Marketing Mid-Recession Mega Contests

mike lewis

• June 03 2009
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• 3 comments

Alli, The Alliance of Action Sports, has had a busy six months of existence. Formerly AST, the contest promotion mega company owned by NBC and MTV, has hosted its first Winter Dew Tour, expanded its amateur Free Flow Tour, signed Gatorade as the title sponsor, created a partnership with the Maloof Money Cup, and is gearing up for the Summer Dew Tour.

Accomplishments aside, Alli has not been immune to sponsorship problems plaguing action sports events. In March, the Dew Tour announced it was canceling its Baltimore and Cleveland stops after those events’ sponsors, Right Guard and Panasonic, pulled out on their extreme alliance with Alli.

Instead, Alli announced a five-stop tour including a skate specific stop in Boston in late July in conjunction with the International Skate Federation (ISF) World Championships. The tour will then continue on to Portland, OR, Salt Lake City, and Orlando, where it will feature BMX, skateboarding, and freestyle motocross.

We caught up with Alli Director of Marketing BJ Carretta to find out how all these changes are affecting the marketing game plan.

What have been some of the biggest challenges for promoting the new format on the skate side?

There haven’t been too many challenges. In partnering with the ISF, it’s definitely going to be a broader group of athletes. We’re excited about having a more global presence. The response has been extremely positive from the industry and consumers to host an event of this nature and scale in Boston.

Do you think partnering with ISF will add some legitimacy for the riders?

I hope so. As an organization, we support what they’re trying to do. Gary’s group is fantastic to work with and getting skateboarding on a global level is what we’re trying to do.

Are you working with any local companies or shops to promote it?

We’re definitely going to be. We haven’t really dug too deep into that yet, but from a grassroots perspective we do have a pretty deep and detailed plan. We’re working on a couple fun programs where we highlight the core shops in the community and do some fun things with them to help bring kids out.

The Free Flow Tour is also coming through Taunton, Massachusetts July 11 so we’ll be doing some fun stuff around Dew Tour for that.

How large of a role do grassroots promotions play for you guys?

It’s pretty big. We try to get out to as many parks and shops as we can. Support from them is huge for us on multiple levels. We do radio and TV promotion, but we want to make sure that our event is for the kids and for boarders and riders - keep it as pure as we can.

Can you give an example of a campaign with a shop that has been particular effective?

In Salt Lake City we partner pretty heavily with Fifty Fifty. We’ve done flat land demos in the parking lot. We’ve had Bar-B-Ques. Last year, in every market we did a block party at a local park. In Baltimore it was Charm City Skate Park, we get a bunch of product and host things for the kids, swag ‘em up, get ‘em excited about it, try and get some pros out there. It’s very simple stuff, but it gets the kids excited about the event.

How has it been working with Gatorade on the Free Flow Tour?

It has been really good. They have a very, very smart group over there. Their marketing team is very dialed; they know what they want to do. They’re only going to help us grow the am space. We couldn’t ask for a better partner than Gatorade. They have such deep sports experience and they know how to apply their knowledge to the space they’re working in.

Why are you guys putting so many resources into the amateur contest circuit?

We have to keep expanding where it begins, and it begins with the kids. There’s the recent stat that skateboarding has been the fastest growing sport in the U.S. over the past five years, and it’s important for us to be a part of that. Competitions are competitions, but they’re becoming more prevalent and it’s important that we maintain the nature of what these sports are founded on as much as we can and still give these kids the best outlets to showcase their skills, while having fun with it. The more we can do in the am space, the more we can get people involved. Even if they don’t become pros, they get involved in the culture, and the goal is just to grow the whole space, culture, and the sports.

Are you going to be doing a Free Flow Tour for snowboarding?

Yeah, this year we launched the Gatorade Free Flow Tour for summer and winter.

You’re starting that this winter?

Yeah, we’re kicking that off January 2010. It will be all the same disciplines as the Dew Tour. We’re going to have some East Coast events, one or two Midwest, Rockies, and then West Coast. Then the finals will happen at the Toyota Challenge at Northstar-at-Tahoe. The overall winner gets placement into the next year’s Winter Dew tour.

Do you have those locations lined up?

We’re still working on confirming all the resorts other than the finals.

Have you nailed down locations for the Winter Dew Tour?

We have not.

Alli is also funneling its might into promoting the Dew Tour with a blitz of multimedia promotion, including a series of “Lights” advertisements. According to Robyn Trani, director brand marketing & communications, the “goal is to elevate the riders/athletes to superstar status and convey how epic the competitions are. By using a music video sensibility it brings the riders’ abilities, tricks & talents to life in front of rockstar stage lighting. It conveys bigness and anticipation around the competitions. That’s why we had Warren Fischer of r electro-indie pop band Fischerspooner direct the spots.”

How much different was it getting into the winter scene than the summer?

It was different right off the bat. This was the first time we had female only events. Then there was marketing to a different group of consumers. But I think the overall media penetration of winter, because of the Olympics, is a little more widespread than in skateboarding, and when you go to a resort to do an event, it’s already crowded, so there’s already a built in audience.

How was the acceptance from endemic snow companies?

It was really positive. I think when the Dew Tour started we had to prove ourselves within the community. Whereas when we launched winter, we already had four years of summer, so they kind of knew what to expect.

Skaters are definitely wary of big contests, which probably made it a little harder originally?

A little bit (laughing). They are, but we continue to work to improve. Everything we do, the athletes are involved. We always strive to get input from them on everything from course designs, to comp formats, and all sorts of things like that. We don’t want to be seen as someone coming in and dictating what the event is. It’s very important athletes are involved in the process and shaping the future of competition.