06/14/10
MAC President Marcie Allen is featured in a Tennessean article on corporate sponsorship.
Corporate sponsors’ cash sings to country music industry
Three years ago, The Clorox Co. took a gamble.
With Kingsford, its No. 1 charcoal brand, losing ground as gas grills began to dominate backyard barbecues, the Fortune 500 conglomerate searched for ways to lure consumers back to old-fashioned briquettes.
Wooed by a Nashville-based company, California-based Clorox ultimately decided to hitch both of its barbecue-related brands, Kingsford Charcoal and KC Barbecue Sauce, to multiplatinum-selling country artist Tim McGraw.
It was the first time Clorox had gone country. But McGraw had a ready-made musical calling card that may have helped nudge the corporate suits at Clorox into hitching their marketing budget to his talent.
McGraw’s most-played song of the decade, “Something Like That,” includes this can’t-get-it-out-of-your-head refrain: “I had a barbecue stain on my white T-shirt.” He also has a habit of grilling with his crew before concerts.
“We’d never thought about country music before — or done any music partnerships before — but, when you looked at the people buying our products, country music started to make a lot of sense,” said Drew McGowan, who runs Clorox’s growing music sponsorship division.
The division just signed its third seven-figure country sponsorship deal in as many years, this time with Keith Urban’s 2010 Summer Lovin’ concert tour.
Clorox isn’t the only corporation with a newfound love of country music.
Country stars were once mostly pitchmen for pickup trucks and beer, but corporate America increasingly is signing lucrative endorsement deals with Nashville-based artists for everything from candy to credit cards.
With the soaring cost of touring (and declining album sales), corporate money increasingly provides artists not only with cash, bu alsot with access to vast marketing machinery that can fill the role once played by big-budget record labels that don’t have as much advertising muscle as they once did.
Marketing experts say the evolving profile of country music’s fan base — more frequently college-educated than in years past and increasingly Internet-savvy — has sparked interest in corporate support, including backing tours for big-name artists and some up-and-comers, as well.
“In the past half a dozen years, corporate America has entered country music in the same big way they started in rock ‘n’ roll,” said Marcie Allen, president of Mac Presents, a Nashville-based live event marketing company that brokers corporate-country deals, including McGraw’s and Urban’s Clorox deals.
“It used to be that for every 10 rock ‘n’ roll sponsorships, you’d have two in country. Now companies that were never in the music space are choosing to go country.”
The move may be paying off for Clorox. It declined to release product sales figures but said that internal metrics have tracked consistent spikes in sales of barbecue sauce and charcoal in every market that’s had a company-sponsored artist perform in concert.
In 2008, after its sponsorship of McGraw’s “Live Your Voice Tour,” which included radio advertising buys, grocery store signs, a sweepstakes to go win backstage passes to meet McGraw, and social media tie-ins, charcoal sales nationally began climbing for the first time since 2003.
Velveeta meets Rodney Atkins
At this week’s CMA Music Festival, fans have been able to follow clues via Twitter to find the secret location of 10 Olhausen pool tables, browse through a booth of Reba-brand clothing for Dillard’s department store, perform (in the virtual realm) alongside Rodney Atkins at the Velveeta Shells & Cheese booth, enter Manwich’s open-mike competition and walk by several dozen advertising banners touting 60 corporate sponsors, twice as many as a year ago.
What may not have been immediately visible was the courting by CMA strategists of dozens of corporate executives from both coasts, many getting their first up-close look at country music fans as consumers.
“Country has an impressionable, enthusiastic and really lucrative fan base, and there’s no better way to showcase that than to bring the companies out to see it,” said Sheri Warnke, hired in April for CMA’s newly created position of vice president of strategic partnerships, a job designed to not only recruit festival sponsors but also broker introductions between corporations and advertising agencies around country music.
In part, due to the superstar status of performers such as Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood who have crossed over to the pop charts, it’s been an easier sell, Warnke said.
“It helps a whole lot that corporations have finally heard of these country artists,” Warnke said.
“That hasn’t always been the case before. I sit in front of Fortune 50 company executives all the time now, and they think the genre is really hot … with names such as Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Lady Antebellum and Taylor Swift. Crossover appeal has helped a lot.”
Part of Warnke’s job is gathering the demographic information about the country music fan base to provide a compelling picture to corporations with marketing dollars to spend.
According to CMA’s data, some 40 percent of Americans are country music fans, 70 percent have attended some college and nearly two-thirds now have Internet access at home.
