It is now towards the final few weeks of the internship. After the New Orleans Saints training camp scouting visit, I was tasked with the scouting of Netflix and Pandora Radio for paid advertisements. Like Discovery + and Hulu, Netflix’s advertisements were strategically placed throughout an episode and many of them were repetitive, resulting in hours of watching different genres of shows. Much like the other streaming platforms, there was also an issue with advertisements being skipped, on Netflix and Pandora Radio. The advertisements on Pandora Radio were placed at random intervals and were also very repetitive. After finishing this assignment within a number of days and completing my move back to Ohio for fall camp for Tiffin’s football program, I was given my last assignment of scouting the news channels Fox 36 and WTOL 11, based out of the Toledo market area. Like the previous news stations I have done, it was repetitive to watch through and find paid commercials and sponsored content for the news stations. WTOL 11 was the first news station that I have seen that had multiple companies sponsor a weather extended forecast segment, as seen below. I think that this internship was a great opportunity to learn more about the behind-the-scenes action that takes place with partnerships and sponsorships. It was very rewarding to know that my information that I collected could be useful for organizations and brands in the future. Since this internship took place in the summer there was a lack of in-person events such as professional sports games and entertainment event opportunities to be scouted, however, I think that it was a great learning experience.
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7/28/2023 0 Comments Saints Training Camp ScoutingLike many teams in the National Football League, the New Orleans Saints organization held their annual training camp that leads into the football season. This experience was great for many reasons. I have watched and supported the Saints since I was a young kid as they are the closest professional team to my hometown. It was great to see the practice facility and the players out there for practice. My trip to the Saints training camp was designed to track the numerous sponsors and partners of the New Orleans Saints organization. This was also my first in-person venue scouting event, as all of my other assignments were virtual scouting of websites, TV broadcasts, and streaming services. At this event, I arrived early so that way I could take as many pictures as possible of the numerous amounts of sponsorships and partnerships. For example, surrounding the field, there were barriers set up to separate the players and fans who attended the training camp. On these barriers, there were various companies and their logos throughout the entire facility. There was also banners around the premise that displayed company logos and branding, including a VIP section. This scouting trip will be my favorite experience to come from this internship as I thoroughly enjoyed scouting a live event and being able to watch my favorite professional football team practice. I even got the chance to meet and take pictures with some of the players after their practice was over with. overall, this is my most favorite experience so far during my internship here at Sponsor United.
7/19/2023 0 Comments Discovery + & Hulu ScoutingMuch like scouting a news station showing, scouting streaming platforms is fairly similar in the aspect of collecting advertisements during commercial breaks. The commercial breaks are often spaced out throughout the length of the episode, however, the issues that I ran into was many of the advertisements were the same reruns and the Discovery+ and Hulu streaming services frequently and at random skipped over advertisements. While I would have enjoyed the lack of advertisements if I was casually watching these streaming services, it made it very difficult and time consuming to gather a wide variety of advertisement selections. I watched hours upon hours in order to gather enough advertisements, having to switch from different genres of show selections to receive new advertisements from the algorithm that both Discovery + and Hulu use. While most of the advertisements are nationwide companies and restaurants, there are several companies that are local to Louisiana that I have seen during these advertisements. One of the more common advertisements that are nationwide but also have a local tie within certain areas are the motor vehicle companies. Companies like Ford, Chevrolet, Dodge, Toyota, and many others use the same advertisement in every market, however, at the end of each advertisement, there are localized dealerships within a certain area. On multiple occasions, there are advertisements that are placed on the screen when pausing a show or movie. I have never seen that before that I can remember and I had trouble categorizing it before consulting Andrew about how this would be put into the ProTool.
