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[Editor's Note: After our meeting with the Sharks, the caravan left for Redwood City, CA where we visited EA Sports Headquarters. As an employer of many Warsaw alumni, we were able to have a beneficial talk both on EA's business with COO Peter Moore but also a general conversation with Warsaw grads working at EA and Sony on how to attack our summer internship applications. In addition, we were able to learn more about the late Jim Warsaw from those who knew him. We want to thank EA and Sony for a great visit; I will hand it off to our resident gamer, Gary Wang, to detail the specifics. - MVW]
On Thursday afternoon, our class arrived at the Electronic Arts headquarters to meet with Warsaw alums and EA Sport’s Chief Operating Officer, Peter Moore. Moore previously was the Corporate Vice-President of Microsoft‘s Interactive Entertainment Business division, overseeing the Xbox and Xbox 360 game consoles. For avid gamers such as myself, it was truly a dream come true to meet such a prominent figure in the gaming world.
EA Sports develops sport juggernaut franchises Madden, FIFA, Tiger Woods PGA Tour; and accounts for 35-40% of all of EA’s profit. While EA is widely known for their sports games, other titles such as Call of Duty and Battlefield have been crucial in progressing competitive gaming culture to where it is today. Naturally, questions pertaining to the future of gaming culture were asked.
Moore stated that the future of gaming, especially with EA, will focus on delivering content digitally to the consumer. In fact, digital entertainment is the area where EA is currently the most aggressive. To illustrate, EA’s FIFA and Madden franchise are offered on 12 different gaming platforms from consoles to mobile applications. In the future, there will be no need for disks, and consumers could have the opportunity to purchase games for a fraction of what it costs today.
If that holds true, how would EA make money? Moore discussed EA’s AEM strategy, or Acquire, Engage, Monetize. Meaning, games would essentially be free, or “Freemium,” and EA would make money by monetizing in game extras. For example, in Tiger Woods PGA Tour, a gamer can play $5 for a Nike Club that would give their character +5 in swing power.
Additionally, Moore talked about the rise of competitive gaming leagues and how EA will monetize that area. With the rise of leagues such as Major League Gaming, video games are increasingly being considered a sport. Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets, stated at this year’s MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference that he believes that video games will be the world’s number one sport in the future. Moore agrees and told our class that the future of EA competitive gaming will be to provide a platform for gamers to compete against each other for monetary benefits. Personally, as an avid Madden player, I would welcome the extra cash in my pocket. Check out the trailer for the new Madden ’13 below, can’t wait!
Gary Wang
After leaving Visa, the group piled into our vans and headed to the HP Pavilion in San Jose to meet with Malcolm Bordelon, Executive Vice President of Business Operations for Sharks Sports and Entertainment. Malcolm has worked for the organization for 17 years and it was a privilege to get to speak with him for an hour and a half.
The conversation centered around the NHL franchise but we also learned about the other aspects of the business. Malcolm brought up the importance and growth of social media as a tool to establish customer touch points with fans. This medium has allowed the Sharks to increase fan affinity in a way that resulted in 100 percent capacity for home games this past season (according to Sports Business Journal). Malcolm even told us about the Sharks’ policy for fans who unsubscribe from team emails. When people unsubscribe, the Sharks organization will call them and thank them for their time; this lets the fans know that they care and often results in resubscribing to the emails. It has also given the Sharks the ability to address complaints from fans through social media and repair relationships before they are permanently damaged.
The conversation ended with in-depth discussion on dynamic and variable pricing techniques and also the Sharks’ logo re-branding. Malcolm brought in all of the uniforms and talked about the theory behind the design and the placement of logos on jerseys that are easily visible on television broadcasts. The amount of planning and thought that went into those jerseys was impressive. My favorite jersey was the all black one below.
