If you find yourself traveling across Central Florida on I-4 this weekend, there’s a good chance you’ll pass a convoy of SUVs ferrying Sprint executives between two of sports’ biggest events, the Daytona 500 and the NBA All-Star Game in Orlando.

Sprint will juggle both of its biggest sports properties for the first time after signing this season as the NBA’s official wireless service sponsor with a four-year deal while also renewing its agreement as the title sponsor of NASCAR’s top series.

The Sprint-sponsored All-Star Pregame Concert is a new event this year for the NBA, and a major part of Sprint’s weekend activation.

Typically, the company’s sponsorships would have been activated on the same weekend in two separate states, but this year the NBA and NASCAR are hosting two of their biggest annual events within 55 miles of each other.

“We will take full advantage,” said Steve Gaffney, Sprint’s vice president, corporate marketing. “We have all these assets at our disposal. We’re not thinking about it as how much to divide, but how to capitalize on two very marquee properties.”

In a whirlwind effort to manage activities at both sites, Gaffney and the company’s executive team will spend considerable time shuttling between Orlando and Daytona in a fleet of SUVs.

Gaffney plans to stay in Orlando for the weekend, where Sprint will host about 30 guests. He’ll spend Friday at the NBA’s technology summit there and attend the Sprint-sponsored All-Star Celebrity Game that evening at the NBA Jam Session. He will travel to Daytona on Saturday morning to evaluate the company’s on-site activities there, return to Orlando Saturday night for the NBA All-Star Saturday Night, wake up and head back to Daytona Sunday morning for pre-race hospitality events and the opening laps of the 500. Then he will return to Orlando on Sunday in time for the company-sponsored pregame concert at the Amway Center and for the start of the All-Star Game.

The Sprint-sponsored pregame concert, featuring the hip-hop group Gym Class Heroes, is a new event for the NBA and is a key part of the company’s activation plan around All-Star Weekend.

NASCAR chief marketer Steve Phelps, who has been in the sports business for two decades with the NFL, Wasserman Media Group and NASCAR, said he can’t recall an example of a brand executive juggling two major sporting events the way Gaffney will all weekend.

“A lot of times it’s weekend to weekend to weekend from NHL All-Star to Super Bowl to NBA All-Star to Daytona, but it’s unusual that the proximity of the two is so close,” Phelps said. “That’s pretty cool.”

Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse and Chief Marketing Officer Bill Malloy will also be on hand for the start of the Daytona 500 at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday and tipoff of the All-Star Game at 7:37 p.m. The company is considering renting a helicopter to get them to and from Daytona that Sunday. Sprint will not be taking customers to both events.

“We view this as a unique opportunity, given the proximity of the two events on the same weekend,” Gaffney said. “We’re going to get a lot of visibility with two very attractive fan bases on a one-on-one basis and through a very comprehensive media plan throughout the weekend.”

Sprint’s marketing plans for both events include everything from on-site displays to sponsored concerts, hospitality functions and TV commercials. Though Sprint will have a major presence in both Daytona and Orlando, executives will pay particular attention to the NBA given that it is the first time the company has activated around All-Star Weekend.

“On the NBA side, it is about executing flawlessly and learning,” Gaffney said.

In Orlando, Sprint’s on-site efforts will be located at the NBA’s interactive Jam Session, where the company will have a live DJ, branded interactive touch screens to push product, and a half-court basketball court.

In Daytona, Sprint will roll out its Sprint Experience activation, which the company has taken to races around the country in recent years. The 14,400-square-foot display, which hosted more than 500,000 fans in 2011, will offer Miss Sprint Cup autograph sessions, interactive games, a cutaway show car and giveaways for Sprint customers.

Because Sprint is title sponsor of NASCAR’s top series, it has more assets at the 500 and will host approximately 300 people, including businesses, small businesses, wholesale customers and individual consumers.

“They have a presence there that’s hard to miss,” Phelps said. “They have signage at the track, the Sprint Cup mobile app with 3 million users, customers they host and consumers who win sweepstakes. They spread themselves out across the sport from drivers to tracks to teams to media partners.”

Octagon assisted Sprint with its plans for both events. JHE will manage its on-site activities at both events.