7/12/2023 0 Comments Fox 8 & WWL ScoutingFor my next assignment, I was tasked with scouting my local TV news stations, Fox 8 and WWL, for advertisements in the form of commercials, company branding in the news studio, and companies sponsoring news segments. For this assignment, I was to watch hours of recorded news castings and to screenshot any paid sponsorship assets that I notice. The majority of the paid sponsorships and partnerships of a news station come from their advertisement slots when news stations go to commercial break. In a single episode of a local news showing, the majority of the commercials are rerun throughout the program. This makes it difficult to gather a lot of paid advertisement slots in a single viewing, so I was tasked with watching multiple news programs of a single day for multiple consecutive days in order to gain a base of consistent companies that regularly pay for these advertisement slots available. In addition to paid advertisements that are ran through commercial breaks, I am also on the look-out for live reads. A live read is an advertisement that is read live on air by a producer or the host, often called endorsement ads. The types of live reads that are featured on news stations is often a company sponsoring a local traffic watch or a weather report before or after a commercial break. In the Sponsor United ProTool, these live reads are tracked and assessed to show companies how they can reach new audiences. The key to identifying and categorizing these types of television advertisements is to watch a lot of the news and to pay attention just in case something is missed.
After the initial meeting with Andrew, we met again to discuss my first major assignment and project. My first task is to scout the Louisiana Marathon’s website and photos online for paid sponsorship companies. There are approximately 305 individual pages of around 20-30 photos each, split up by the two different days of the race. First, I sifted through the website itself for mentions of any official sponsors of the marathon and any sponsored pages of the website itself. After doing this, I then went to the photo albums of the most recent marathon that had took place. I sifted through each photo album, looking at each picture to find sponsorships to track that partnered with the Louisiana Marathon. These sponsorships come in all shapes and sizes, from barriers, the start/finish line, banners hanging on the route, promotional tents, and take-home items. For big events like this, there is a lot of repetition of company branding throughout the entire venue, which makes it hard to keep track of only looking through pictures on the Louisiana Marathon website. Andrew then reached out to me and asked if I had any questions about certain pictures and how to categorize them. He offered some guidance and ways to remember certain advertisements and promotional content that he found useful during his time as a sponsorship scout in the years prior. After I finished looking through all the pictures thoroughly, I took a look at the marathon’s online program pamphlet and found some more examples of official sponsors and page sponsors. After collecting all of the screenshots and inputting it into the Sponsor United ProTool, I am ready for my next big assignment.
After completing the final Red Zone Report, the other interns and myself were given access to advanced training. These mini courses in advance training covered anything we may come across in every imaginable category and sport available. While waiting for my manager to contact me, I took the opportunity to look through some of the course modules for topics like NCAA scouting, in-person venue scouting, and scouting broadcast TV and radio. I was then introduced to my market manager, Andrew Kalmans. Andrew is the market manager for the Houston area, as well as the New Orleans area that I live by. Andrew and I share common interests in the Houston Astros major league baseball team, as well as college sports, specifically football. He thought it very interesting how I was a current college football player and asked plenty of questions about my college career and experiences in the sport. After talking for a while about each other’s history of education and experiences, Andrew asked me about the reason I chose Sponsor United as my internship and what I would like to achieve during my internship period. This is when we talked about the goals and professional mentor worksheet. I expressed my goals for the internship being to Gain valuable information on the ins and outs of sponsorships and marketing for various events and how it impacts the public and companies. Andrew’s suggestion was to gain as much information and experience throughout the entire internship and to connect with other people within the organization.
6/22/2023 0 Comments End of TrainingIt is a bitter sweet moment that this week is the end of the sponsorship scout training. I am nervous but also excited to get to working on assignments that will add value to the ProTool and the companies that utilize it. In the upcoming third and final Red Zone Report of training, I have heard from other interns and training administrators that it will be tougher than the past two reports. The Red Zone Report is comprised of various sponsorship assets to be tracked that we have gone through over the course of the training process. This report is a collection of photos chosen by the training administrators for the sponsorship scouts to identify and correctly track each asset that we see. Many of the photos used in the Red Zone Report are photos that I have seen throughout the training videos and meetings and I am able to correlate each picture with the correct sponsorship asset. There are a wide range of assets to be tracked, such as sponsored promotions on a team’s website, TV broadcasting advertisements, sponsored services and products available both online and in a venue, and in-game promotional giveaways based on performance. Overall, I think the third Red Zone Report and the training modules has prepared me for the rest of my internship. After the Red Zone Report was graded, Mac reached out congratulating me on completing the sponsorship scout training course. He then told me that within the next few days, my manager would be reaching out to start giving me assignments and I would report to them for the remainder of the internship.
