A few weeks ago, Dawn Hudson got a call from some of her old high school friends. They happened to be in town near her, and though they realized it was unlikely, they wondered if she might be free for lunch – within the next half hour.
Despite having a demanding job as chief marketing officer for the National Football League, Hudson decided to try, but she didn’t want to go in empty-handed. So, like many marketers, she opened a closet filled with old promotional items and grabbed a few T-shirts and caps.
“You would have thought I gave them the world when I gave them this old merchandise,” Hudson said during a keynote last week at the Advertising Speciality Institute Power Forum in Miami, a portion of which was recorded and posted on YouTube. “It was a good reminder that when you pick the right item with the right person, magic happens.”
That magic is particularly powerful in sports, Hudson added, something she said she’s learned since coming to the NFL two years ago.
“For all the great merchandise I’ve been involved with, from the Pepsi logo and thinking it was fantastic, or the Mountain Dew logo, thinking it was a symbol of youth and attitude… nothing compares with putting a little logo of the Cowboys or the Bears or the Giants (on something),” she said. “Even the NFL, that takes a lot of hits, is of such great value.”
Hudson passed on a few other words of wisdom in the short online clip, such as remembering that technology is there to help understand consumer but is not an end itself, and toe continue to focus on creativity. It is the work she and her team have been doing in events, however – figuring out where to stage the Super Bowl or run the Draft, for instance – that has brought home the biggest lessons.
“When we sell merchandize at the draft, we don’t sell the T-shirts. What we sell is experience. What people buy is a momento of that experience,” she said. “Experience is a buzzword today, but I think we have to remember that a lot of what you create are lasting memories . . . What you offer people has so much more meaning when it’s par to that experience.”