We want to thank Malcolm for taking the time to host the program, it was an informational and enjoyable session. – Matt Van Wyen
Last week, the University of Oregon hosted Guy Kawasaki on campus. Kawasaki is the former chief evangelist for Apple, founding partner of Garage Technology Ventures, co-founder of Alltop.com, and the author of over 10 books. Students who have taken Andrew Nelson‘s Recognizing Entrepreneurial Opportunities class know Kawasaki from the series of video clips on the “art of the start” that we viewed throughout the term. For anybody interested in starting up an entrepreneurial venture, these videos are must watch material. Several Oregon MBA students were in attendance to hear Kawasaki’s presentation on Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions. His premise is that enchantment empowers us to influence and inspire others in positive ways. He broke it down to 10 key points:
- Achieve Likability… If you want to be liked, smile. Avoid the “Pan-Am” smile and make a Duchenne smile. Accept others and default to yes instead of no.
- Achieve Trustworthiness… Trust others to gain their trust. Look at companies like Amazon, Zappos, and Nordstroms. They trust their customers and their customers trust them.
- Perfect… Continually perfect your product or service. It’s easier to enchant people with great stuff. Great products are DICEE. Deep, Intelligent, Complete, Empowering, Elegant.
- Launch… The key to launching: tell a great story. Plant many seeds. In the era of social media, nobody’s are the new somebody’s. Use salient points to describe your product, service, or cause.
- Overcome… To overcome resistance, provide social proof. Use a dataset to change a mindset. Enchant the influencers and the rest will follow.
- Endure… Build an ecosystem around your product, service, or cause. Invoke reciprocation. Don’t rely on money, rely on the relationships you have and the loyalty of your customers.
- Present… You have to be a good presenter. Customize your introduction. Sell your dream. The Guy Kawasaki power point rule: 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point fonts.
- Use Technology… Now is the time to enchant people with technology. It’s fast, free, and ubiquitous… a marketing trifecta! To be effective on social media you must provide value. Social media value comes in three forms: information, insights, assistance.
- Enchant Up… To enchant your boss, drop everything else when they need something, even if it’s not important or fair. Prototype fast, it’s tangible proof that you dropped everything else and allows time to fix things early to deliver a better end result. Finally, deliver bad news early.
- Enchant Down… It’s a given that you need to pay people who work for you but you also need to provide a MAP: mastery, autonomy, purpose. Empower action. When the situation calls for it, suck it up and do the dirty job yourself.
It was an incredibly interesting and engaging presentation. Kawasaki is a charismatic speaker and a great story teller. He offered great insights and valuable takeaways. In case you missed it, you can get a taste for Kawasaki’s Enchantment presentation in the YouTube video below:
It turns out that Kawasaki is an Oregon fan. He shared a fun story about how he managed to get an official Oregon hockey jersey. He proudly sports his Oregon jersey whenever he gets the chance and on multiple occasions proclaimed that Oregon has the best jerseys in the country. This wasn’t the first time that Kawasaki visited the UO campus either. Kawasaki took a number of pictures on an earlier visit to UO. He described the feel of our campus as an Ivy League school (red brick buildings) with interiors like the Apple store in Covent Garden. Not a bad combination! You can check out his pictures here: http://holykaw.alltop.com/pictures-from-the-university-of-oregon.
What did you learn on the CSBP trip to Seattle?
Well, to sum it up:
It’s ok to not give customers a choice, problem solving need not result in an answer, utilize the word “opportunity” whenever possible, even non-tree huggers can green their business, tapping into behavior is important, big companies have the capacity to do big things, and it doesn’t need to be “either-or.”
Our trip started and ended with a train ride from Eugene to Seattle and back again- by far the best way to travel. Once we arrived, we checked into our hotel and dropped off our bags so we could head over to our first visit of the trip – Safeco Field.
 Just a standard Seattle building The VP of Operations, Scott Jenkins, gave us an overview of many of the sustainability initiatives the field has undertaken from LED lighting retrofits to smart monitoring of the grow lights for the grass to an 81% diversion of waste from the landfill. When asked how they managed such a huge reduction the answer was simple, don’t give people a choice. Safeco Field has a lot of influence over what their vendors serve food on/in and was able to switch completely to compostables. As far as the consumer buy-in and understanding, well, they just took out the trashcans and left the compost and recycling bins – why complicate things? For more on our visit to Safeco, check out the post from esteemed CSBP colleague and baseball nut, Andrew White.