While the on-site activities are important, Florida is not a top-10 market for Sprint, Gaffney said. The company does have a strong presence in several markets, including Orlando and Miami, but it sees this Sunday as a chance to raise its brand awareness nationally through TV. Last year’s Daytona 500 earned an 8.7 Nielsen rating and drew 15.6 million viewers on Fox, while the NBA All-Star Game earned a 5.2 Nielsen rating and drew 9.093 million viewers on TNT.

“We want big numbers, big ratings, off both events,” Gaffney said.

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Most college athletes go pro in something other than sports, the NCAA likes to say in its commercials, and that fact isn’t lost on NCAA corporate partner Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

The world’s largest rental car company will launch a new TV ad during March Madness featuring 16 of the company’s employees, each of whom played college sports.

The 30-second spot called “We Played” is the culmination of a massive casting call that went out via email to Enterprise employees in the Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles areas. More than 200 employees responded by uploading self-made videos to an internal site, expressing why they should be included in the ad.

The 16 former athletes were chosen based on subsequent screen tests conducted by Enterprise’s ad agency, St. Louis-based Cannonball Advertising and Promotion. The company wanted a diverse group of athletes representing a variety of sports.

The spot will launch next month on CBS, Turner networks and ESPN.

Enterprise will continue a campaign featuring its own people by introducing NCAA basketball  tournament fans to company employees who played college sports.

“We’re fortunate to have so many folks join the company who were former NCAA athletes, and we thought it’d be great if we could take them and make them part of the campaign,” said Patrick Farrell, chief marketer for Enterprise Holdings, the umbrella company for the Enterprise, National and Alamo brands. “We started a campaign last year featuring real employees, and the use of former student athletes this year is an extension of that.”

The tie between Enterprise and the college space is a logical one. No U.S. company recruits more college graduates annually than Enterprise, according to CollegeGrad.com. Enterprise each summer brings in close to 2,000 interns and in 2011 made more than 8,000 entry-level hires. BusinessWeek called Enterprise one of the best places to launch a career because of its management program and culture of promoting from within.

A team of 200 recruiters works for Enterprise to find future employees to go to work in the St. Louis-based corporate headquarters or at one of 7,000 company locations.

Given the company’s strong ties to colleges, Enterprise decided in 2005 to invest in an NCAA corporate partnership that comes with full marketing and media rights to the basketball tournament and other championships. That deal runs through the 2013 tournament. Financial details of the sponsorship weren’t available, but most NCAA deals, which are sold by media partners Turner and CBS, go for the high seven figures annually.

Enterprise in the past has used the ad units that come with the sponsorship to run its “We’ll pick you up” spots during the NCAA tournament.

The company, working with Cannonball, changed direction last year with a new ad campaign called “The Enterprise Way,” which used employees in eight different spots. The campaign marked the first new creative approach for the company since 1989, with the idea to have actual employees emphasizing the company’s commitment to customer service.

Incorporating former college athletes into “The Enterprise Way” campaign was the logical next step for March Madness this year. The spot will debut in the coming weeks and also run during other NCAA championships during the course of the year.

Employees in the spot were paid actors’ scale wages for their work.

At the Final Four in New Orleans, Enterprise does not have plans to activate in Bracket Town, the fan fest area, but it will manage the fleet of Buicks (another NCAA corporate partner) for all of the NCAA officials in need of a car.

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Knapple is a veteran of numerous sports naming-rights deals. Photo by: TERRY LEFTON / STAFF

Van Wagner Sports and Entertainment has hired veteran sports marketer Jeff Knapple as executive vice president, a new position that will see Knapple spearhead a company initiative to offer a broad range of marketing services, including naming rights, brand integration and signage.

Knapple, who has handled myriad naming-rights deals during his career — ranging from Target Center in 1989 to MetLife Stadium last year — will be based in Los Angeles.

“The idea is to pull together more of the different parts of our company and to be able to provide a large variety of services to teams and venues,” said Van Wagner Sports President Cliff Kaplan, adding that the company works with about 200 teams and venues in North America. “We think we can offer a range of services that will differentiate us from anyone else in the space.”

Knapple, who will report to Kaplan, was with Wasserman Media Group since selling his Envision agency to WMG in 2002. Kaplan and Knapple have known each other since 1997, when The Marquee Group, where Kaplan worked, bought the agency where Knapple was employed, ProServ. The two worked on opposite sides of the MetLife deal last year, with WMG representing the New York Jets/Giants and New Meadowlands Stadium and Van Wagner working on behalf of MetLife.

