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Allstate’s net gain

How the company's field goal nets went from big idea to masterful marketing

As Allstate approaches its first decade as a college football fixture, the origin of its field goal nets can finally be revealed.

Turns out that some of the most indelible advertising in sports was inspired, when traced back to its origin, by a Wilson tennis racket.

It was more than a dozen years ago that former NFL events chief Jim Steeg bought a Wilson tennis racket, one that had a large “W” imprinted on the strings. The “W” that signified the Wilson brand sparked Steeg’s interest and led to another thought: Could the NFL place an image of its shield in the nets behind goal posts?

The nets have made Allstate one of the most prevalent brands in college football.
Photo by: Texas Athletics
“I thought it would be a new way to brand the league,” Steeg said.

From that idea, the NFL shield was emblazoned on the nets behind the goal posts at Super Bowl XXXVII in 2003 and in Pro Bowls from 2002 to 2004.

When Steeg left the NFL in 2004, the net program languished. But soon after that year’s Pro Bowl in February, the venue signage experts at Van Wagner were seeking new inventory for college football. The agency at the time specialized in aggregating the rights to signage across several college sports venues and selling it to sponsors.

Van Wagner had tried a variety of ways to create inventory, including fixed signs and even wraps of complete lower bowls in college stadiums. Nothing offered TV exposure comparable to its courtside basketball signage, which had grown to include 80 schools.

The nets, though, represented a completely new platform for advertisers in a space that could be highly visible.
“This was completely market-driven,” said former Van Wagner Sports & Entertainment head Mike Levine, now a principal at CAA Sports. “Our four biggest advertisers were asking for the same kind of visibility in college football.”

But as they’d soon discover, there were complications with schools, rights holders and broadcasters.

Marketing’s fish tale

The 2014 college football season will be the 10th season for Allstate’s nets program. What started as signage on nets has evolved into a full-fledged sponsorship program that makes Allstate arguably the most prevalent brand in college football with a Sugar Bowl title sponsorship, mobile marketing tailgate tour, scholarship charity program and, very likely, a position with the new College Football Playoff.

But the field goal nets “are the centerpiece,” said Dan Keats, director of sponsorship and marketing for the

Inspiration was drawn from nets featuring the NFL shield that appeared at Super Bowl XXXVII.
Photo by: Getty Images
Chicago-based insurance giant. “The nets have grown to the point where they are endemic to the game. It used to be that the ‘Good Hands’ nets really stuck out. Now it’s the games that don’t have the nets that stick out because we’re all over the place.”

In 2013, Allstate had net sponsorships with 78 schools, 23 bowls, 10 neutral-site games and four conference championships (see chart, below). As Ed Erhardt, ESPN’s president of global customer marketing and sales, said, “They’re woven into the fabric of the game.”

But tracing the defining idea back to its roots can be a challenge. Like every great idea, it’s tinged with part legend, part truth, until it grows into a Moby Dick of a fish tale.

“I’m probably one of the few people who doesn’t take credit for the idea,” Keats said with a laugh.

“I’ve heard at least five people take credit for it,” said Silver Chalice’s Lawton Logan, who was with college agency Host Communications at the time the nets program was founded in 2005.

Peel back the layers of the legend and it truly started like most other ideas — in an office meeting. It was 2004, and college football was booming. Attendance was up, TV ratings were on the rise, and marketers wanted a piece of the game.

As Levine and others inside Van Wagner’s Manhattan office searched for ways to create more in-venue signage in stadiums, the NFL’s brief Pro Bowl branding efforts came to mind. The idea for a network of branded college field goal nets took shape during a brainstorming session in Bill Barbera’s office on Third Avenue.

“We looked at each other and asked, ‘Can we actually do this?’” said Barbera, who still heads the Allstate business as Van Wagner’s senior vice president of sales.

Within six weeks of the meeting, Barbera and his team had mocked up a net with an NCAA football logo and hoisted it at the old Giants Stadium.

“Once we saw it up there, we knew we had something unique,” said John Libro, the former vice president of development and college sports at Van Wagner, and now chief revenue officer at Circle Media.

Some early mockups had MasterCard’s twin globes, Nike’s swoosh, and the oh-so-apt Target logo on the field goal nets. The retailer, for some reason, didn’t buy in to the concept.