On the second day we woke up early to get ready for our trips to Microsoft, Alaska Airlines, and Costco. At Microsoft, Rob Bernard, Chief Environmental Strategist, and Josh Henretig, Director of MARCOM, described to us the beginning of their sustainability initiatives as “well intentioned chaos” and went on to explain the importance of frameworks. Microsoft strives to solve problems in an effort to demonstrate how problems can be solved – their goal is to provide scalable, leveragable solutions, not one-hit wonders.
Alaska Airlines gave us a chance to explore the insides of a plane and learn that even a self-admitted non-green company can make substantial improvements to their carbon footprint. Jacqueline Drumheller taught us the key steps she took in leading change from the middle, some of which were: don’t ask for permission, tackle the metrics, relentless communication, and use the word “opportunity” all the time.
Costco, our final stop of the day, left us feeling a bit differently than our previous meetings. Costco has been participating in cost reduction activities that have been successful both financially and environmentally. Their “sustainability” program is really a set of fortuitous outcomes from their business practices and the company shows minimal interest in trying to educate or promote more sustainable decisions to their consumers (consumers who consume and consume by their very nature). Yet, even a company with no warm and fuzzy tree-hugger-world-saving image is still having a positive impact. Whether it’s about feeling good or about the bottom line, there is still a case for sustainability. When it really comes down to it, that’s what we’re in school to learn about: how to make the case for each and every business – how to speak their language.
Day three started with McKinstry, an innovative consulting/engineering/building firm where Hendrik Van Hemert, an Oregon MBA alumni, stressed the importance of fitting sustainability into each individual client’s business in ways that make sense. Turns out President Obama is also a fan, for more check out CSBPer and former Seattleite Andy Fenstermacher’s post on McKinstry. We also toured their shop and production facilities and were able to get a glimpse of innovative building practices – by building in the warehouse and then inserting finished “components” (which are really the guts of the building) at the work site the company is able to a) make a better product (due to the controlled environment) and b) reduce its waste through reuse and recycling.
 Seattle, with blue sky, caught on camera Next stop was Starbucks, arguably the most engaging meeting of the trip. Jim Hanna, the Director of Environmental Impact, invited us to bring any questions, and more importantly criticisms, right out into the open, framing this meeting as an equal opportunity for us to learn from Starbucks and also for Starbucks to learn from us. The company’s goal is to use their scale for good and outlined some of their initiatives from their C.A.F.E practices which reward coffee farmers for sustainable farming to an entire lighting retrofit throughout the entire U.S. store base. And of course, we couldn’t leave without talking about the cups. Well good news, they’re working on it, but from a society-wide systems approach and not a “let’s throw some compostables out there that will end up in the trash anyways but at least we look good” standpoint.
Our last visit of the trip was to REI to learn about their successful initiatives and ambitious goals. For a company whose very nature is to value the outdoors it seems sustainability is a no-brainer. While some of their initiatives are more readily accomplished as their employees and clientele do not need much convincing, the company has still had to navigate its way through frameworks, metrics and measurements to set goals that are truly impactful to their business. One important point that Kevin Hagen made to us is that sustainability does not need to be a trade off between doing what’s right and doing what’s advantageous financially- ‘it doesn’t have to be an “either-or,” it can be an “and.”’
We wrapped up the trip with the opening game of the Seattle Mariners right back at Safeco Field where we started and had the opportunity to see their efforts in action.
So, it was just another few days at the OMBA participating in an experiential learning excursion to visit with chief managers of some of the top companies in the nation. What does your MBA program offer?? 
– Shannon Oliver, CSBP Class of 2013
Our second day in Seattle started off with a trip to McKinstry, located in the city’s SODO industrial neighborhood. McKinstry is  one of those companies that is difficult to summarize in a simple sentence. They describe themselves as a “full-service design, build, operate and maintain (DBOM) firm.” In other words, they do just about everything that pertains to buildings. The 1,600 people that work at McKinstry comprise a unique mixture of people not often seen in a single company – engineers, strategists, skilled laborers, and others working together under one roof (though, in reality, the company is so large it has quite a few roofs on its campus).