“It’s about harnessing and multiplying assets,” said Knapple, who said he had been talking to Van Wagner for about six months. “So many times, when you go in to pitch naming rights to a team or venue you see a wider range of marketing opportunities that we can really take advantage of.”

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Going green is good for NASCAR’s bottom line.

Three years after the sanctioning body decided to create a separate sponsorship portfolio for environmentally conscious companies, it has signed its second “NASCAR Green” sponsorship. Creative Recycling, a Florida-based company that specializes in stripping, repurposing and disposing of electronic equipment such as computers and cell phones, signed a multiyear deal with the sport to become an official “NASCAR Green” partner.

Financial terms of the agreement were not available.

“When I think about NASCAR and I think about NASCAR Green and think about this ability to reach this huge audience, the super fans, the casual fans and the TV audience, what NASCAR is trying to do with this green platform, the value of trying to make people aware of the environment, is extremely strong,” said Jon Yob, founder, president and CEO of Creative Recycling Systems Inc. Andrew Campagnone of Sports Marketing Consultants advised Creative Recycling on the sponsorship.

The deal is NASCAR’s second major green sponsorship. It brought on American Ethanol, a lobby group that represents domestic ethanol interests, as a sponsor in 2011 in a six-year deal worth more than $2 million a year.

NASCAR executives hope to bring on more green sponsors in the coming years. They see opportunities with companies specializing in solar or wind energy, next-generation agriculture, and micro-grid management and energy consumption.

“Any technology or solution that impacts the amount of energy we use to put on the show are categories we can bring forward in this,” said Mike Lynch, NASCAR’s managing director of green innovation. “We spend a lot of time now and attention focusing on that.”

Lynch was hired in 2008 and assigned with making NASCAR more environmentally friendly both at the track and in the court of public opinion. He acknowledges that the idea of NASCAR, which hosts races that can burn upward of 6,000 gallons of fuel, being green is an oxymoron. He’s looked to overcome that through traditional environmental initiatives like recycling programs at the track and tree-planting efforts, but he also worked with NASCAR’s sales team to create a separate sponsorship portfolio for “green” partners.

By selling sponsorships to companies such as American Ethanol and Creative Recycling, NASCAR has turned “green” into a revenue stream, and aligned itself with companies that help raise awareness for environmentally friendly practices and give the sport a positive association that counters the public perception that it’s not environmentally conscious.

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Editor's note: This story is revised from the print edition.

Rory McIlroy and his father, Gerry, were enjoying a quiet breakfast in the dining room at PGA National when they were approached by a stranger in shades.

Louis Wellen, Oakley’s sports marketing manager, knew McIlroy as an up-and-coming junior golfer, so he stopped by the McIlroys’ table, dropped off a few pairs of Oakley sunglasses and left him with a message.

“Rory, you don’t know it yet, but you’re going to be a big part of Oakley’s history,” Wellen told him.

Oakley has made recent gains in golf through apparel deals with U.S. Open champ Rory McIlroy (left) and PGA Championship winner Keegan Bradley. Photo by: GETTY IMAGES

Photo by: GETTY IMAGES

The year was 2005, two years before McIlroy turned pro, and six years before McIlroy wore his first Oakley-branded golf shirt, belt or pair of pants. But Wellen was intent on making an impression on the 16-year-old.

Wellen’s drive-by encounter proved prophetic, even if the payoff didn’t come until just before the 2011 season. That’s when Oakley signed McIlroy to an apparel deal and, sure enough, McIlroy had the trademark Oakley “O” all over him a few months later when he won the U.S. Open in one of the most dominating performances ever at a major golf championship.

Now the Irishman is the face of Oakley’s burgeoning golf business.

“I remind Rory of that first conversation every time I see him,” Wellen said with a smile.

Known for its sunglasses, Oakley has spent the past decade trying to break through on the golf apparel and footwear front. Even those in the industry are surprised to learn that Oakley has been making golf shoes for 10 years, an awareness issue the company intends to turn around by spending more money against golf this year than ever before.

Oakley guards its financials closely, but Scott Bowers, senior vice president, global marketing and brand development, said the brand plans “double-digit increases in our marketing spend over the next few years.”

Central to that effort will be convincing the golf consumer to take the brand seriously as an important piece of golf equipment.

“Rory is one of the few golfers who has the profile to drive brand reappraisal, in terms of what Oakley stands for,” said Malcolm Turner, a principal at Wasserman Media Group. “They need consumers to rethink what Oakley stands for and what they have to offer.”

