Executives who do business with the NBA will head to All-Star Weekend in New Orleans armed with laptops, BlackBerrys, cell phones and one other tool of the trade: a pair of cotton work gloves. That last item comes courtesy of the NBA, which is pushing its sponsors to participate in an unprecedented level of community service wrapped around the league’s biggest event.
While the NBA has long trumpeted its community service mission, the league’s business partners increasingly are buying into the value of cause-related marketing programs. For the first time, all 20 of the NBA’s corporate partners, as well as eight promotional partners or licensees, will be engaged in one place doing some type of community service this weekend in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans during All-Star Weekend.
The league and its sponsors will work on 10 projects involving five community partners during the NBA’s first Day of Service, planned for Friday. The projects include building houses, playgrounds and classrooms in struggling New Orleans neighborhoods.
Certainly there is a public relations benefit to the NBA’s community service focus. This is a league that has battled a player image problem and, more recently, a gambling scandal involving a referee. But the NBA’s increased aggressive community service involvement is drawing more support among sponsors who recognize the value to their brands of cause-related marketing efforts.
“Our partners understand that cause-related marketing is part of our DNA,” said Mark Tatum, senior vice president of marketing partnerships for the NBA. “From our initial conversations, we talk about social responsibility so our partners know from the beginning that it will be a part of it. It’s a collaborative process and it demonstrates their commitment and helps them meet a lot of their objectives.”
The NBA, like other leagues, has always attached a charitable arm to its business. The NFL has a longstanding and highly promoted relationship with United Way, while the PGA Tour raises millions of dollars for designated charities at each local tour stop. But ever since David Stern retooled the NBA’s community service approach in 2005 with his NBA Cares initiative, the league has been making deeper inroads into getting its business partners involved on an integrated, leaguewide basis.
Previous efforts, like the NBA’s “Read to Achieve” and “Basketball Without Borders” programs, were created by the NBA, but league executives soon grew frustrated by the lack of engagement among league partners. As a result, the league rolled out NBA Cares, which also allows for the league to develop and pay for other community service programs as it sees fit.
“It was the culmination of a lot of things, and we felt we needed a better umbrella to capture what we were doing while making a commitment to do more and engage our partners more aggressively,” said Kathy Behrens, senior vice president for community and player programs for the NBA. “We have done that, but we are not done.”
While support of its NBA Cares initiative among league partners is not mandatory, it is expected. The NBA last July called together all of its partners and held a rare sponsorship forum to outline its community service plans not just for New Orleans, but for the 2007-08 season. After hearing the league’s detailed plans, every partner agreed to join in the New Orleans project.
“We don’t bring anyone kicking and screaming into it,” Behrens said. “But people understand that it is an obligation of the private sector and that we take it seriously.”
While no league partner balked at participating, sponsors chose their level of participation.
NBA executives, team officials and players
have already put plenty of sweat equity into
the NBA Cares initiative through projects
for Habitat for Humanity and other charities.
“What is good for the league is generally good for its partners,” said Jeff Urban, senior vice president of sports marketing for Gatorade, adding that the spend on cause-related marketing does not take away from any other marketing initiatives.
On the brand side, it’s not just the notion of feel-good community service that is driving participation. Brand extension is the backbone of a sponsor’s involvement with the NBA’s social programs. While New Orleans presents an obvious community service opportunity for the league and its sponsors, companies are also looking for more leaguewide integrated community service programs.
For example, Toyota this year created its “Project Rebound” program, which rebuilds basketball courts and playgrounds in 15 NBA cities, including New Orleans. While the company takes value from giving back to local communities, it also sees the program as a way to build grassroots brand awareness while involving local dealerships.
“In almost all of our initiatives there is some sort of cause-related marketing component,” said Chad Harp, a Toyota spokesman. “We are doing much more with the NBA because it’s where we get our most bang for our buck. Toyota vehicles don’t directly tie into the NBA, but they have a network that allows us to tap into local levels and we can work the program all the way down from corporate to local dealerships. The push is to make it authentic.”
The push to “make it authentic” represents one of the big risks in cause-related marketing programs.
“All that glitters is not gold,” said Greg Johnson, executive director of the Sports Philanthropy Project, which has worked with the NBA and other leagues in creating community service programs. “You don’t get a positive response just because you are doing something philanthropic. There has to be credibility and a strategic nature to the programs. You don’t want to be superficial. You can build a basketball court in a city and leave it there with your logo, but partners have to insist that there be quality control or it can blow up in their faces.”
One of the keys to the NBA’s strategy is that league officials have created a turnkey structure that allows partners to engage in cause-related marketing on both the team and league level, or even through the NBA’s other assets, like the WNBA and the NBA Development League. The NBA uses staff and resources from its community development department and its events department to execute a sponsor’s community service program.
“There is not a company that isn’t thinking about social responsibility, and what our partners have said to us is that they want a turnkey program that can make it more relevant,” Tatum said. “There are programs that we have and there are programs our partners have. It is one thing for a company to go out with their own program, but there is another level when they do it with us, or with our players.”
It’s the league’s ability to integrate its programs with its sponsors that is driving its cause-related marketing, experts said.
“When it comes to cause-related marketing, a company just can’t have a media buy or signage,” said Randy Bernstein, president of Premier Partnerships, which was retained by the NBA to help the New Orleans Hornets create $1 million sponsorship team deals that also include community service components. “The advantage is that a company can be seen as a corporate citizen participating in community growth. But the effort has to be backed by actions, and that there is the right intention.”