The core of McKinstry’s work focuses on building systems and energy-related issues. During our visit we learned that McKinstry made a strategic decision to diversify its capabilities in order to adapt to market cycles and external economic conditions. When the construction industry is highly active, the company provides design services for major projects and manufacturers HVAC systems. When the market cools down, McKinstry helps its clients plan for future projects or improve the efficiency of their existing buildings.
During our visit we were hosted by Henrik Van Hemert, a 2011 alumnus of the Oregon CSBP program. Henrik shared how he ended up at McKinstry after completing his degree and what it has been like to work in a company largely dominated by engineers, laborers, and other non-MBAs. It served as a good reminder that our freshly acquired business skills can be valuable in just about any context and that we shouldn’t be afraid to cast our job-search nets widely.
The name McKinstry may sound familiar to some. During the 2008 presidential campaign, then-candidate Obama visited the company and mentioned their energy work in one of his ads:
– Andy Fenstermacher, CSBP Class of 2012
During our recent trip to Seattle, we had the opportunity to visit SafeCo Field, the home of Major League Baseball’s Seattle Mariners, an organization committed to sustainable operations, as evidenced by their decision to become a charter member of the Green Sports Alliance. Scott Jenkins, the Vice President of Operations, was our host for the afternoon, and gave us a fantastic tour of the stadium. While he was guiding us through the owners’ suite and the visitors’ dugout and clubhouse, Scott shared with us some of his insights regarding sustainability and operating such a large facility. One of the most important lessons I took from that tour (besides the fact that the center field wall looks a lot farther from home plate at field level) was the vital importance of communication when it comes to sustainability initiatives. Repeatedly, Scott told explained development and told stories that hinged critically on being able to communicate effectively to various stakeholder groups both upstream and downstream.
 Mariners Home Opener at Safeco Field When tackling waste reduction goals, the Mariners needed to gain cooperation from vendors, employees, and customers in order to make sure that everything worked out according to plan. As a large client, Scott and his team were able to convince vendors that they needed to provide biodegradable and recyclable product offerings at SafeCo. But what if employees and customers don’t understand what the organization is trying to do, and those new products end up going to the landfill anyway? To solve this challenge, Scott took a more passive approach. Compliance with newly implemented waste reduction programs was achieved by merely relabeling collection areas. For employees, the former trash room became the recycling center, prominently displayed by a poster on the wall. For customers attending the game, trash barrels were removed, and replaced with recycling containers and compost bins. There are only 17 containers at SafeCo now for “trash”, and they are labeled “Landfill”, to remind game-goers what the results of their actions entail.
Although the Mariners have been successful in implementing waste diversion and other sustainability initiatives in the ballpark, it hasn’t always been easy for Scott. He continually stressed the importance of speaking “the same language” when discussing capital investments with his superiors in the organization. As always with any expenditures, you must communicate the business case for the cash outlay. By focusing initially on easily introduced projects with fast paybacks, Scott was able to earn the trust of those above him, and eventually work towards additional sustainable improvements that seem more difficult to finance (such as a small photovoltaic array on top of the stadium’s parking garage).
Overall, the trip to SafeCo was truly a valuable experience that highlighted the importance of communicating on proper terms with various stakeholders… and also allowed some of us to live out our childhood dreams of sitting in a big league dugout with our friends and a bag of sunflower seeds on a sunny afternoon.
– Andrew White, CSBP class of 2013
Last week the students of the Lundquist College of Business were treated to some great business community infiltration: Net Impact graduate and undergrad chapters worked together to organize a Green Business Networking hour, a local Green Business Expo, and a keynote address from the First Lady of Oregon, Cylvia Hayes, about job creation in Oregon and it’s deep ties to renewable energy and other sustainable industries. The Expo highlighted a number of local companies including Grape Solar, Good Company, a sustainability consulting firm, Arcimoto, a three-wheeled electric vehicle start-up, and Two Degrees, an energy bar company for social benefit.
