E
arlier this year, Christine Brown pulled off the reverse of the typical sponsor summit, where a league gathers executives from the companies that sponsor it. Brown, who heads up sponsorship marketing at NRG Energy, brought representatives from seven of the eight NFL teams that it sponsors and six of the eight NFL players it has deals with to New York to learn more about the company through a program headlined by CEO David Crane, who laid out the energy provider’s vision for its future.
Christine Brown
NRG ENERGY
“We need their help to not only build our brand, but also to drive our business,” Brown said. “It was fruitful in motivating them; getting our teams to get more deeply engaged and think about driving our business.”
Brown joined NRG in 2012 after 13 years at Octagon, where she rose to vice president of the agency’s consulting division. The company used solar installations at NFL stadiums to sign up customers and stadium advertising for branding, but it hadn’t figured out how to use those assets to tell its story. In the last year, NRG ramped up its visibility, adding endorsements from players and personal services deals with ESPN’s Mike Golic and Mike Greenberg to help bring the sponsorships to life.
“We had all these solar installations … but we didn’t want to be just seen as a solar company, because we’re so much more,” Brown said. “As we started defining our vision for a clean energy future and how important it is to demonstrate what’s possible, we took the handcuffs off, and now we’re able to use the installations as proof of our vision.”
— Bill King
