W
hen Meredith Starkey was throwing T-shirts into the crowd as a student at Clemson on behalf of sponsors in the late 1990s, she thought it might be the beginning of a career. Today, with fans at venues looking down at their phones as much as they are looking up at the game, Starkey remains in the center of the action.
Wireless brands are becoming as endemic to sports as T-shirts and Gatorade.
Meredith Starkey
T-MOBILE
“It’s really exciting to be inside of that evolution,” said Starkey, who worked in marketing at Motorola for three years before joining T-Mobile in 2009.
T-Mobile’s complex MLB league rights deal, announced last year, took more than a year to negotiate, and both sides gave Starkey kudos for skillfully navigating the political minefields that came with the deal. With the sponsorship now firmly in place, Starkey, the company’s director of sponsorships and events, counts T-Mobile’s on-the-ground marketing at this year’s MLB All-Star Game in Minneapolis as among its best efforts.
T-Mobile is outspent profoundly by huge competitors Verizon and AT&T, so for Starkey and T-Mobile, it’s all about timing.
“We look for key moments and try to own them to really break through,” Starkey said. “When you have the right strategy and focus on execution, sponsorship and event marketing can have an incredible impact.”
— Terry Lefton