Café Yumm, a local Eugene start-up turned Oregon restaurateur success story, also came to exhibit at our Green Business Expo. I caught up with Maritza, the Café Yumm representative, who explained that Café Yumm’s commitment to sustainable business practices and community engagement were key to their remarkable growth during 2008 and 2009, when most other restaurants were closing their doors.
Check out this video where Maritza walks me through just a few of the green initiatives that Café Yumm champions.
Earth Day was a great opportunity to show the campus community the business case for green, and perhaps plant seeds of awareness about the part they could play for a more sustainable future.
–Mikaela Hicks
 Above - The Visa Office [Editor's Note: After a afternoon meeting at the Pac-12, the group checked into our room at the Serrano Hotel in San Francisco and got ready for day two which included a visit to Visa, The San Jose Sharks/Sharks Sports & Entertainment, and EA Sports. Accelerated MBA Student Katrina Galas will now detail our visit to Visa. Enjoy! - Matthew Van Wyen]
By Katrina Galas
While most companies use a sponsorship in sport to become “top of mind” with their customers, Visa’s goal is to be “top of wallet.” It’s vision – to be life’s currency.
Contrary to popular belief, Visa profits are transaction driven – it doesn’t actually make money off of late bill payments. It is an enabler – the company that brings the world the technology to borrow money. As a result, its main objective is to be the preferred credit card for the most number of purchases, thus “top of wallet.”
Warsaw Alumni, Kara Linse, was a gracious host, especially since she began her career at Visa as Global Sponsorship Marketing Manager (FIFA & Olympics) only a few short months ago. Kara not only spoke about the background of Visa, but her career journey and how her various roles after graduating from Warsaw led her to this great new opportunity in the world of sports business. “It all connects back to my time at Warsaw,” she said, “and being proactive about meeting people and gaining as many relevant experiences as possible while you’re a student.”
By becoming the exclusive IOC TOP sponsor in the Global Payment category back in 1986, (as well as sponsoring 205 National Olympic Committees), Visa is able to require its own credit card as the only acceptable form of payment during these large scale, highly visible and well-attended global sport events. Furthermore, Visa provides the necessary infrastructure (kiosks, etc.) on-site to make this possible.
After listening to Matthew Kauffman, Head of Global Sponsorship Marketing Olympic & NFL teams, it was obvious that Visa is very proud of its sport sponsorships and treats them very seriously, acknowledging that sports are a platform that presents the best opportunity to engage with its consumers. Sports are at the core of its marketing activation strategy, costing significant amounts in association rights and generating impressive ROI year after year. In fact, after speaking with Rob Prazmark, one of the creators of the IOC TOP program, on an earlier Warsaw class trip to NYC, the Olympic Games occupy an entire page in the Visa history books, showcasing the beginning of the Visa Olympic sponsorship as being largely responsible for the turning point in Visa’s global success.
Visa recognizes that the athletes themselves are the essence of any Games and the passion and energy around the event emanates from the athletes. Visa knows its consumers care deeply about the success of their countries’ athletes at the Games and can therefore build a strong brand connection by supporting athletes. Visa over-delivers when it comes to caring about its athletes, going out of its way to get to know them and their families, and honoring them appropriately for their achievements. For example, Visa aired a Michael Phelps congratulatory ad moments after he finished his legendary performance in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
Rich Greene, Sponsorship Marketing for the NFL, spoke about Visa’s association with the NFL and explained that its activation strategy is built off the key insight that for its consumers, experiencing the NFL is “Better Together.” He also shared how Visa taps into existing passion for various teams, rather than trying to create passion itself. This approach allows the brand to have a seat at the table for creating legitimate experiences around the NFL property and its core events, like the Super Bowl. The timing of the NFL, which has recently evolved into a becoming more of a year-round property, compliments the timing of the Olympic and FIFA activation schedules nicely, rounding out Visa’s key sport sponsorship properties.
Finally, Nancy Panter, Business Leader, Global Public Relations, concluded our visit, sharing insights about the role of PR as it relates to sponsorship activation. It is critical to prepare for every scenario that could exist, both positive and negative, so that it can be dealt with promptly and properly if and when it happens. The brand needs to be upheld in every situation and she works extremely hard to ensure that that happens.
