Don’t succumb to “logo soup.” Targeted marketing is much more effective.

A huge initiative like the NCAA Men's Final Four means lots of branded events – with each event offering a different value for specific demographics. That's a lot of targeted marketing! Robin Tooms visits with Rachel Quan, VP of external operations for the 2016 NCAA Men’s Final Four in Houston.

Robin: Hello and welcome to this edition of Brandonomics, an inside look at top brands and their marketing strategies. I am Robin Tooms, VP of Strategy at Savage Brands and my guest again is Rachel Quan, VP of External Operations for the 2016 Men’s Final Four here in Houston. So Rachel, I’m so glad you’re back on Brandonomics sharing about all the great marketing and communications that you’re doing.

Rachel: Thanks Robin, it’s good to be back with you.

Robin: The task that you have, again we’ve talked about how large the marketing challenge is that you have, but one thing that’s kind of interesting is there are at least 6 official events that are happening around the Men’s Final Four, around the games themselves; that is a lot of different events to market and that’s a lot of logos because each event has their own mark to it. So how are you dealing with all of these competing names and titles and messages around the events?

Rachel: Well we really determined with the marketing team that we’ve been working, both with the NCAA and locally, that we wanted to make sure we understood who we were going after for each event and understood that the demographic’s a little bit different for each of those events. We certainly could put everything on one piece of paper on a poster and we always joked that if we did that it would end up with “logo soup” if you will, and trying to get everybody to go to everything was a bit of a marketing strategy we didn’t think was going to work very well. So we really tried to figure out who it was we wanted to make sure we were marketing to when it came to each event. And so, for instance, FanFest, we’ve really said that we want to market to families.

Robin: Right.

Rachel: And we want to make sure that our advertising is very specific to families and families seeing it as a great thing to do together and having kids in the advertising if you will. We know that the true sports fan is already going to come to these types of things but in this instance it was making sure we were reaching out to families and specifically doing that. Whereas with the music festival, especially with some of the acts coming in, we really saw it as something that Millennials would be interested in coming to and being a part of. And so we wanted to make sure we were advertising to Millennials and making sure that we were thinking about publications they would be viewing or reading if you will, and using our marketing dollars for those publications that were specific to that demographic.

Robin: Well I like that. So first I will say as a non-Millennial, I myself will be attracted to some of the lineup of the festival but what’s interesting, what you’re saying is, keep the key target audience in mind and some of the other ancillary audiences like myself will also be attracted to that; and that takes a lot of discipline to do.

Rachel: It does, it does and I think because a lot of times we just want to throw it all on the wall and see what’ll stick but I think we really tried very hard to make sure that we were being deliberate and very intentional about marketing to certain segments of the community.

Robin: And I’m sure it will pay off in attendance.

Rachel: Well that’s the hope.

Robin: All right, well thank you so much for sharing that.

Rachel: Thank you.

Robin: This has been another edition of Brandonomics, an inside look at top brands and their marketing strategies.

Houston is host to the 2016 NCAA Men’s Final Four. The Houston Local Organizing Committee is the local organization which works with the NCAA on a daily basis to help plan and execute the 2016 NCAA Men’s Final Four.  Listed below are some of the events and volunteer opportunities that will occur the week of March 30- April 5, 2016 during the Final Four: Final Four Fan Fest, March Madness Music Fest, Final Four Friday, Final Four Dribble, and more. https://www.ncaa.com/final-four