As Chief Operating Officer for Wasserman (www.teamwass.com), the global “culture-centric” branding, marketing and sports representation agency, Will Pleasants is responsible for the influential business development, human resources, IT, and overall day-to-day operations for the 550-plus employees around the globe. Before assuming COO duties over a year ago, Pleasants was COO of the firm’s marketing division, working with the Managing Partners to lead that division’s tremendous growth and diversification of service offerings. Brand clients include American Express, Microsoft, Verizon, Spotify, and Peps; the agency’s athlete clients include the NBA’s Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook, MLB’s Giancarlo Stanton and the NFL’s Andrew Luck. According to eventmarketer.com, 2016 saw Wasserman engage in 1,885 event days, 86 projects in 15 countries, 3.3 million consumer attendees and a whopping 1.26 billion social media impressions, a number that is projected to increase in the wake of Wasserman’s acquisition of NYC-based Laundry Service, a digital shop with more than 1,000 social media influencers. Prior to joining Wasserman, Pleasants served as director of strategic planning with Group CSE, worked with the Orlando Magic, and spent time with NIKE.
Interviewer Marcie Allen, founder and president of MAC Presents, a music-oriented experiential branding and sponsorship agency based in New York, is a visionary in the branding/sponsorships space in her own right, having negotiated and executed a wealth of high-profile partnerships between blue-chip brands and elite artists, among them Sony, Southwest Airlines, YouTube, Microsoft, Verizon, Samsung, Citi, Delta, AT&T and artists including Foo Fighters, the Rolling Stones, Green Day, Billy Joel, John Legend, Imagine Dragons, and Keith Urban.
MARCIE ALLEN: You’ve been at Wasserman for more than a decade. How has the role — and importance — of experiential marketing shifted over that time?
WILL PLEASANTS: We have seen tremendous growth and evolution in experiential marketing during the past decade. Today, it is less about creating massive spectacles to engage with an in-person audience and more about how to extend the physical activation experience into the digital space and creating shareable content in order to reach a wider audience. Experiential marketing is one of the best ways for a brand to create strategic, original content that they can truly own and that their consumers can capture and share as well. This content can be used in a variety of ways by the brand, including for digital content, social content and in traditional marketing and advertising campaigns.
How often does the TV viewing experience come into play when you’re negotiating sports sponsorships vs. the on-site experiential component, and how has that shifted in recent years?
It isn’t necessarily an “either/or” situation when negotiating sports and entertainment sponsorships for our clients. Sometimes it is a more traditional sponsorship that will reach at-home or streaming viewers, and sometimes it is an on-site activation that will help capture content and create viral buzz, so it really depends on the specific situation. The key is to have consistency with the message at all touch points.
Do you see streaming as a friend or foe to live sports, and how has streaming adoption impacted your talks with sponsors?
We see streaming as a friend to live sports. We have to adapt to the newer generations that grow up consuming content on their tablets and phones and use social media more than they watch traditional cable. Our business needs to evolve to accommodate this shift. Streaming not only increases the number of eyeballs on an event but it also opens up new sponsorship potentials and opportunities, which is a good thing.
As far as conversations with sponsors, we advise them to be cognizant of this shift, and it’s our job to help them understand how they can best join the conversation organically. The key is understanding the landscape of who has the appropriate rights, and working with all the desired rightsholders.
Major League Soccer attendance and viewership has been significantly on the rise in the past several years, suggesting soccer could finally become a fifth major league in the States like it is in other parts of the world. What’s the brand opportunity there?
Major League Soccer (MLS) has a ton of potential, having grown its average attendance 40 percent from 10 years ago, but there’s still a long way to go before it can truly compete with the “Big Four.” That being said, brands have definitely taken notice of this shift and have started to get more and more involved in the space. Take Target for example, which made its biggest push into team sports this year by partnering with both MLS and the Minnesota United on a jersey sponsorship deal. I think you will start to see more deals like these come out, since the market is much less saturated than other sports, and there are a lot more opportunities for brands to make their mark and get involved from the ground floor with the league.
Aside from Wasserman’s work, what’s the most innovative sports marketing you saw in the past 12 months and why?
I loved Hyundai’s in-game “commercial” during this year’s Super Bowl that followed U.S. troops stationed in Poland. It was a bold move to do things completely different from everyone else and film their commercial not before, but during the actual game, giving troops the opportunity to watch the game live with their families using 360-degree camera technology. Pulling this off essentially meant fitting months of hard work and planning into a three-hour timeslot to create a live commercial on the spot. Not only was this incredibly difficult to shoot, but it ended up being one of the most buzzed-about and effective ads of the entire night.
Music has long trailed sports in terms of sponsorship investment – IEG reported brands spent $15.7 billion on sports sponsorship in 2016 vs. $1.47 billion in music. Why do you think that gap remains, and what can the music industry do to make itself more buyer-friendly?
Sports is one of the last events that people make a point to watch live. If you don’t watch the big game live, not only are you missing out on the playing action, but you are also missing out on all of the social conversation and moments that happen in real-time online. Sports fans are tweeting while watching live and brands want to engage them.
The difference in the music industry is that — outside of concerts — music is rarely consumed live or broadcasted, so you don’t have the same sponsorship and social opportunities that you do in sports. However, the audience for music is as enormous and diverse as the artists themselves, so there is ample opportunity for marketers to come up with fresh and creative sponsorship solutions.
I believe you will see more and more dollars flow into music partnerships for two reasons. One, artists are seeing the value of these partnerships and looking to do more with brands — especially those that are authentic to the artist. Two, while sports partnerships are typically longer term music partnerships many times allow you to be more nimble and “heavy up” in a shorter window for a product launch, etc.
But smart marketers — both brands and properties — realize how sports and music can, and should, work together. For example, at the Final Four recently, the three days of nightly concerts (March Madness Fest) were just as popular as the games, and created a great atmosphere for the organizing committee and the city.