Menu
Marketing and Sponsorship

StubHub Looks To Capitalize On Success Of Ticket Oak Campaign With New Viral Videos

StubHub has found success with its Ticket Oak marketing campaign, “especially in social media,” and to "take advantage of that, the brand is releasing a series of viral videos starring the Ticket Oak," according to Mallory Russell of AD AGE. The first video "will be released this month and another will air in December.” StubHub CMO Ray Elias in an interview spoke about the Ticket Oak campaign, and how the secondary market ticketing company "plans to better serve its audience." The following is an excerpt from the Q&A:

Q: Why did you decide to use the Ticket Oak as your central character? What was the strategy behind that?
Elias: Contrary to the way it's been written about, we don't view it as a mascot, per se. … We took a risk with that creative. And we thought it was either going to be really funny and catchy or ... (not). So we took the risk and we have seen tremendous growth as a result. … Historically, we've been very measurement focused, direct response focused. There's been a lot of pent-up demand out there, and it was easy to grow the business in that way. And now that we're the size that we are it's really about reaching the mass market. We wanted a single iconic creative that delivered our core message at this point, which has gone from functional -- what is StubHub and where you want to sit -- to the emotional aspects: access, choice, convenience, lots of selection and tickets growing on trees.

Q: How has the Ticket Oak affected the business?
Elias: Tremendous success. The traffic growth has been 40% year over year. We're a company that's seeing 15 million uniques a month. Brand awareness has gone up something like 20% as a result of these campaigns. Marketing at StubHub is the revenue driving function, so we really manage marketing based on revenue and top-line growth. So as the business has continued to grow and flourish over the years so has our marketing investment. ... This was really to refresh and extend the shelf life. We're buying more media that we did in the spring around this.

Q: Can you talk about what new technology you are working on and how that might change the way you market?
Elias: Most people don't go to something because they don't know about it. So people have started to use StubHub beyond just buying tickets. They're really using it to discover events now as well. And I would say that our experience is being tuned to support that to be very, very useful to fans as a discovery tool. We're in a great position because we care about all live events all the time (ADAGE.com, 10/23).

SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 25, 2024

NFL meeting preview; MLB's opening week ad effort and remembering Peter Angelos.

Big Get Jay Wright, March Madness is upon us and ESPN locks up CFP

On this week’s pod, our Big Get is CBS Sports college basketball analyst Jay Wright. The NCAA Championship-winning coach shares his insight with SBJ’s Austin Karp on key hoops issues and why being well dressed is an important part of his success. Also on the show, Poynter Institute senior writer Tom Jones shares who he has up and who is down in sports media. Later, SBJ’s Ben Portnoy talks the latest on ESPN’s CFP extension and who CBS, TNT Sports and ESPN need to make deep runs in the men’s and women's NCAA basketball tournaments.

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

Shareable URL copied to clipboard!

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2012/10/24/Marketing-and-Sponsorship/StubHub.aspx

Sorry, something went wrong with the copy but here is the link for you.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2012/10/24/Marketing-and-Sponsorship/StubHub.aspx

CLOSE