After a handful of pitches, Barbera sent Jonathan Ruchman, an Allstate marketing manager, an email on May 21, 2004. Attached was a Photoshopped net with Allstate’s venerable “Good Hands” logo.

Ruchman called back Barbera that same afternoon, asking him not to show the idea to another company.
Recalled Levine: “We hadn’t even talked price yet.”

So simple, yet so obvious

From the beginning of internal talks at Allstate, they were smitten with the idea of branded nets. The insurance firm was already a big fan of college football, but its investment in the game was purely media with broadcasters like ESPN and CBS.

The nets presented the opportunity to own an asset that would potentially make Allstate part of the game.

Van Wagner hoisted this mocked-up net at the old Giants Stadium to test the concept.
Photo by: Bill Barbera
 

Joe Tripodi, Allstate’s chief marketer at the time, called it “a disruptive media placement idea that could have legs and evolve.”

Allstate’s marketing team in 2004 included many of the same executives who are still there: Lisa Cochrane, Pam Hollander and Karen Uhler, as well as Ruchman, who has since moved on to be director of customer experience at Brookdale Senior Living Solutions.

Tripodi, now Coca-Cola’s global CMO, ultimately was the executive whose approval was required.

Those inside the deal characterized Ruchman as the nets’ internal champion. By today’s standards, Ruchman’s presentation of the nets to Tripodi might seem a bit crude. It was akin to a high school shop project. He built a small wooden football field with a strip of Astroturf for grass, a plastic goal post with uprights, and mesh netting with the “Good Hands” logo. There was no PowerPoint, no video, no splash to speak of.

It took Tripodi no more than 15 minutes to approve the initial budget, Ruchman said.

“He instantly understood the potential,” Ruchman said. “The reason this was so compelling was the tie-in to the equity of the Allstate brand and its promise of ‘You’re In Good Hands.’ Allstate stands for protection. The net essentially protects people.”

“When I first saw this idea I was blown away, because it was so simple and obvious, but no one had ever done it before,” Tripodi said. “It was also perfect for the Allstate ‘Good Hands’ logo as a place on the football net for a kicker to aim.”

Van Wagner had the idea. Allstate bought in. But their problems were just beginning.

Clearing the uprights

In 2004, most college football stadiums didn’t have field goal nets like the stadiums in the NFL. At most college stadiums, extra points and field goals were simply kicked into the stands and the fans would throw back the footballs.

Van Wagner executives recall no more than 30 percent of the college stadiums were using nets back then.

There also was the issue of navigating the rights and the rights holders. Was the net a sponsorship asset or a broadcast asset? The nets had never been sponsored before, so it wasn’t written into any contracts. No one technically owned the rights to the nets.

Eventually, it was determined that the schools’ rights holders held those rights, and Allstate would have to buy the signage on the nets from the likes of Host, Learfield Sports, ISP Sports, CBS Collegiate Sports Properties, Nelligan and others. This was before the industry consolidated essentially into two agencies — Learfield and IMG College.

Those deals have ranged from $50,000 to $250,000, depending on the brand and visibility of the school. The more TV appearances for the football team, the higher the cost.

More importantly for Learfield and IMG College, as both agencies have tried to sell more national sponsorship deals, Allstate has become a model for how to own an asset and scale it nationally, something that’s considered incredibly difficult in the fragmented college world.

“It’s definitely something we’re trying to do more of,” said Rick Barakat, vice president at IMG College.

Allstate struck deals with close to 30 schools for the first year of the program, but the deals could be messy and

Allstate instantly saw the potential of the nets program.
Photo by:Kent Gidley / Alabama Athetics
confusing. It took some time for Allstate and the rights holders to understand the need to own both end zones.

One of the original schools to come on board was the University of New Mexico, which sold one end zone net to Allstate and the other end zone net to Route 66 Casino.

“There wasn’t just a flip of the switch,” Hollander said. “It took a year to get everything lined up.”

During the development process, there was some paranoia that the program would be hijacked by a rival brand or signage company. Inside Van Wagner, it was referred to as “Project Starkist,” in homage to former NFL coach Bill “Big Tuna” Parcells. Some nets were sent out in boxes marked “Top Secret.”

Winning the hearts and minds of the conferences, schools and broadcast rights holders who controlled college football was another issue.

