MAC IN THE NEWS
Drake/AT&T Up for Billboard Award
10/13/10
10/13/10
The partnership between Drake and AT&T/BlackBerry was nominated for this year’s Billboard’s Concert Marketing and Promotion Award, marking a fourth straight nomination for MAC Presents.
New Ideas Fill IEBA Conference
10/07/10
10/07/10
Marcie Allen recently spoke at the annual IEBA Conference in Nashville on the panel “Country Music in Corporate America.”
Experts Discuss Touring Deals
09/17/10
09/17/10
Senior Sponsorship Coordinator Jessica Beutler spoke on the panel “Hit the Road, Activate Your Base” at Billboard’s Music and Advertising conference in Chicago.
Event Marketer – Rock On
09/07/10
09/07/10
MAC Presents and Marcie Allen were featured in a story on summer tour sponsorships in the August issue of Event Marketer Magazine.
Billboard 30 Under 30
08/16/10
08/16/10
Director of Events Patrick Moore was an honoree for Billboard’s 2010 Power Players: 30 Under 30.
Drake at BlackBerry’s Torch Launch
08/16/10
08/16/10
MAC Presents booked Drake for BlackBerry’s August 11th launch party for their new Torch device. [READ MORE]
Drake, Jay-Z, Eminem at OVO Festival
08/02/10
08/02/10
Drake brought surprise guests Eminem and Jay-Z to the stage for his recent OVO Festival, in partnership with BlackBerry.
“10 Questions” with Marcie Allen
08/02/10
08/02/10
MAC President Marcie Allen was featured on All Access as a part of their “10 Questions” series.
Drake Launches OVO Festival
07/21/10
07/21/10
MAC Presents brokered BlackBerry to sponsor Grammy-nominated artist Drake’s OVO Festival on August 1 in Toronto, Canada.
Lady A, OfficeMax Raise Funds
06/22/10
06/22/10
MAC Presents supported the efforts of OfficeMax and Lady Antebellum in raising $50,000 for Nashville flood victims.
THE TENNESSEAN
06/14/10
06/14/10
MAC President Marcie Allen is featured in a Tennessean article on corporate sponsorship.
Billboard Interview: Marcie Allen
06/10/10
06/10/10
MAC Presents president Marcie Allen was one of the panelists featured on the Marketing & Branding for Country Music panel at this week’s Billboard Country Music Summit in Nashville. [READ MORE]
American Brand Stand
03/16/10
03/16/10
The Nashville Business Journal
American Brand Stand
Corporate sponsorship deals, major artists find harmony with concert tours
Jay Z Show Wins Metromix’s Best Of
02/22/10
02/22/10
When the biggest name in rap made a long-overdue return to Nashville in November, he told the crowd of fans at Vanderbilt he was having the best show of his entire tour. We wouldn’t doubt it. [READ MORE]
Jack Ingram & KC Masterpiece
11/18/09
11/18/09
Jack Ingram, KC Masterpiece Line Up ‘Eat and Greets’
August 27, 2009 – Country | Branding
By Ray Waddell, Nashville
Singer/songwriter/barbecue enthusiast Jack Ingram is partnering with KC Masterpiece Barbecue Sauces and Marinades in a campaign to encourage Americans to keep grilling throughout football season this fall.
The campaign includes “Eat and Greets” with Ingram at select tour dates beginning in September, where contest winners will be invited to a backstage barbecue before each show. Ingram will make public appearances on behalf of the brand and participate in additional media-driven programs in key markets.
Ingram made national news headlines yesterday when he set a new Guinness World Record for “most interviews in a 24 hour period” while promoting his new album “Big Dreams & High Hopes” on Big Machine Records.
Ingram is currently in Dallas and Austin promoting the new album in his home market before he opens three shows for Toby Keith in California.
KC Masterpiece and parent company Clorox have become increasingly involved in country music and country music tours, sponsoring Tim McGraw’s 2008 tour and Keith Urban’s 2009 tours (both with Kingsford Charcoal), and also partnering with Lady Antebellum in a Brita promotional campaign. The KC Masterpiece/Ingram deal was brokered by Brian Hill, Ingram’s agent at Paradigm; Marcie Allen, president of MAC Presents; Drew McGowan, Senior Group Manger, Public Relations & Sponsorships, the Clorox Company, and George Couri, Ingram’s manager at Triple 8 Management.