“Golf is where our focus is, head-to-toe,” said Chris Long, Oakley’s national sales director for traditional sports. “But there has been an educational process to get it more accepted as a part of performance.”

Not only did McIlroy win the U.S. Open last year, another Oakley golfer, Keegan Bradley, won the PGA Championship. And now the company is committed to put the marketing dollars behind its momentum in golf.

These player endorsement deals can run close to seven figures for a golfer of McIlroy’s stature, to the low to mid-six figures for golfers who aren’t as accomplished or as well-known. These deals often carry heavy incentives for big wins like McIlroy and Bradley had last year.

With the exception of McIlroy, Wellen said the brand typically doesn’t spend as much on endorsement deals as other major brands like Nike or the endemics.

“We lose it if it gets real competitive,” Wellen said. “We don’t have the budget of a Nike or Adidas. Most of our deals come about because the golfer wants to be with the brand. You have to remember that a small percentage of Oakley sales comes from golf, and our budget is proportionate to that.”

That commitment to golf is growing. Golf footwear — specifically the new Cipher shoe — for the first time is receiving “tier one” marketing support this year. That means it is the highest marketing priority, a designation typically reserved for other Oakley premier brands like Fast Jacket eyewear or Airbrake goggles.

Advertising will be heavy in golf and non-golf magazines, as well as online at PGATour.com and other sites. There also will be in-store displays at some of Oakley’s retail partners.

“This is a real first for footwear,” said Jared Wall, Oakley’s global product line manager of footwear. “To be considered a tier-one asset, that just wouldn’t have happened before. But with Rory winning and then Keegan winning, it’s catapulted golf and footwear into a category that really deserves the attention. You can advertise all day long, but it means so much more to have guys winning in our product.”

The genesis for Oakley’s supposed overnight success with McIlroy and Bradley actually began 22 years ago when Wellen first began distributing Oakley shades on the PGA Tour. He didn’t know much about the game and it showed. He went to his first tournament wearing shorts, a T-shirt and flip-flops, and was promptly escorted outside the ropes.

Through a friend who was a professional water skier and Oakley wearer, Wellen, who leans more toward surfer dude than golfer, was introduced to Mark O’Meara. The PGA Tour star helped Wellen by giving him a family pass to get back inside the ropes. Wellen, who was more appropriately dressed this time in slacks and a golf shirt, used the access to pass out Oakley eyewear to the golfers.

The brand already had the cool factor in spades and getting the eyewear on golfers wasn’t a problem. Brett Ogle was the first pro golfer to win a tournament in a pair of Oakleys, taking the 1994 Hawaiian Open (see related story).

David Duval and Annika Sorenstam both were wearing Oakley shades when they were ranked No. 1 in the world at the same time in 1999.

But penetrating the apparel and footwear market was a different story. That’s not what Oakley was known for and it lacked the authenticity factor. It just wasn’t considered a golf brand.

“We had not gotten really aggressive with golf apparel until 2006 or ’07,” Wellen said. “But we realized that we needed a bigger presence in the industry if we’re going to do golf right. Getting McIlroy … that changed everything.”

Now it has McIlroy in Oakley apparel and hopes to get the footwear deal when his Foot-Joy deal runs out this year. Ricky Barnes and James Nitties wear the eyewear, apparel and footwear, true head-to-toe deals.

Bradley is wearing the Oakley Cipher this year, marketed as the lightest golf shoe ever made. Brendan Steele, the third-round co-leader in the PGA last year, is wearing the eyewear and apparel. Ian Poulter and Zach Johnson are among several golfers wearing the sunglasses.

“It’s exciting for golf to have a nontraditional brand make that kind of commitment,” Wasserman’s Turner said. “You can tell it’s more than just a brand statement here. They see real revenue, they see a real business here worth pursuing.”

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Oakley is known for its cool shades, but the company markets its eyewear as an important piece of golf equipment. Where did Oakley get the idea for that approach?

Australian golfer Brett Ogle was the first PGA Tour pro to win a tournament wearing Oakley sunglasses, in 1994. He was defending that championship the following year at the Hawaiian Open when he hit a wayward drive behind a tree on the 13th hole.

As Ogle tried to punch the ball back to the fairway, his club slammed into the tree and his iron snapped, causing the clubhead to fly toward his face. The head of the iron popped Ogle in the cheek and left a slashing mark across his Oakley glasses.