During a testing phase before the nets were implemented, Van Wagner raised the “Good Hands” on nets at Oklahoma, but football coach Bob Stoops didn’t like it and demanded that the nets be removed, even though Allstate already had an agreement with the school’s rights holder, Learfield Sports. Oklahoma rejoined the program years later.

On the engineering side, Van Wagner had to become experts on the rigging system that would be required to quickly lift a net into place during kicks, and then lower it immediately after the kick.

Because there was no uniformity from one stadium to another, the rigging had to be adaptable. Some nets were attached to the stadium, others were strung to poles in the ground. Those customized rigging jobs could cost as much as $100,000 or more to install.

Tests of all sorts were employed to find suitable rigging and to simulate game conditions. During one test in Qualcomm Stadium with a San Diego State kicker, the rigging hadn’t quite been perfected, and Libro remembered being repeatedly lifted into the air as he tried to hold down a bottom corner of the net.

Some schools enlisted engineers for soil and ground testing. Ruchman recalled one instance in which the new rigging equipment wouldn’t fit through the stadium gate. The suggestion of a helicopter delivery was briefly considered and rejected.

Today, the branded nets come in a variety of sizes, from 40 feet by 60 feet, to 55 feet by 40 feet, but the “Good Hands” logo is always a 22-foot square. Each net is hand-painted and weighs around 100 pounds.

Dealing with pushback

If the operational issues weren’t challenging enough, the political obstacles were downright intimidating. Schools, conferences and rights holders had to be sold in.

Van Wagner’s many college relationships helped forge a path. Van Wagner had a large inventory of college signage that it sold, so its contacts proved beneficial.

Right away, though, ESPN balked, fearing the new ad medium would cause production problems and siphon off ad dollars from Allstate, one of the network’s biggest spenders in the hyper-competitive insurance category.

A planned launch in fall 2004 with close to 30 schools was aborted because of objections from the broadcaster.

“It was in the gray area of rights between school and broadcaster, so we made a business decision to not challenge ESPN,” Levine said.

Ruchman recalled the standstill being more confrontational, saying there were early cases where ESPN blocked out the net logo through its on-screen technology.

Erhardt indicated that ESPN production objected to the nets because they obscured the view of the ball and the field. He became a mediator of sorts.

“There were certain stadiums that were not good for nets,” Erhardt said. “We had to do site visits to campuses to make sure the nets would work, and that we could see the ball. The lighting at night versus the sun going down at the end of the day was another concern. Sales worked between our customer Allstate and our production team.”

ESPN also felt a need to protect its rights against what was perceived early on as an ambush-marketing attempt.

“We didn’t want sponsors just randomly showing up buying nets,” Erhardt said. “The good thing was that Allstate was a quality partner we trusted and we could build something together to make them like a fabric of the game. But we didn’t want a situation where every goal post is for sale. … We had to be very conscious that the exposure was appropriately valued by Allstate and by us, within our larger relationship.”

By the time the 2005 season started, ESPN had agreed to allow one net per stadium. Eventually, Allstate sweetened the pot by committing to a bigger ad spend.

“We agreed to spend more money with them,” said Blaise D’Sylva, then Allstate’s media director, and now Anheuser-Busch’s vice president of media, sports and entertainment marketing. “As sports marketers we are always trying to find some space we can own and, from the beginning, we thought it was big and breakthrough.”

Today, Allstate has advertising units in every broadcast where its nets are on display, from ESPN to CBS to Fox.

From 2005, Allstate’s investment with ESPN in college football grew. The following year, Allstate bought the title sponsorship to the Sugar Bowl, as well as BCS marketing rights.

Allstate is in negotiations with ESPN for the new College Football Playoff in a deal that could include a Sugar Bowl renewal and the right to lift the “Good Hands” in the first-ever playoff.

Reaching national scale

The “Good Hands” net made its debut without incident Sept. 1, 2005, during a Temple University season-opening game at Arizona State on a Thursday night.

However, the first national prime-time game came four days later, and it was not as smooth. With Miami playing at Florida State on Labor Day evening, hundreds of top Allstate officials were watching on TV, as were Libro and Barbera at a New Jersey restaurant.

Florida State scored the first points of the game and led 10-0. The nets rose and fell on cue. But when Miami scored,

Allstate integrates the nets throughout its sports marketing mix, including this ad for game programs at its partner schools.
the net didn’t move. The operations people at Florida State thought the net was supposed to go up only when the Seminoles scored.