Jack Ingram, KC Masterpiece Line Up ‘Eat and Greets’
August 27, 2009 – Country | Branding
By Ray Waddell, Nashville
IEG Sponsorship Report
11/18/09
Billboard Concert Marketing And Promotion Award Goes to Clorox Barbecue Brands for Firing Up The Keith Urban Escape Together World Tour
11/18/09
Billboard Concert Marketing And Promotion Award Goes to Clorox Barbecue Brands for Firing Up The Keith Urban Escape Together World TourNovember 6, 2009:
NEW YORK — Last night, Billboard magazine bestowed KC Masterpiece barbecue sauce and Kingsford charcoal with the music industry’s premier marketing honor — Billboard magazine’s annual Concert Marketing and Promotion Award — for firing up the Keith Urban Escape Together World Tour. In sponsoring the tour, the barbecue brands encouraged friends and families to get together and grill in their own backyard, something Urban and his band identify with during their hectic tour schedules. The award recognized the brand’s willingness to change the rules of traditional sponsorship and make a powerful business impact.
Announced last night at the Billboard Touring Awards at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, the Award confirmed that the traditional sponsorship model is rapidly evolving, with increasing emphasis being placed on the natural fit between artist and brand as well as the role of online community and mobile technology in reaching and engaging fans and consumers. The Concert Marketing & Promotion Award recognizes a sponsorship or promotion that benefited the concert industry at large by stimulating attendance to live events, providing value to fans, and promoting the artist and brands involved. This year’s program received hundreds of submissions crossing every genre, narrowed down to seven finalists by Billboard’s editorial team and then voted on by the public to ultimately select the winner.
Throughout the summer of 2009, KC Masterpiece® and Kingsford® Charcoal worked together with one of the world’s hottest artists, Keith Urban, whose Escape Together World Tour reached audiences across North America. Together the barbecue brands and the chart-topping country artist inspired Americans to “Turn Up the Music and Fire Up the Grill.” As part of the sponsorship, KC Masterpiece® and Kingsford® hosted the Keith Urban Backstage Barbecue Experience, VIP pre-show events at which attendees enjoyed a menu of delicious grilled foods, an intimate acoustic performance by Keith Urban as well as a group photo opportunity with him. Additional program highlights included:
– World Champion Pitmaster Chris Lilly, the official BBQ Pitmaster of the Escape Together tour, created tailgating tips, recipes and how-to videos, which lived on KeithUrban.net
– Partnership with Country Music Television for a BBQ Week hosted in part by Pitmaster Lilly
– “Me, You and a BBQ” sweepstakes at concerts, SMS, online and in retail
– VIP and ticket-upgrade sweepstakes, grand prize trip to Nashville for a backyard BBQ and a chance to meet Keith Urban
– A community site hosted on the Urban Web site for chat, downloads and tour information
– Online “street teams” to promote the campaign through blogs and other participatory forums
– Photo activation onsite at concerts for redemption and sharing after the events
– Retailer “tool kits” to do in-store tie-ins with KC Masterpiece and Kingsford products
– Online promotion materials coordinated across product and retail partner channels
“With everything going on in the world today, people are simply looking for a way to escape, whether it’s tailgating before a show, being inspired during Keith’s show or hanging out in the backyard grilling with family and friends. Working with Keith is a perfect match,” said Drew McGowan, sponsorship group manager at Clorox. “This campaign works because we tapped into something authentic and real — the way people come together and celebrate everyday. Hanging with friends in the backyard has become a year-round experience that extends beyond the summer months.”
Teams involved in the “Turn Up the Music, Fire Up the Grill” campaign included George P. Johnson Entertainment Marketing practice (strategy and activation); CURRENT (public relations); and Mac Presents (talent procurement).
