Ellen Lucey guides sponsors through the 90 NCAA championships that provide marketing opportunities.NCAA
Ellen Lucey spent more than a decade managing sports sponsorships at Coca-Cola, an NCAA corporate champion, so she brought a highly valued brand-side perspective when she joined the NCAA earlier this year. The first challenge, however, was remembering her new title: director of championships and alliances, corporate relations, marketing and branding. “My old boss said, ‘That’s not a title, that’s a job description,’” she said with a laugh. Aside from the mouthful of a title, Lucey, a former swimmer at Indiana University, was energized by the idea of working in a field that served her so well. “Being an athlete … set me up and set me apart,” she said. “Giving back to that mission is a dream come true.”
■ On the relationship between the NCAA and multimedia partners Turner and CBS: My team is talking to Katy Mollica (Turner) and Devron Edwards (CBS) every day. They’re out there selling and talking media; we’re out there executing the partnership to activate what the brands have purchased. We do a lot of things together. We just had a team-building event in Minneapolis where we learned how to curl.
■ Why the NCAA?: I spent 22 years in Atlanta on the corporate side. When I was looking for something new, I was very interested in getting on the property side. This has been a great accomplishment and very humbling to get here. … I have been able to bring the perspective of the corporate partner; I can provide insight into what they’re thinking and how they work. Every day, it’s a little bit of an education.
■ On the perspective from the brand side: Every once in a while, we might make a small, value-in-kind request from a partner to send us some product. But at Coke, depending on where it was, the bottler is not interested in delivering 10 cases to this little party when they’re delivering thousands and thousands of cases every day. It’s just one of those things you’d think would be easy and it’s just not. It’s easier to just go buy the product. But you don’t think about that if you haven’t been on the other side.
■ On the growth of NCAA partnerships beyond basketball: The awesome part of these deals is that each partner can come in and find different and unique opportunities within these 90 championships so they can leverage their business. Each championship is a different opportunity. One example is that we had a much higher demand for wrestling tickets than I would have imagined. One partner wanted several more tickets and we had run out. There just weren’t any more. Those are good problems to have.
■ On working with LeBron James when she was at Coca-Cola: One of my favorite things we did with Powerade was put LeBron into the world of DC Comics. LeBron’s a very big Batman fan so we made his superhero character sort of like Batman. In addition to that, to gain some reach, I took LeBron to Bristol, Tenn., for a NASCAR race. He was like, “Where are we going?” And we put LeBron’s superhero on Bobby Labonte’s car for that race. He had a great time; when I first told him about it, he wasn’t too sure.