Despite a gaffe here and there, Allstate and its nets were well on their way to being a college football cornerstone.

Those involved said they knew the nets had gained acceptance the day Brent Musburger mentioned them on-air. Before the game, Musburger explained, a placekicker had told him that he always “aimed for the hands.”

It was a rare instance of advertising becoming endemic.

“Game-winning field goals into Allstate nets at high-profile schools were repeated over and over on sports highlight shows,” Ruchman said. “The added impressions were priceless.”

“l love it when I hear the kicker say, ‘I was aiming for the E’ in the net,” Hollander said. “Come on, that’s great.”

Off the field, Allstate has skillfully leveraged the nets, using them in TV ads, and integrating them across its marketing and sports marketing mix.

In recent years, Allstate has focused more on integrating local agents into the mix with tailgates and rally parties at agent offices.

The scholarship program has donated more than $3 million to general scholarship funds across the country.

“Allstate’s made it the centerpiece of their sports marketing, and now they’re a brand that’s inseparable from college football,” Barbera said.

Just last week, Allstate convened its top marketers and agency partners in Chicago to begin planning for the 2014 season, its 10th season of raising the nets.

More than 40 executives attended from Allstate’s marketing, digital and social media branches, as well as regional managers from Florida and California. Also there: IMG Consulting; Octagon, which works on activation; Taylor for PR; Leo Burnett for ad creative; and Starcom, the media-buying agency.

Those inside Allstate jokingly refer to the agencies as “the five families,” but it requires all of them to manage an expansive program that grows every year.

“It is the signature position in college football,” Logan said. “They took an asset, owned it and scaled it to build this incredible reach. It’s really become a great model.”



Allstate's net-work

Here are the schools, neutral-site games and bowls that had field goal net sponsorships with Allstate in 2013, representing 534 games:

Schools
Akron, Alabama, Arizona, Arizona State, Arkansas, Ball State, Baylor, Boise State, Bowling Green, Brigham Young, California, Central Florida, Cincinnati, Clemson, Colorado, Colorado State, Connecticut, East Carolina, Florida, Florida State, Fresno State, Georgia Tech, Hawaii, Houston, Idaho, Iowa, Jacksonville State, James Madison, Kansas State, Louisville, LSU, Maryland, Memphis, Miami, Minnesota, Mississippi State, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, N.C. State, Northern Illinois, Northwestern, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Ole Miss, Pittsburgh, Princeton, Purdue, Rice, Rutgers, San Diego State, San Jose State, SMU, South Carolina, South Florida, Southern Miss, Syracuse, TCU, Temple, Tennessee State, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Toledo, Tulane, Tulsa, UNLV, USC, Utah, Utah State, Vanderbilt, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, Washington, Washington State, William & Mary, Wyoming

Neutral-site games
AdvoCare Texas Kickoff (Oklahoma State vs. Mississippi State); Battle of Piney Woods (Sam Houston State vs. Stephen F. Austin); Bayou Bucket (Houston vs. Rice); Bayou Classic (Grambling vs. Southern); Chick-fil-A Kickoff (Alabama vs. Virginia Tech); Cowboys Classic (LSU vs. TCU); Kentucky vs. Western Kentucky, Nashville; Rocky Mountain Showdown (Colorado vs. Colorado State); Southern Heritage Classic (Tennessee State vs. Jackson State); West Virginia vs. Maryland, Baltimore

Conference championships
Big Ten, Conference USA, Mid-American, Southeastern

Bowls
Allstate Sugar Bowl, AT&T Cotton Bowl, AutoZone Liberty Bowl, Beef O’Grady’s St. Petersburg Bowl, Belk Bowl, Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl, Chick fil-A Bowl, Fight Hunger Bowl, Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl, Gildan New Mexico Bowl, Little Caesars Pizza Bowl, National University Holiday Bowl, New Era Pinstripe Bowl, Northrop Grumman Military Bowl, Outback Bowl, R&L Carriers New Orleans Bowl, Russell Athletic Bowl, San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl, Sheraton Hawaii Bowl, TaxSlayer.com Gator Bowl, Texas Bowl, Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, Valero Alamo Bowl

Source: Van Wagner

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