Media Links: Downloads Images & Videos Here – http://www.keithurban.net/escapetogether
The Clorox Company
The Clorox Company is a leading manufacturer and marketer of consumer products with fiscal year 2008 revenues of $5.5 billion. Clorox markets some of consumers’ most trusted and recognized brand names, including its namesake bleach and cleaning products, Green Works natural cleaners, Armor All and STP auto-care products, Fresh Step and Scoop Away cat litter, Kingsford charcoal, Hidden Valley and KC Masterpiece dressings and sauces, Brita water-filtration systems, Glad bags, wraps and containers, and Burt’s Bees natural personal care products. With 8,300 employees worldwide, the company manufactures products in more than two dozen countries and markets them in more than 100 countries. Clorox is committed to making a positive difference in the communities where its employees work and live. Founded in 1980, The Clorox Company Foundation has awarded cash grants totaling more than $73.9 million to nonprofit organizations, schools and colleges. In fiscal 2008 alone, the foundation awarded $4.2 million in cash grants, and Clorox made product donations valued at $10.2 million. For more information about Clorox, visit www.TheCloroxCompany.com.
Media Contacts:
Tom Maher
George P. Johnson
617-535-9820
Brandon Briggs
Current
312-929-0502
Drew McGowan
Kingsford and KC Masterpiece/The Clorox Company
510-271-7499
Billboard Concert Marketing And Promotion Award Goes to Clorox Barbecue Brands for Firing Up The Keith Urban Escape Together World Tour.
NBJ: Rising Star
11/17/09
11/17/09
Cardwell’s company helps musicians find additional revenue
SUCCESS CAME EARLY. TO WHAT DO YOU ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS? Determination and hard work. Realizing there is a solution to every problem.
HOW DO YOU NETWORK? I have always tried to help people along the way. I truly believe in what goes around comes around.
DO YOU MAKE MUCH USE OF HIGH TECH? Considering BlackBerry is one of my biggest clients, yes. I use my GPS on my BlackBerry often.
FAVORITE LINE FROM A MOVIE THAT INSPIRED YOU. ”Why not fight harder? Make them listen,” Dirty Dancing
WHAT WOULD YOU RECOMMEND TO OTHER YOUNG BUSINESS PEOPLE LOOKING TO SUCCEED? Learn as much as you can from veterans in the industry. Internships are the key to a successful career.
HOW DO BUSINESS PEOLE UNDER 40 DIFFER FROM OLDER BUSINESS PEOPLE? They are willing to take more risks because they do not have as much to lose.
NAME ANOTHER YOUNG ENTREPRENEUR AND COMPANY THAT YOU ADMIRE. Michael Freeman/Digigraph Design (and it’s not just because he’s my cousin).
YOU’RE ON A 10-HOUR TRIP TO ASIA, WHO DO YOU WANT SITTING NEXT TO YOU? Annie Leibovitz (photographer)
FAVORITE STRESS REDUCERS. Acupuncture with Dr. Zhao.
FAVORITE MUSICIANS. Dave Matthews Band, Lady Antebellum, Damien Rice, Coldplay, Kanye West, John Mayer
WHAT ARE YOU MOST PASSIONATE ABOUT? My husband, our four dogs, WO Smith School and photography. (www.macphotos.net)
Cardwell’s company helps musicians find additional revenue
SUCCESS CAME EARLY. TO WHAT DO YOU ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS? Determination and hard work. Realizing there is a solution to every problem. [READ MORE]
Entrepreneur speaks at MTSU July 10
11/17/09
11/17/09
Entrepreneur speaks at MTSU July 10
Marcie Cardwell will be speaking at MTSU on the July 10. Cardwell is the president of MAC Presents.
She will give a presentation about her 10+ years of experience in the concert promotion and sponsorship
field. She will also speak in deep about the burgeoning industry of corporate alliances with music tours and
artists.
Entrepreneur speaks at MTSU July 10
Marcie Cardwell will be speaking at MTSU on the July 10. Cardwell is the president of MAC Presents. [READ MORE]
Matchmaker for artists, sponsors always looks for the perfect fit
11/17/09
11/17/09
Matchmaker for artists, sponsors always looks for the perfect fit
The drop in compact disc sales, combined with a cluttered advertising environment, has brought performers and corporations together in recent years, helping boost the business of music sponsorships to a record $1 billion in 2007.