“If I hadn’t been wearing the Oakleys, yes, no doubt, I would have done some serious damage to my left eye,” Ogle wrote in an email last week. “I still remember it well. … It’s funny now because I laid on the ground for quite some time trying to figure out what just hit me. Meanwhile, my good friend John Daly was in the group behind and he hit his drive near where I lay. He thought he had me with his tee shot. Very funny stuff, actually.”

Oakley’s reputation in golf grew exponentially when David Duval wore the eyewear during his run as the world’s No. 1-ranked golfer in 1999. Duval began wearing Oakleys in college at Georgia Tech because he had allergies that made his eyes more sensitive to sunlight. Louis Wellen, Oakley’s sports marketing manager, suggested to Georgia Tech coach Puggy Blackmon that Duval wear the wrap-around Oakleys, and he stayed with the brand.

“When Duval won a major [the 2001 British Open] in a pair of Oakleys, that put us on the map,” Wellen said.

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Pitchers and catchers report to spring training this week, which means that off the diamond, MLB marketers are nearing the end of their sales cycle. As far as we can discern from the bleachers, they are batting .500 on renewals so far.

Procter & Gamble, which has found sports as religion after years of avoiding it, is finalizing a renewal with an omnibus deal that includes Head & Shoulders. A new Head & Shoulders commercial with Joe Mauer was shot recently, with the Twins catcher back for his second year as a spokesman as P&G uses sports to pitch the billion-dollar shampoo brand directly to men for the first time. The broad personal-care sponsorship also includes Gillette, which traces its MLB sponsor roots with MLB as far back as the late 1930s.

Meanwhile, InterContinental Hotels’ Holiday Inn brand, an MLB sponsor in the hotel and resort categories since 2006, is not returning. With a billion-dollar repositioning and renovation for Holiday Inn to tout, MLB was a nice platform, and the brand did some impressive activation, including baseball-themed TV ads around the Holiday Inn upgrade, which showed a Holiday Inn “ground crew’’ upgrading the hotel, along with some earlier creative featuring Fox MLB talent Joe Buck pushing the “official hotel of MLB.’’

However, marketing behind the Holiday Inn facelift is over and Crowne Plaza, the next InterContinental brand in need of a brand uplift, is not necessarily a good fit for MLB.

Majestic’s new fleece top will be worn by MLBers beginning in spring training.

DIAMOND DUDS: Elsewhere in hardball marketing, VF’s Majestic brand shot a TV ad in downtown Miami earlier this month touting its longtime rights to make and market Major League Baseball’s on-field jerseys.

The spot should break in mid-to-late March and features the Boston Red Sox’s David Ortiz and the MLB home run leader from the Toronto Blue Jays, Jose Bautista. Alex Radetsky at Radegen Sports Management handles marketing for both.

As part of the ad, both players serve as mannequins in a faux sporting goods store. Jim Pisani, president of VF’s licensed sports group, was mum on creative details, but said “the message is that it’s OK to wear your MLB jersey anywhere — it’s not just for the stadium.”

The ad will be supported by digital, social and point-of-sale campaigns.

Another major Majestic initiative for the upcoming season is the new on-field item, the $59.99 featherweight fleece top, which will be worn by MLBers beginning in spring training and throughout the season.

COMINGS & GOINGS: As part of a purge of senior licensing executives at WWE, former NFL consumer products chief Jim Connelly is out as licensing chief, a position he had held since July 2009. No replacement has been named. … At MillerCoors, 11-year brewery veteran Ryan Luckey moves from director of sports and entertainment marketing to director, innovations and sustainability. Luckey held the sports/entertainment slot since 2009. No replacement has been named. … Gary Jacobus moves from the NBA, where he was vice president of global marketing partnerships since 2009, to executive vice president, head of business development at Media Ventures Group, New York. … Meanwhile at the NBA, with the lockout over, the league has started to fill the loss of Peter Farnsworth, former senior vice president of business development, who left late last year. The league has rehired Brandon Snow, who will be vice president, business development. Snow was director of client development at DDB since 2008, prior to which he was senior director of global marketing partnerships at the NBA. … On the team side, Allison Howard is joining the Los Angeles Lakers’ corporate sponsorship sales team after six years with Premier Partnerships in Santa Monica.

Terry Lefton can be reached at tlefton@sportsbusinessjournal.com.

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