Looking to take home a Rally Monkey or a Mike Trout bobblehead for your collection of baseball memorabilia?
July 19 may not be the best night to head to Anaheim stadium.
The giveaway at the Los Angeles Angels vs. Texas Rangers game will be virtual, compliments of Sports 1 Marketing LLC, an Irvine-based agency behind technology that provides consumer data to sponsors in exchange for prize coupons delivered via smart phones.
David Meltzer, the sports and entertainment marketing agency’s chief executive, said he’s giving away “really big gifts,” including a $20 game card from Dave & Buster’s and a $50 coupon from Golfsmith. Fans will be able to participate by texting “S1M” to a number that will be displayed at the stadium during the game. A link to log-in will follow, enabling access to downloadable vouchers.
“Here, data is more important than what you’re giving away,” he said, adding that even if a consumer never redeems a prize, the company still has their personal data and can market to them. And if they do claim the virtual coupons, there’s an opportunity to make an additional sale.
“Twenty-dollar game cards don’t cost [Dave & Buster’s] anything, but if you come in to their restaurant and use $20 of electronic games, they know you’ll buy a drink, food and more cards, so as many people we can give game cards to, that’s what they want,” Meltzer said.
The Angels’ virtual giveaway runs on the agency’s Aggregated Marketing Platform, which also will be used during Brooklyn Nets basketball and New York Islander hockey matches under terms of a three-year deal Sports 1 Marketing just signed with Barclays Center that starts in 2017.
Meltzer started the agency six years ago with National Football League Hall of Fame quarterback Warren Moon. It employs 40 and generates “more than $10 million” in annual revenue, Meltzer said, but its beginning was rather humble.
“We were in Mission Viejo subleasing one office with three desks and a shared conference room,” he said. “People would come for interviews—I could see it in their face—they were like ‘Warren Moon is not going to be in here,’ that’s how bad the offices were. But there was Warren, sitting in a plastic chair interviewing people in a conference room.”
They, along with minority stakeholder Scott Carter, left Leigh Steinberg Sports & Entertainment as the owner—a sports agent who was the inspiration for the “Jerry Maguire” movie character—struggled with alcoholism. The pair didn’t want to “enable” Steinberg, who has since re-established his business.
Meltzer and Moon, meanwhile, now use their own “relationships capital” to promote clients’ new products and services.
“We can bring all of these people that everyone wants to be with to different projects,” he said, adding that most efforts his agency is part of have a charitable component. “L’Oréal, one of our big clients, they host their plastic surgeons and dermatologists at different charity events. I bring a celebrity to sit with them, and everybody is a winner—the sponsors love it because they meet [wealthy doctors], and [they] love it because they meet their sports heroes and celebrities.”
Gift giveaways are a frequent part of the sponsored events, but Meltzer often noticed “inefficiencies.”
“The companies would send stuff, and people would leave it,” he said. “Sometimes you don’t want to leave it, but you forgot it, and … more importantly, none of the companies really know who you are—they are guessing.”
The agency hosted a “gifting suite for NFL players” at a recent Super Bowl, handing out $400 Nike golf clubs, he said. Not all players managed to stop by—Peyton Manning didn’t make it but later asked Meltzer to send him the gift.
“It clicked in my head—sponsors don’t care if Peyton Manning comes and picks it up, they just want to get him the driver so when the TV hits him, he’s using the Nike driver.”
The idea solidified at one of the giveaway nights at Anaheim stadium—State Farm sponsored some 40,000 sombreros on May 5, and Meltzer, who also hosts The Sports Blender radio show with former big leaguer Jim Leyritz, quizzed Angels’ Vice President of Sales Neil Viserto about the cost of sponsoring a giveaway. The answer was “a lot of money,” for the product itself, plus logistics, storage and cleanup.
He sold Viserto on bringing Aggregated Marketing to Angel Stadium, but then had to build the platform.
Sports 1 Marketing hired Randy Granovetter, the founder of headset company Jabra who had prior experience at Microsoft Corp. She became Sports 1 Marketing’s chief technology officer in charge of the effort.
“We’ve started getting into data analytics,” Meltzer said.
Warren and Meltzer recently struck a deal to sell the Aggregated Marketing division to Gerard Jacobs of Acquired Sales Corp. in Lake Forest, Ill., retaining ownership stakes alongside their consulting business, which will remain separate. The deal calls for a payment of $200,000 upfront and 7 million shares of Acquired Sales, which will change its name to Sports 1 Marketing Corp.
“We are anticipating the biggest asset of Aggregated Marketing [will be] the millions of qualified leads,” Meltzer said, adding that each has a market value of $3 to $5 and can be resold.
“It will make us a huge target for an Omnicom or Nielsen because … we have a ton of data they can collect beyond just email and phone numbers—that data is extremely valuable.”