One of the people cashing in on that boom has been Marcie Allen Cardwell, a Nashville native who acquired a taste for live music ever since booking the group Megaphonics for her senior prom at Harpeth Hall in the early 90s. Cardwell started her live-event marketing company, MAC Presents, in 2004 after moving back to Nashville from Atlanta, where she ran a firm that handled booking and produced music festivals, including Riverfront Park’s former Thursday night concert series Dancin’ in the District.
In her 10-person company’s new offices above the honky-tonks on Lower Broadway, Caldwell sat down with Tennessean Assistant Business Editor Ryan Underwood to discuss sponsorships for artists such as Tim McGraw, LeAnn Rimes and John Mayer, as well as the effect the economy might have on summer concerts.
Can you start by explaining what MAC Presents does?
We are a sponsorship and fulfillment agency. What that means is that … we help identify artists that a particular brand would want to sponsor. For instance, with John Mayer and BlackBerry, he’d never done a corporate sponsorship deal, but was interested in finding one — this is when I was working as a consultant to Creative Artists Agency. So he, his management, CAA and I all sat down and figured out what companies he was open to working with, one of which was BlackBerry. From there, I reached out to the event-marketing firm George P. Johnson and a deal got done.
What is the starting point for most deals — does it typically start with an artist or a company?
The starting point is when we get a phone call. Sometimes we work for the artist and sometimes we work for the brand. We help artists identify particular brands that they’d be willing to associate themselves with. Or if we’re on the brand side, we help them identify artists who could represent their brand, which is much more of a challenge and a risk, because, one day, somebody could be crystal clear and the next they’re in rehab.
How do you go about pairing a brand with an artist?
Whenever we sit down with a brand, there’s always a story. The way we secured a sponsorship deal for Tim McGraw and Faith Hill’s Soul2Soul Tour last year, for example, started when one of my colleagues was watching Oprah.
Tim and Faith were on the show telling a story about when they first decided to date each other exclusively. They were sitting in a red, 1976 CJ6 Jeep that belonged to one of the crew guys. They were telling her that they now own that Jeep and go out on the farm in it; and it means so much to them. Well, my colleague came in and said: “We’ve got to pitch Jeep.”
This was four minutes on Oprah — I mean, are you kidding, this was unbelievable. And to see the way that Tim and Faith’s faces lit up when they were talking about this Jeep.
We took a meeting with the ad agency, the event agency and with Jeep. I opened up the meeting with the Oprah clip and then said, “I don’t know if there’s much more that I need to say here.” It was a perfect fit. Jeep was launching its new Jeep Wrangler, and Tim and Faith were heading out on tour. What better to go along with a summer concert tour than a Jeep? It was an unbelievable partnership — of course it doesn’t always happen like that.
Does landing a deal have more to do with gut instincts or is there research behind it?
There’s so much research — it’s one of the reasons I am up to 10 employees now. You’ve got Q Scores and market trend watches and SoundScan album sales and ticket sales and on and on. When you’re working with an artist or brand, they expect you to know everything about who’s sitting across the table from them.
Having said that, it has to be a natural fit. It can’t be forced.
We did a deal with Estancia Wine and LeAnn Rimes. She was doing a video shoot for “Good Friend and a Glass of Wine,” and was looking for a wine partner. We picked up the phone and called the wine company. They had heard the song, thought, “Wow, that would be so perfect.” LeAnn Rimes reaches exactly the demographic they were going after.
With Tim McGraw, we closed a deal for his summer tour with Kingsford Charcoal and KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce. The way this started is that I had heard that Tim, and especially his band the Dancehall Doctors, like to grill out sometimes backstage before the show.
So I asked, “What kind of grill are they using?” Well, not a gas grill. They’re using charcoal, they’re firin’ it up. So, KC Masterpiece and Kingsford sponsored the tour.
We’re the matchmaker. We want the best deal for both sides because here’s the thing … if one side isn’t happy, the relationship won’t mean anything.
