LEE P. THOMASIt was late last year when IMG chief George Pyne and college division president Ben Sutton called Lawton Logan into Pyne’s office in Manhattan. Little did Logan know that those 5th Avenue offices were about to become his second home.
Pyne and Sutton asked Logan to take the lead on IMG Sports & Entertainment’s business development and to create a national platform for the first time for IMG’s college division. Logan, who lives in Lexington, Ky., where he originally worked for Host Communications and moved over to IMG College during the acquisition, took on the challenge.
He’s now coordinating the U.S. sales efforts for all of IMG, including colleges, golf, tennis and fashion, as well as creating the national platform for colleges and hiring a staff of 15 to 20 to sell it. This is on the heels of IMG’s acquisition of ISP Sports last year.
The whirlwind of activity has Logan in New York for about four days a week as he assembles the staff and creates a structure.
“College has been so fragmented, it has never really established itself from a value standpoint and now it has a chance to be very competitive with other leagues,” said Logan, who’s running the point in New York for Sutton, president of IMG College. “We’ve never really had a national platform in college athletics before until IMG acquired ISP Sports. This is a great chance for us to talk about solving problems for brands by bringing them marketing solutions in the college space. … It gives us a chance to go to market with a new story to tell.”
Logan has been busy the last few months hiring staff and establishing sales offices in Chicago, Charlotte and San Francisco for national business development. On the college sales front, new personnel have sprung up in Atlanta, Los Angeles and New York.
“Lawton’s willingness to explore, listen, learn, create, really do whatever it takes to get the job done, are great strengths,” Sutton said. “We have enormous confidence in his leadership and ability to build the first truly national college sales organization in the country.”
Age: 39
Title: Senior vice president, U.S. business development
COMPANY: IMG College
Education: B.A., communications, University of Richmond; MBA, Georgia State University
Family: Wife, Ashley; children, Lawton Jr. (6), Alston (4) and Grant (2)
Career: Hope-Beckham, 1994-96; Cox Broadcasting, 1996-2004; Host/IMG College, 2004-present
Last vacation: The Breakers, Palm Beach, Fla. |
|
What's on your iPod: U2, Dave Matthews
Band, Black Eyed Peas, Frank Sinatra
Guilty pleasure: Coffee ice cream
Best stress release: Watching “Entourage”
Pet peeve: Spotty cell-phone service
Greatest achievement: My family
Greatest disappointment: The middle seat
on airplanes
Fantasy job: CEO of Walt Disney Co.
Business advice: “I never worry about action,
only inaction.” — Winston Churchill |
