In sports, brand messaging is a game of its own. To make progress on policy efforts, brand awareness, event sponsorship, or your reputation, you need messaging that resonates with audiences from many different backgrounds. A few media figures or opinion leaders can have an outsized impact on your results.
Fortunately, the sports industry offers many convenient opportunities to engage influential audiences. You can support your brand messaging with events that naturally tie into key moments in your sports calendar. With the momentum of a thrilling sports moment, you can unify target audiences across cultures, generations, and political viewpoints.
Sports event planning companies can help you develop the right strategy to reach your target audience, whether it’s celebrities, bipartisan policy leaders, or potential sponsors. There are a few different ways you may want to approach event planning, depending on your brand messaging goals:
1. Event Planning to Promote Your Product or Policy Priorities
Events can help you draw attention to something you’ve been working on as an organization. With the right kind of event planning, you can raise awareness of a product or policy priority and communicate its importance to your most influential audiences.
This situation is a great time to plan an event that brings opinion leaders together. Your event will provide opportunities to build positive connections with audiences who may be open to partnerships or your policy priorities. The thrill of a major sports moment can help you unite disparate groups and set your plans in motion.
For example, Immersive Strategies recently helped a client secure strategic partnerships based on their priorities through an event celebrating a much-anticipated game. Even in a polarizing political environment, the event cultivated relationships with bipartisan policy leaders and other key influencers. We brought a variety of prominent figures together around their enjoyment of the sport, fostering a sense of unity and strengthening our client’s brand equity.
To make the public aware of your new priorities, you can then hold a press conference and bring media attention to new partnerships or engagement opportunities for fans. Some sports event planning companies, like Immersive Strategies, can help you with media relations and press readiness.
2. Event Planning to Raise Brand Awareness
Event marketing can also help your brand build awareness. Smaller events, like dining experiences, allow you to form strong connections with thought leaders who can reinforce your messaging with the general public or audiences that are harder to reach. If you invite influential opinion leaders to a fun or meaningful event, you can give them positive associations with your brand. In turn, those opinion leaders will be more likely to talk about your brand with their audience and boost your messaging.
Virtual or hybrid events can expand your reach to a wider audience. An event that features an influential speaker or famous attendee can spark interest from audiences who may not have otherwise shown interest.
Press events are especially effective for raising brand awareness. With the right media guidance and network access, you can gain press coverage that builds a buzz.
3. Event Planning to Boost Your Brand Reputation
Strategic events can have a large impact on the emotions people associate with your brand. A carefully designed event creates warm memories for influential attendees, who will then share their thoughts with their own audiences and add to your brand reputation.
Let’s say your brand hopes to engage both new and old fans more effectively, including audiences who could help with event sponsorships. You can work with a sports event planning company to put together a message, a strategic roadmap for partnerships and sponsorships, and a media amplification strategy to reach a wider audience.
From there, you can plan a series of events where influential audiences can connect with your brand’s key players or famous former athletes. These events can include major games, season openings, or key moments in your sports calendar. This strategy will help you engage the people you most need to reach around their shared love of the sport, and by extension, your new brand messaging.
For example, the Immersive Strategies team helped our client plan their game-based event at an intimate waterfront venue in Washington, D.C. We gave attendees exclusive opportunities to take photos with legendary former players and other league memorabilia, as well as to engage with other cultural figures at the event. The event allowed our client to forge compelling activations with several Fortune 500 companies, which elevated their brand while also optimizing event expenses.
You can maximize the impact of your campaign with a solid event marketing plan. Good event marketing will convince more people to attend, then reinforce your brand messaging during and after the event. It’s important to choose careful messaging that resonates with all of the audiences you want to reach.
Once you have a general campaign plan and messaging strategy, the question is how you can maximize your events to achieve your brand goals.
How to Plan a Successful Event For Your Sports Brand
In this industry, the most successful events typically capture the existing magic of the sports experience. However, you don’t necessarily want to recreate a neighborhood game day party. You will want to adapt your event to the audience while still leaning into nostalgia and the present moment.
Depending on your sports event goals, a creatively designed event space or a well-selected fine dining establishment can set the stage for making important connections. The right venue will work together with carefully chosen décor, food, and music to captivate your audience’s senses. The goal is to create the best atmosphere for the experience and for your audience.
Regardless of your venue, the key to sports event success is to create standout moments where people can engage with both the event and with each other. Excellent food is essential, as are key players or talent whenever you can bring them in. For instance, giving your attendees the opportunity to meet their sports heroes is usually a winning move.
The event itself can do a lot for your brand messaging, but communications are critical, too. You will need strategic event marketing to get people to the event in the first place. Social media and other platforms can reinforce your messaging at the event.
Sports connect people across cultures, age groups, geographical backgrounds, and politics. You can lean into that unifying excitement to forge connections that would be difficult in most other settings.
Sports Event Planning With Immersive Strategies
Immersive Strategies is an event planning firm that has successfully worked with a number of global sports organizations. We can help you connect with influential audiences and achieve your brand messaging goals. Our team can assist with:
- Producing and managing sports events that leave a lasting impact
- Crafting brand messaging narratives that resonate with people from many backgrounds in today’s culture while remaining on-brand
- Engaging opinion leaders and potential partners to amplify your brand’s reach
- Utilizing our vast network to establish strategic partnerships and sponsorships that mitigate event costs
Reach out to us today for end-to-end event planning that will reinforce your brand messaging.