Has that selectivity limited your ability to get deals done?
For me, it’s not about quantity. It’s about quality. I may not close 150 deals a year, but the 10 to 15 deals I do close are meaningful and not forced, and the relationships continue.
What is the size of the deals you’re doing and how does your company get paid?
These sponsorships are usually seven figures plus. We always work off a percentage of that. We get paid once a deal is signed, and as they say, once the check clears.
It’s very hard. You’ll work on a deal sometimes for six or eight months and obviously if you don’t close a deal, you don’t get paid. We don’t work on retainer. We make money when the deal closes. And we deal with everything from start to finish — from identifying either the brand or the artist to negotiating the contract to actually putting up all the signs and banners at concerts. Right now, we’ve got three people on the road with John Mayer and two on the road with Tim McGraw.
It seems like you came into the touring space at the right time.
I would love to sit here and say it was planned. There was $1 billion in music sponsorships in 2007, which has doubled in the last four years. It’s booming. Sponsorships have been around for years, but not necessarily as actively as they have been in music.
How will the economic slowdown — or gas prices — affect your business?
Obviously, the economy is cyclical. It’s up, down, up, down. I was in Atlanta when 9/11 happened. Our office was evacuated because we were a block away from the CNN Center. And I was scared that everybody would be afraid to come to the festivals I owned then. We were doing 50,000 people a night every Friday in Centennial Olympic Park.
But even by the summer of 2002, attendance at all of our festivals was up from the previous year. No matter what happens with the economy, music will still be there. What was the first thing that was done after 9/11? They held a big televised music fundraiser. It was all about the music.
Do you see any danger with there being too much clutter in the sponsorship space? Is there a danger an artist could lose credibility with too many corporate connections?
I don’t think they lose credibility at all — not when it’s done right. It’s not like these products are being integrated into the show. John Mayer doesn’t answer his BlackBerry in the middle of a set. And as a music fan at heart, in the deals I do, I would never let that happen.
In terms of clutter, let’s be honest, nobody’s watching TV anymore without skipping through commercials with TiVo. That’s why, when I’m sitting with a brand and they’re discussing their multimillion-dollar ad buy, I’ll say wouldn’t you want to reach out and touch your consumer? Don’t you want to have one-on-one, interactive marketing? That’s just a fancy way to describe what sponsorships are.
MAC Presents started in 2004. But you had owned another business previously, MAD Events and Booking. What’s different this time?
My husband came up with the name MAC Presents. It’s the initials for my name, but it also stands for “Music and Companies.” He said before, you were bringing music to consumers with your festivals. Now, you’re connecting music with companies. And it’s true, I’ve taken little pieces of all the different jobs and experiences I’ve had and been (able) to create a whole business around it.
Are there any key lessons you took from your first business?
First of all, I’m trying not to rush. Also, I don’t want to spread myself too thin, which I think I probably still need to work on. I have brought in a chief operating officer, Cande Cook, who ran student activities at Vanderbilt University for years and years, so I could focus on selling, which is what I do best.
Do you go to a lot of concerts?
I do. With 14 years in the business, and having owned my own festivals, it’s different. The only place I really go see shows is the Ryman — I love it there. It moves me. It inspires me. I’d say I’m at 75 percent of the shows put on at the Ryman. But it’s not the same for me anymore going to arena shows.
What about festivals — have you been to Bonnaroo?
I’ve never been to Bonnaroo. My husband and my dad go every year — together actually, which is kind of funny. But it’s hard for me to go to festivals and enjoy myself and not be stressed out about picking things apart when they really don’t have anything to do with me. But I never ran a venue like the Ryman, so I don’t go in and say that’s wrong and that’s wrong.
I go to a festival and, my God, they don’t have enough Porta-Johns. Look how long the line is at will-call. They’re out of water. Their beer isn’t cold. You know, I don’t think my friends and family really like going to festivals with me.
Matchmaker for artists, sponsors always looks for the perfect fit
The drop in compact disc sales, combined with a cluttered advertising environment, has brought performers and corporations together in recent years, helping boost the business of music sponsorships to a record $1 billion in 2007.