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| The Marketing Arm CEO Ray Clark |
RAY CLARK is CEO of The Marketing Arm, the entertainment, music and sports marketing services agency he founded in ‘93 and sold in ‘99 to Omnicom. Ranked No. 6 by PROMO magazine on its list of the top 100 promotional agencies, The Marketing Arm manages more than $200M annually in client programs via relationships with such industry titans as DDB, TBWA/Chiat/Day and BBDO and through its four business units: Millsport (sponsorship and sports consulting), USM&P (events), Davie-Brown (music and entertainment) and ipsh! (wireless marketing). Clark spoke recently with SportsBusiness Journal
New York bureau chief
Jerry Kavanagh.
| FAVORITES |
| Piece of music: LENNY KRAVITZ’ Greatest Hits. |
| Vacation spot: Cabo with the fellas, Laguna Beach with the family. |
| Quote: “You’re used to what you’re used to.” I make up a lot of dumb quotes, and that’s one of the ones I use the most. |
| Sporting event: Any sport I get to play. People would be surprised that I’m not that big a sports fan as a viewer. |
| Movie: “Old School.” |
| Last book read: The KURT COBAIN Journals and BILL CLINTON’s “My Life.” |
| Pet peeve: People who focus on the negative and people who think small. |
| Athlete you most enjoy watching: ROGER FEDERER. |
| Basic business philosophy: Create a vision, have a plan, work your plan, evaluate and adjust, work your plan even harder. |
| Best career decision: Quitting General Mills at age 22 to follow a dream in sports marketing and, in the last ten years, selling the company to Omnicom. |
| Biggest challenge: Convincing corporate decision-makers to take smart, calculated risks. |
Q: EDWIN LAND, a physicist and the inventor of Polaroid photography, said, “Marketing is what you do when your product is no good.” Does that mean that a good product needs no marketing?
Clark: That’s like saying nurturing and cultivating are not necessary for a small child if the child is smart. To me, a brand is more like a living organism. It has a life of its own and has to be nurtured and cultivated on a daily basis.
Q: You once said that you could foresee a world in which traditional advertising would become increasingly irrelevant, where agencies less wedded to traditional marketing would be the ones that would prosper. Has that premonition proved to be true?
Clark: It’s been the model for our agency, and in two years we’ve gone from 55 employees to 700. That’s because marketers realize the big ideas are being launched off emotional platforms. And those platforms (sports, music, television, film, gaming) are where The Marketing Arm plays.
Q: Does marketing appeal more to emotions than to intelligence?
Clark: I don’t think there’s a clear difference between the two; I don’t think the two are opposites. In order to (1) break through the clutter of over 2500 marketing messages a day that are bombed on new consumers and (2) change consumer behavior, marketers [must] realize that they will have to play to a consumer’s existing affinities or emotions.
Q: Does emotion play a big role in marketing?
Clark: It does. And I think that marketers are realizing that more and more. Unless you play to the consumer’s existing affinities and emotions, then you have very little chance of breaking through the clutter, and you have even less chance of changing consumer behavior.
Q: On the sponsorship of college football bowl games, you said: “It’s not enough to simply sign on as a sponsor. Sponsors need to activate their sponsorships in creative ways that will actually change consumer attitudes and behavior.” That’s pretty ambitious. What sponsorships have been able to change consumer attitudes and behavior?
Clark: Nokia had an incredible run with the Sugar Bowl whereby it saw, year over year, impressive results that solidified that people positively changed their opinion of Nokia as a company and of its products because it was affiliated with the Sugar Bowl. And it was not just because it sponsored the game; it was because of all the things it did around the game: consumer contests, hospitality, signage -- a combination of a lot of powerful things.
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| Nokia Drops Sugar Bowl Sponsorship
Despite Successful Ten-Year Run |
Q: And now Nokia has dropped that sponsorship.
Clark: Well, maybe they figured out that ten years is enough.
Q: DAVID OGILVY said, “I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support rather than illumination.” Is there an over-reliance on statistics in marketing?
Clark: I believe there is an over-reliance on research at corporate marketing departments. Most corporate decision-makers are risk-averse, and numbers give them the confidence to take some risks when they potentially may be wrong. Mass-media decisions, or more general marketing decisions, may be overly analyzed. However, I would argue that most sports marketing decisions are based on very little research and are overly instinctive or are due to the preference of the corporate decision-maker.
