The players and coaches from freshly crowned Villanova climbed the Werner ladder last Monday night to clip off their snippet of net in full view of the cameras.
Each photo of coach Jay Wright at the top of the ladder etched the distinctive blue and yellow platform a little deeper into NCAA tournament lore. No photographer actually means to take a picture of the ladder, but they can’t help it. The ladder and its recognizable colors are inescapable to the lens.
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Werner’s research shows a 4:1 return on its NCAA deal.
Photo by: MICHAEL SMITH / STAFF
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See Wright. See Kris Jenkins. See Ryan Arcidiacono. See the Werner ladder. That’s how ingrained the NCAA’s official ladder brand has become in the postgame celebration.
It is arguably the most unusual NCAA sponsorship position among all of the partners, even though Werner’s marketing rights are passed through from NCAA corporate partner Lowe’s.
“Ladders are tough to market,” said Chris Filardi, the Werner Co.’s vice president of marketing. “In the construction world, ladders aren’t always as sexy as the tools. But now we have an image and it’s identified. We’ve been able to bring the ladder category to a place of visibility.”
Filardi and his marketing team provided SportsBusiness Journal with an inside look at Werner’s activation during Final Four weekend in Houston.
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Villanova’s Jay Wright got his title, and Werner ladders got its screen time.
Photo by: NEIL KING
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The winning climb up the ladder by Villanova’s coaches and players was the centerpiece to the program. But in eight years as the NCAA’s official ladder, Werner has built out the activation to include full hospitality for 120 guests, an hourlong appearance from former Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun, 10 shuttle vans wrapped in Werner blue and yellow with ladders on top for the company’s guests, and ladder placement around the city.
In fact, Werner’s ladders were omnipresent throughout Houston, from the set of ESPN’s “Mike & Mike” to CBS Sports Network’s studio show and the Guardians of the Game awards show, presented by the National Association of Basketball Coaches.
Werner’s full-court press during March Madness represents 50 percent of the company’s marketing budget, Filardi said, so it’s incumbent on his marketing team and Werner’s agency, FishBait Marketing, to make the most of the four-day weekend.
Stacy Gardella, Werner’s director of interactive marketing, said return-on-investment research shows a 4:1 return for Werner on its NCAA marketing.
“We have shifted to more product-driven messages now that feature a look at our new style of ladder,” Gardella said. “It’s more about product and less about just getting the brand on TV, which quite frankly was our mindset eight years ago.”
Long before Werner acquired NCAA rights, championship-winning players and coaches were climbing Werner ladders to cut down the nets. Stadiums that hosted the Final Four simply used the ladder they had on hand. Most of the time that was a Werner, which boasts that it is the nation’s best-selling ladder brand.
In the months leading up to the Final Four, before there ever was an NCAA sponsorship, Werner’s distributors would visit stadiums to make sure they had the latest and safest Werner model, knowing that it’d be used for the net cutting.
The visibility from the net cutting was nice, but Werner had no marketing rights. Filardi, a 16-year veteran at Werner, wanted to do more with the images from the championship, but couldn’t. So eight years ago, Filardi and his team began talking to Lowe’s, which is one of Werner’s best retailers. Dating back to 2005, Lowe’s has been an NCAA partner with full marketing rights.
Working with CBS, which then managed and sold the NCAA’s marketing rights (CBS now jointly manages the program with Turner Sports), Lowe’s arranged for Werner to have pass-through rights. Werner became the official ladder and gained rights to the NCAA’s brands, like March Madness, to use in its advertising.
“We were already there with our ladders,” Filardi said. “We just formalized the relationship.”
The arrangement remains complicated because it involves Werner, the NCAA, Lowe’s, CBS and Turner.
“Getting this deal was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Filardi said. “It’s an agreement with multiple parties, as well as making sure everyone is on board philosophically with how we approach our integrated marketing. There are a lot of people involved.”
Werner is currently the only NCAA sponsor that uses pass-through rights, although NCAA corporate champion Coca-Cola in the past used pass-through rights for McDonald’s, Papa John’s and Domino’s Pizza.
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Werner’s March Madness blitz comes in its busy spring season.
Photo by: NEIL KING
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It’s an effective way for Werner to own NCAA marketing rights without paying as much as the other partners. Werner, a private company based in Greenville, Pa., didn’t reveal specifics, but Filardi said that Werner’s spend is less than the $15 million to $20 million that most partners pay for NCAA rights and advertising on CBS/Turner.
“We’re a very unique company [in this space] because most of the other partners are much, much larger,” Filardi said. “We’re not that big.”
Still, Werner’s March Madness blitz represents its marketing for the spring, a huge selling season.
Werner also has sponsorships with the men’s and women’s coaches associations, which grants the company rights to use the title-winning coaches in its advertising and appearances. That’s how Werner was able to bring in Calhoun, a three-time NCAA champion coach at UConn, to speak to its 120 guests at Houston’s Yellow Rose Distillery at no charge on the day of the semifinals.
There, a collection of Werner’s best retailers, distributors, employees, bankers and lawyers dined on bourbon-braised beef and sipped on specially prepared cocktails like the Werner Podium Punch, named after Werner’s new podium-style ladder, the kind Villanova used in the net-cutting ceremony for the first time last Monday night.
“The beauty is in the authenticity of the ladders. You can’t make that up,” said FishBait’s Rick Jones, who along with Brittany Schiller has worked with Werner on the program for the last eight years. “The ladder and the net cutting represent the foundation for everything we do.”