A big thank you to Visa for hosting us all at their San Mateo office on April 4, 2012 – it was definitely one of the highlights of our Sports Business week in San Francisco.
 The Warsaw MBA Group
The natural entrepreneurial instincts of Dixie Powers guided her as the founder and former president of Baggallini Inc. Her work ethic, ingenuity, and perceptive vision of an untapped market for organized bags and accessories fostered a company that eventually grew from $1.2 million in gross income in 2003 to over $18 million in 2010.
On April 10th, 2012, Dixie presented her story to the Women in Business club. Originally from Salem, Oregon, Dixie certainly does have a life story From Bags to Riches, the name of her autobiography-in-process by Kerry Tymchuk. She comes from a conservative family where her and her sister’s first job involved picking strawberries and beans until the age of 16 when they began working in the canneries. Dixie’s hard-working character derived from her childhood. She said that, “We grew up with a work ethic, we had to.” She spoke fondly of her father as a role model and self-made man who started a women’s shoe and clothing store as well as dabbled in real estate and the stock market.
After high school, Dixie’s father hoped she would pursue an academic path and attend the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Dixie had always found school to be uninspiring and admitted to skipping twenty-two days of school her senior year. After graduation, she attended a college that eventually funneled into what is now considered Portland State University. To her father’s dismay, she discontinued her enrollment during her second term and found herself needing to pay room and board at her parents’ house in Salem.
Dixie acquired a job answering phone calls for her uncle as an alternative to working in the canneries again. She tolerated this job until one day when she received a phone call from her friend Carol, who worked as a flight attendant at United Airlines. Carol suggested Dixie pursue a job as a flight attendant. Unfortunately, United Airlines was at full capacity. Three days later, Carol called Dixie again with a job opening at Delta Airlines. She quickly discovered that the requirements of a flight attendant included no husband or kids, hair pulled back, no jewelry larger than a nickel, and weigh ins. Essentially, “Young, thin, and cute. And we were all three!”
 Dixie Powers and WIB President Kelly DeFacci model totes from Baggallini Starting at the age of nineteen and for the next thirty years of her life, Dixie became a flight attendant. At one point or another, she was based in Miami, Chicago, Memphis, Atlanta, and many more cities. Dixie was in Boston, her favorite base, for thirteen years and now returns every summer. In Boston she began to develop her innate real estate skills by renting and buying a variety of properties like her father, who sadly would never see her professional successes.
Soon after, she fell in love with and married her husband, a banker, and had a son and a daughter. Their family eventually transferred to Portland, Oregon, where Dixie was based with Delta Airlines. Her flights journeyed to countries like Japan, Korea, Thailand, and China. On her days off while in these countries, Dixie explored the street markets where she would find designer brands names such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, Nike, and Ralph Lauren. She and her fellow flight attendants would frequently return home with a variety of goods for friends and family. She often flew with flight attendant Ann Simmons from Dallas who would buy Chanel earrings for $5 and return home to sell them for $50. Dixie, however, became fascinated with bronze figurines and began selling them to friends, neighbors, and local businesses. Dixie guaranteed that it is, “impossible to go to Asia and not want to become an entrepreneur.”
One day while browsing the street markets of Seoul, Dixie discovered a coin pouch. She immediately recognized a need for the accessory as a flight attendant in order to keep each currency isolated. Dixie found a manufacturer and subsequently began to identify and design a wide variety of products that flight attendants desired such as travel and tote bags as well as twistable, travel-sized razors. Dixie and Ann experienced rapid achievement by selling their products to junior flight attendants at other bases to sell to their colleagues. Together Dixie and Ann successfully launched their company Baggallini Inc.
As Baggallini continued expanding, the duo developed a line of vividly colored children’s travel bags that revolutionized the appearance of all products at trade shows. They then franchised the company to encourage growth and eventually Norm Thompson and The Container Store began carrying their products. In February 2001, Dixie retired as CEO of the company and sold baggallini for $40 million.
