can get us started.

A (26:18)

I'm so curious what Rob's most contrarian sports take is. Mine is watching at home is way more fun than watching in person. That's not because I want everyone watching tv, which of course I do. But no, I, you know, last year. And we're gonna go to another one. I do love the Vikings. I'm a true Vikings fan. I'm not a fair weather fan. And we went to a Vikings Bears game last year and it was my first time in U.S. bank Stadium. And it's amazing. It's. It's gorgeous. It's. There's an energy and at the same time I was like, gosh, I'm really missing the announcers and I really want to just get up and to the fridge and grab a snack.

B (26:57)

Yeah. It's even hard to see in.

A (26:59)

It is. It is.

B (27:01)

It's hard to see what's happening.

C (27:02)

All right. For me. Okay. If you're going to build a sports stadium of any kind. Right. And you're using taxpayer dollars, it should also be an amazing venue for us non sports people for like rock concerts and they should have really great acoustic acoustics. And I am looking at you, US Bank Stad. Sorry.

B (27:27)

Yeah.

C (27:28)

But that monstrosity, which I know is beautiful and can. Is great for Vikings games or whatever, it is a horrible place to listen to a concert unless you want to hear Bono singing three times the same because of the echo. It's like, oh, I. You know, it's just terrible. So that's my contrarian view. If you're going to build A sports stadium. It should add value beyond just being a sports stadium.

B (27:53)

I would agree with that. Seeing a concert in US bank is a rough time.

A (27:56)

It's not so good.

B (27:57)

Also, as a Packers fan who's gone to that stadium to watch the Vikings and Packers play, it makes that Viking noise the so loud, it's like echoing, you know, talking about like the horn thing. Oh yeah, they do. Oh, man. All right. My contrarian take is that track and field is one of the most exciting sports to watch. If you haven't watched track and field, you might only tune in the Olympics. But there are year round track and field races. There's even indoor races which are really fun because the tracks are even smaller. So there's like closer packs and it's really fun to watch everything from like the even the 10,000 to the mile to the hurdles. There's drama, there's beef with a lot of these sprinters and these athletes. This will be done by the time this episode's released. But you can go back and watch. It's the world championships in Tokyo right now for track and field and just other running sports in general. And it's really fun to watch. So if you don't watch track and field, you should try it out. And that they're short too, so you just want to watch them on YouTube or just tune in for a second. They're not big three hour events. You can just tune in to watch certain races.

C (29:00)

I will definitely be sure not to watch that.

B (29:03)

Well, I'm not going to have my feelings hurt because you don't watch anything related to sports, so that's fine.

A (29:08)

Rob, if you had to watch sports, what do you choose?

C (29:11)

Oh, okay, I will say this, I will say this. Netflix has done a really good job with their different series like Quarterback. Like I actually watched that and it didn't have the sports in it. It just had the people. And I really enjoyed it. I learned about Kirk Cousin who was like a guy who was the Vikings quarterback. Like his journey was really interesting. So I did enjoy that. And Brad Pitt got me into F1 a little bit movie. So I watched a little bit of the F1 Netflix series and I'm like, this is really exciting. Maybe I'd actually watch one of. But probably not. They just sit there and they go around for so long. But when you can cut to the chase, no pun intended, there's some pretty good, some pretty good stuff there. And talk about sponsorships, Jeepers, they've sponsored every square inch of those cars and their suits and their everything else, like, geez, that's some money.

A (30:03)

Yep.

B (30:03)

Yeah, they figured out how to monetize that pretty effectively. All right, perfect. I think that wraps us up. That's it for this episode of the Marketing Architects. We'd like to thank Taylor De Los Reyes for producing the show. You can connect with our us on LinkedIn. And if you like the podcast, please leave us a review. Now go forth and build great marketing.

C (30:25)

This is so interesting. Just to let you guys know, I'm. No, I'm serious. Like, I'm so fascinated by. No, I swear to God, this is so good.

A (30:32)

I want to go into all this stuff. It was just getting to. To be too much.

C (30:36)

This sounds so damn smart. I mean, it's just. This is a good one.

B (30:40)

Well, it's not done, so stay focused. Marketing Architects.