Q: You said, “League and team sponsorships are a bit stale and so are promotional ideas around them.” What’s the freshest idea in sponsorships?
Clark: I’m most intrigued and interested in brands developing their own content and in an authentic way customizing that content to a segmented consumer group.
Q: What does that mean?
Clark: It means developing customized television, film, music or sports, where they own it versus simply signing on to be one of a laundry list of league sponsors.
Q: Give me an example of a brand that has done that well.
Clark: Mountain Dew recently produced a snowboarding film that was incredibly well-produced and completely authentic to a core consumer group in a feature film called “First Descent.”
Q: Is that the ultimate in product placement?
Clark: I don’t know about that, but it’s a great way to appeal to a core consumer.
Q: Are there any marketing ideas that have outlived their usefulness?
Clark: I think that mass marketing in general is more and more a stale idea.
Q: Speaking of stale, the whole fixation on, or fascination with, Super Bowl ads seems so trite. Is imagination dead? Where is the creativity?
Clark: The platform of the Super Bowl has become so large, traditional 30-second commercials are having difficulty living up to it. I think you’ll start seeing branded messaging that does not look like 30-second commercials become the breakout messaging during future Super Bowls.
Q: The Washington Post last month cited unnamed marketing experts who said that the ‘06 Winter Games represent a new challenge in that “U.S. athletes must be marketed at a time when television ratings are falling, corporate marketing strategies are shifting and the battle for Olympic-related advertising is increasingly competitive.” How do you meet that challenge?
Clark: The bottom line is, winter Olympic athletes are on an infrequent stage and they have a tiny window in which to showcase both personality and winning. So, corporate marketers are going to be more resistant to winter Olympians than ever before because there are so many other alternatives that potentially could be more powerful due to frequency and success. Would you rather work with LEBRON JAMES or with the no-name luge medalist? I’d pick LeBron James if the audience was right.
Q: Who’s the next big marketable star: SHAUN WHITE? REGGIE BUSH? VINCE YOUNG? CHRIS PAUL?
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| Clark Feels Federer Could Be
Greatest Tennis Player Of All-Time |
Clark: I’m a tennis fan, so I think Roger Federer is a huge opportunity for the right company. It won’t surprise me at all if he becomes the all-time greatest tennis payer.
Q: You said of next year’s NHL All-Star Game moving from the weekend to midweek, “I would cater to fans first, the corporate audience second, because fan interest is what drives the corporate interest.” Has the league lost sight of that?
Clark: In that particular case, I believe the league has lost sight of that.
Q: Is there a classic marketing campaign that you admire or wish you had participated in?
Clark: Like a lot of people, I admire most of what brands like Nike and Gatorade have done over an extended period of time. But recently I’m most impressed with what the new AT&T has done.
Q: What’s impressive about it?
Clark: AT&T succinctly told the story of two companies with different pedigrees coming together for the greater good of the consumer.
Q: What’s a marketing challenge -- in any area (sports, business, politics, entertainment) -- that you would be eager to accept?
Clark: I’d like to restructure every major element of how the major professional leagues operate, from compensation systems to fan influence to rules to how the leagues are marketed.
Q: The Yankees’ interlocking NY logo was judged recently to be the best of the 20th century. What makes it, or any logo, so memorable?
Clark: It’s not just design. It’s also about frequency and the brand attributes that live on a daily basis for the brand. In the case of the Yankees, they’re seen the most frequently of any other sports logo, and they’ve been seen winning more so than any other logo. Visibility and success. It’s no surprise that it received that rating.
Q: What brands need a fresh look?
Clark: I think the opportunity and challenge in front of Wal-Mart is extremely interesting. And more specifically in sports, [MLB], I believe, will face more challenges over the next ten years than any of the other major sports.
Q: Why MLB?
Clark: The way our society behaves is in contrast with how professional baseball is consumed. And, therefore, they have a problem with how it’s televised, the slowness of the game, and the general interests of a new generation.
Q: Why do consumers believe that a product is good simply because a famous athlete or a popular entertainer says so?
Clark: I think what celebrities do best is they get your attention and they can lend credibility to a message in certain cases. Again, it’s about breaking through the clutter. If a commercial comes on with scale talent vs. celebrity talent, you’re more inclined to lean just a little bit forward when the celebrity talent is in the commercial. It’s a proven fact, and I still believe in it.