Country music fans are more likely to mirror the overall American population in age and income than fans of other music genres, with one-third reporting incomes of more than $75,000 a year.
‘Not just cash,’ exposure
Rascal Flatts landed two major sponsorship deals this year. The trio is partnering with retailer J.C. Penney’s and has renewed its sponsorship with the Hershey’s candy company for its 2010 concert tour. The Hershey’s arrangement includes a free downloadable original song for candy buyers who enter a product code on the http://www.hersheys.com/”>chocolate company’s website.
More importantly for the band, the deal included a host of TV commercials showing the group singing as they make S’mores.
Walk into a J.C. Penney’s store and “there’ll be Rascal Flatts everywhere,” said manager Trey Turner. At each cash register, CDs of the group’s Unstoppable album are available to spur impulse buys.
“Obviously it takes tying together the right sponsor to the right artist,” Turner said.
“But with labels trying to reinvent themselves right now, I think corporate sponsorships are a way for us to get into nontraditional venues. It’s not just the cash. It’s the exposure.”
Artists and companies are tight-lipped about the amount of cash involved. Allen, the marketing company president, said her sponsorship deals for country artists in the past four years have ranged up to $4 million.
And, in a tight economy, music appears to be winning over other advertising investments.
Overall spending by corporations on sponsorships declined in 2009, but spending related to music and entertainment touring increased by about 1 percent to $1.08 billion last year, according to the Chicago-based IEG LLC, which tracks corporate sponsorship spending.
For Brad Paisley’s H2O tour, corporate sponsors and Paisley’s managers created a “plaza” concept. Because fans typically tailgate before a concert, the H2O tour is going to open the gates earlier — at 4 p.m. instead of 7 p.m. — to hear live music performed by newcomer acts.
Dunk tanks with local radio celebrities taking the dive or slip-and-slides entertain fans, along with Corvette simulators supplied by chief sponsor Chevrolet.
Anyone who beats Paisley’s driving time (the singer has attended “Corvette School,” according to manager Bill Simmons) has a chance to meet Paisley in person.
Two other sponsors, Sea Ray Boats and Skinny Water vitamin drinks, are joined in a national grocery store promotion in which fans get a chance to compete for a trip to the Sea Ray Boat-sponsored Aquapalooza next month in Austin, where Paisley will be the music headliner.
http://www.skinnywater.com/”>Skinny Water’s website also touts its “Win a VIP night with Brad Paisley” contest.
Simmons said Paisley’s goal was to find sponsors who could give fans a total experience that would be fun and boost his exposure to more people.
“It’s a big corporation we’re running, and sponsorships help you finance your concerts,” Simmons said. “Anytime you get into the big arenas, it’s expensive. But the goal with Brad is never just the money — (of) course, the money is nice. I think in the beginning people like The (Rolling) Stones did it for money, and lot of people do it for money, but money was not my motivation. My motivation is just to get more impressions for Brad.”
Social, digital tie-ins
Sponsorship experts say digital media tools and social networks are other big lures that help corporations capitalize on the relationships that performers have with their fans via Facebook, Twitter and other online conversations.
Go to Keith Urban’s Facebook page, with 640,000 followers, or Twitter feed (104,000 followers and counting) and you’ll see regular updates by the artist on everything from his upcoming TV appearances to Urban’s favorite barbecue recipes and contest giveaways.
“Interested in attending a VIP barbecue and concert with Keith? Check out KC Masterpiece for ways to win this once-in-a-lifetime experience! Goodluck!” reads one post.
The social media component is a key piece of a deeper marketing strategy that seeks to capitalize on individuals’ “passion points,” said McGowan, the Clorox sponsorship guru.
“One of the things we’ve found is that music is a passion point,” McGowan said. “For those two hours during a concert, fans forget about all the problems in the outside world. We want to be part of that experience.”
Sales gains are one measure of success, but McGowan also touts what he calls a “return on engagement.”
“A lot of people want to be talked to directly,” said McGowan, in Nashville last week to address music industry insiders at the Billboard Country Music Summit. “They want to hear from friends; they want to experience things themselves.”
A Keith Urban VIP barbecue, for example, will allow 50 lucky fans to hear Urban perform an acoustic song in a private setting before joining him for a barbecue meal prepared by the “official pitmaster” of the tour.
“For the 50 fans, it will be an experience they will never forget. And it’s being brought to them by KC Masterpiece,” McGowan said.
By Anita Wadhwani
THE TENNESSEAN