General Sports & Entertainment Chair & CEO ANDY APPLEBY's “all-or-nothing marketing strategy is worth a look,” according to Tom Van Riper of FORBES. Typical consultants “might publish a newsletter or host a small shindig and pray that word spreads,” but “not Appleby.” Since '01 he “has logged about 100 hours a year planning an annual gala in July at the posh Broadmoor golf and spa resort in Colorado Springs, Colo.” For two and a half days, in the “shadow of the Rocky Mountains, some 150 industry types eat, drink, listen to guest speakers and bond over a variety of activities, such as racing Porsche sports cars, fencing at the nearby Olympic training center and touring the U.S. Air Force Academy.” Appleby said, "It's our Super Bowl of marketing." Appleby estimates that his Sports Executive Leadership Conference “has chewed up $3 million in resort bookings, meals and speaker fees over the last decade, or about $2,000 per head.” Those are “big outlays for a small company, but Appleby manages to recoup all or most of that expense by selling sponsorships to Adidas, Ticketmaster, MillerCoors and other big players.” Each sponsor pays $20,000 to $25,000, for which it “gets signage, various public address announcements and ads in the activity program.” For the guest list, Appleby “handpicks members of his core audience -- those who grind away at the day-to-day operations of the industry.” Guest speakers “tend to be off the base path altogether,” including former CIA Dir and Defense Secretary ROBERT GATES and National Center for Policy Analysis Senior Economist BARRY ASMUS (FORBES, 8/22 issue).
