Corporate marketers connect with youth sports
Globe Staff
BEVERLY -- When parents and baseball fans arrived at the state's Little League championship here on Sunday, they were met at the gate with a friendly welcome: Members of two Beverly baseball teams, ages 10 to 12, handed out baseballs imprinted with the Bank of America logo, packaged with peanuts and Cracker Jacks.
''Switch to Bank of America," one of the boys yelled.
''It's a better bank for better people," another chimed in.
Bank of America Corp., which last year signed a deal with Little League Baseball, Inc., to become its official bank, one of a growing number of large national companies that see a big payoff from marketing to children's sports teams. After years of haphazard and disjointed efforts, mostly by tiny local businesses, to penetrate youth sports, big national corporations, with their multimillion-dollar marketing budgets, increasingly are horning in on the action. Little League Baseball now has 15 national sponsors, up from about eight a decade ago.
These companies, which include Choice Hotels International Inc., Bryant Heating and Cooling Inc., and the makers of Snickers and Capri Sun Sport, have devised highly coordinated and aggressive national marketing plans to push their messages down to the local level.
The national sponsors do not get free rein: sensitive to local loyalties, Little League does not allow national sponsors to post signs at regular-season games, and there is no right to logos on team jerseys. Instead, the sponsors have found other ways to get their messages across, largely through contests, mass mailings of discounts, and giveaways of free equipment with the company name. Bryant, for example, provides teams with bags, water coolers, and scorebooks with the Bryant logo on them; some of its dealers park their trucks outside Little League fields and look for leads to sell air conditioners.
With Little League sponsorships, the giant companies hope to tap into parents' fierce loyalty toward their children's sports teams. And in an era in which some consumers criticize national chains as aloof, marketers want their sponsorships of children's sports to brand them as more connected to the communities they serve.
''People care very deeply about the Red Sox and the Patriots, but the deepest affinity in existence is for their kids' games," said Bryant McBride, group vice president of team and youth sports at Active Marketing Group, which is implementing many of the national companies' youth sports marketing programs.
The big corporate marketing efforts, at first only visible during the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa., now are popping up at state and regional tournaments. The companies' next goal is to reach local Little League coaches, parents and fans during the regular season: Corporate representatives already have contacted a small number of leagues with all manner of promotions.
In Beverly, moments after winning the state's Little League championship and advancing to the next round of competition in Bristol, Conn., members of the Dudley Little League team threw their baseball hats in the air, whooping for joy and surrounded by their parents. Before the coaches and parents could leave the field, the tournament's director called them over and handed out a pack of flyers from Choice Hotels, which operates the Comfort Inn and Econo Lodge chains, advertising a 15 percent discount for Little League teams.
''On the road to a championship, there is always a Choice hotel," said the flyer, which listed a phone number for parents to call to book their rooms.
Bank of America, another sponsor at the Beverly tournament, is active during the regular season, too: It holds hitting contests across the country, including Newton and Sharon, and it sends out scores of volunteers to handle everything from fixing ballparks to working concession stands. Local winners advanced through the tournament for the right to compete at Fenway Park, where this year's champions -- a team from West Roxbury -- received luxury-box seats to a Red Sox game.
''This is not about selling more savings accounts for the kids," said Rick Parsons, an executive vice president. ''It's about building a long-term rapport that will carry over from children to their families."
Several of the other companies are targeting leagues' concession stands, where they hope to persuade managers to stock their candy bars and drinks for sale at games. McBride's firm has obtained the e-mail addresses of thousands of concession managers in Little League baseball, and he offers them incentives to buy everything from Snickers bars to Upper Deck playing cards. Capri Sun Sport mailed ''hydration brochures" to local league officials boasting that Capri Sun Sport, a flavored drink, hydrates kids better than water, along with a how-to kit to aid concession managers in running a snack bar. Sunkist Growers Inc., the citrus supplier, has asked teams to take a photo of themselves with their ''Sunkist Smile" -- a smile with a Sunkist orange wedge in every team member's mouth -- and write a brief essay in order to win a field makeover paid for by the company.
In the town of Hanson in southeastern Massachusetts, companies sent the Little League several boxes of freebies, including an Upper Deck clipboard, which now holds a copy of the concessions menu. Its snack bar refrigerator and microwave are decorated in Choice Hotels magnets in the shape of baseballs.
The snack bar first got a free shipment of Capri Sun Sport to sell to thirsty customers after the league's treasurer, Don Ford, received a call from a company representative. He doesn't know how Capri Sun got his number or knew of his position with the league. But Ford agreed that the league's snack bar would stock the drink. For Capri Sun, it was an opportunity to let a core audience sample its wares; for Ford, the free product meant more concession-stand profits.
At one game in the spring, Ryan Cadogan, 14, paid 75 cents to buy a pouch of the Orange Edge flavor of Capri Sun Sport. It was not as good as Gatorade, he said, but it ran a close second. ''It's very orangy," he said.
For companies successful in their marketing efforts, the payoff could be significant. McBride estimates that there are 15,000 concession stands across all youth sports, which each spend about $20,000 per year on pizza, candy, and drinks -- a potential $300 million market.
But the keeping up with the scores of ever-changing volunteers who run local leagues can be difficult for the home offices of big national firms. Since each league runs its concession stands and business operations separately, there are no centralized decision-makers. And even if companies reach the right person, there is no guarantee of a sale.
AT&T Wireless Services Inc. last year promised to make a donation to the league of their choice to Little League families who signed up for wireless service with AT&T, but the company discontinued the promotion after its merger with Cingular Wireless last year. The idea was good, company officials said, but selling the wireless plans proved harder than they expected.
''It can be resource-intensive, no question," said Ian Hall, Cingular's senior manager of sponsorship. ''You really need to get people jazzed up about the program so that the package gets passed down."
Cingular remains a sponsor of Little League, but will look for other ways to show its sponsorship, he said.
Little League officials say they have tried to help their national corporate sponsors by letting companies use their e-mail lists to send product offers to 400,000 league volunteers.
Local sponsors still have a place amid the national advertisers. As they have for decades, local businesses still sponsor local teams. In Hanson, Done Right Construction Services and Don's Barber Shop get signs on the side of the fields.
League officials also said they are watching carefully to prevent too much corporate influence on the game.
''Little League is very guarded against any company that shows any desire to overcommercialize or exploit the children in the name of its products," said Christopher D. Downs, a Little League spokesman.
Despite the restrictions, there are signs of success for the companies. Members of the Dudley Little League team, the new state champions, signed autographs on their new Bank of America baseballs for fans and other players after the game, virtually guaranteeing those balls will be kept for years. And when the team travels to the next round of play in Connecticut, supporters likely will stay at Choice Hotels, said assistant coach, Bobbi-Jo Anderson.
''They're a Little League sponsor, after all," she said.
Sasha Talcott can be reached at stalcott@globe.com.