6/8/2023 0 Comments Training ContinuedThe sponsorship training has shifted towards a more identifying different ways companies can promote their company, products, or services that they provide. There are countless ways that companies can utilize promotional content to get their brand to new and existing audiences. For example, in a weekly quiz, called the Red Zone Report, I was tasked with identifying different companies and categorize their paid sponsorships on a variety of different ways to promote a business in an in-person stadium. This includes companies who pay for naming rights of venues, club or level areas within a venue, and various types of signage within or surrounding a venue. Doing this, I learned that there are numerous ways to categorize each type of signage. This part of scouting is very difficult, especially virtually, as it is hard to navigate the ProTool without knowing where to look for the right category for the asset. I could go on and on about the different types of signage that is able to be tracked and categorized. I would have never thought about this just walking through a venue of my own without prior marketing and sponsorship knowledge. This type of promotional content and advertisements is also extended to products and services within a stadium. For example, a company may have a phone charging station with their logo on it or an ATM machine located within the venue that is to be used. It is fairly interesting to see how companies use any surface throughout a venue to promote their business. I had another meeting with Mac Turchan where we talked about how training was going and learning more about each other and our paths of school and work experience. Mac is originally from Canada and currently residing south Florida in the Orlando area. Mac is the market manager for Tampa Bay, Orlando, and leads the North American golf sponsorships through Sponsor United. He started his Sponsor United journey much like I did, as a sponsorship scout in August 2021 and has been with the company ever since, working his way up the ladder.
6/3/2023 0 Comments The Start of TrainingGoing into this internship, I have very limited knowledge of how sponsorships are utilized throughout the sports and entertainment industry. In the beginning of Sponsor United’s training, I watched a collection of videos that explained the fundamentals of marketing and how companies utilize the Sponsor United ProTool and its data to make decisions on sponsorships and companies they would like to partner with in the future. I learned how to identify sponsorships on social media and other channels of communication with the public. The training is aimed towards aiding sponsorship scouts, like myself, in being able to successfully identify and categorize promotional content between companies. For my first assignment in training, I was tasked with using the ProTool to scrape content from the social media platforms of the New Orleans Pelicans. Using this scraping tool, I was able to identify and differentiate posts that included paid sponsorship content and posts that did not have a sponsor’s logo or product and service attached to it. For example, in my first assignment, the images I had grabbed from the scraping tool were posts from the New Orleans Pelicans’ Twitter page that featured a sponsored post from the team’s partners. These partners were Seat Geek, Verizon, and AmeriHealth Caritas. These companies paid for a partnership with the New Orleans Pelicans in order to have their brand broadcasted and to be able to promote certain content through the team’s social media platforms. The training so far has also exposed me to the different forms of promotional content, such as social media platforms, TV and radio broadcast, venue branding, and take home items. I was introduced to my training mentor, Mac Turchan, who was there for me to answer any questions I might have regarding training or any other aspects of the internship itself.
5/30/2023 0 Comments Orientation DayOrientation day has arrived and to be honest, I was very nervous and anxious to start on this internship. Prior to being accepted and invited to intern with Sponsor United, I had near to zero experience within marketing and I have never heard of the company at all. I learned a lot about the company throughout orientation, as well as, listening to a variety of upper management and the CEO Bob Lynch talk about his organization. Bob Lynch started Sponsor United back in 2018, with the mission to simplify the increasingly complex sponsorship ecosystem. Sponsor United’s company objective is to deliver actionable data and insights in order to build strong marketing partnerships and the data and knowledge that they possess allow brands and rights holders to make informed and impactful decisions to drive business. Since its creation, Sponsor United has achieved their goal to become a leading global sports and entertainment intelligence platform. Sponsor United was mentioned in the Inc. 5000 as one of 2022 and 2023’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies in America. The company covers the majority of all professional sports organizations, but also covers a broad range of properties, brands, agencies, and media companies in over 29 countries worldwide. After hearing the story of the company and accolades that Sponsor United has accumulated, myself and the other interns present got to listen to other members of the leadership team, expressing their gratitude and opening their arms to welcome us into their organization. Once the initial orientation ended, there was a newcomer Q&A that I attended that went into more detail about the company and what the company strives to do. I felt better about the position I was in after the orientation and the newcomer Q&A as a lot of the questions I had were answered regarding the internship.
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