Her professional accomplishments came full circle two years ago when her sister presented her with a gift. Dixie received a license plate holder for the Wharton School of Business, which she now affectionately drives around with in memory and pride of her father.
While verbally illustrating her stories and physically presenting products to the club, Dixie’s passion and enthusiasm overpowered her initial shy exterior. The membership was able to take away the invaluable advice that work ethic combined with diligence provides limitless accomplishments. Thank you, Dixie, for speaking with Women in Business!
[Editor's Note: Our meeting with the PAC-12 spanned numerous topics including the conference's efforts to expand into China. Due to this, we have two contributors for this post. Matthew Maxson covers the PAC-12's rebranding efforts while Shuo Cheng will cover the China initiatives as he was able to meet one-on-one with Carrie Xu, Senior Manager International, about the conference's strategies to enter the Chinese marketplace.]
Rebranding Efforts
After a great visit to Marmot to kick off the trip, we all jumped on the vans and headed to Walnut Creek to visit the Pac-12 Conference. There we were greeted with some of the leaders of the Pac-12’s rebranding effort: Danette Leighton, Chief Marketing Officer, Heather Vaughan, Senior Director Marketing, Taylor Lien, Manager Business Development, and Carrie Xu, Senior Manager International.
This great group led us through the conference’s rebranding effort when Commissioner Larry Scott took over in July 2009. The conference had previously been considered an afterthought in the minds of the country and it was their job to bring it to the forefront of college athletics. This was a prime example of establishing what an entity wants its brand image to be known for and sticking to that. The conference set out core values of student athlete welfare, academic excellence, and integrity and continually seeks to promote these things in all decisions that are made. The key brand attributes the conference established are: west coast, innovative, and excellence.
By having a core set of values and attributes to focus on the Pac-12 has become a leader in the college athletic space. They signed a groundbreaking media deal with ESPN and Fox for $3 billion over 12 years. On top of this they were able to retain enough rights to create their own networks that are to be launched this summer. It was great to hear how great leadership, vision, and focus can take an entity to the next level. With a unique story to tell of the conference with the most overall NCAA championships and the far leader in Olympic sports, it will be exciting to see how the Pac-12 continues to build it’s brand nationally and globally. See the attached clip to see their media campaign around the London games.
The visit ended with a call to action from the Warsaw team to help come up with ideas for promotion of the coming Track and Field Pac-12 Championships in May coming to Eugene. Thanks to Danette, Heather, Taylor, and Carrie for opening the Pac-12’s doors and giving us insight into a great best practice for branding and innovation. We look forward to seeing how the conference continues to evolve and look forward to hopefully meeting up again in May.
-Matthew Maxson
China Initiatives
Carrie Xu, who recently received her masters degree from the University of Southern California Business School with a concentration in sports business and marketing, gave us a fascinating presentation about the Pac-12’s China Initiatives that she has been working on since last year. The Pac-12 decided to try to open the gate to the old and mysterious country after Larry Scott, the Pacific-12 Conference commissioner, spent fours day in Beijing last year, meeting with various officials, including NBA China, Nike China, and NFL China to try to put together a “road map” for a way to expand the presence of Pac-12 universities in China.
The Pac-12’s push into China came from Scott’s initial meetings with all the Pac-12 presidents. He said “the light went off” when he kept hearing about the wide international scope of various universities. The 12 famous universities along the west coast consist of the Pacific 12 conference, which have a higher percentage of international students than other conferences in the United States due to its geographic advantage. As Carrie said, the percentage of international students at the University of Southern California, University of Los Angeles, University of Washington, and University of Oregon is higher than 20%.
In order to increase future recruitment and positive culture exchange, there is a strong desire for the Pac-12 to establish itself overseas. Carrie said the first step for the Pac-12 is to create more exchange programs through major sports such as basketball and volleyball because students in China are familiar with the two sports and there is a plenty of infrastructure to accommodate them. It will be very interesting to see the evolving strategies that the PAC-12 will employ to increase exposure in the Chinese market. Thanks to Carrie for meeting with me individually.
-Shuo Cheng
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