Jeff Bail has come a long way from working on Grey Poupon’s Rolls Royce campaign in the 1980s. Back then, Bail worked mostly in the area of internal brand management and promotions. He worked on
Soft Scrub, Del Monte, Nabisco Cereals, Hawaiian Punch, and Clorox.
Pretty standard stuff for a classically trained marketer like Bail, who has a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University
and a master’s degree from Northeastern University. But the ’80s were also a time of growth in a nascent part of the field that caught his interest: sports marketing. And Bail knew early that he
wanted to be in that business.
But back then, a lot of the people doing sports marketing didn’t come from a marketing background at all. Many came up from the individual sports, whether
arranging golf or tennis tournaments or working their way up from taking tickets at a baseball or football game. Bail, however, saw a need to merge marketing sensibility and experience with the
possibilities that sports presented to maximize a client’s brand, products, or services. In those early days when sports marketing was just about to take off, that focus was often missing or left
behind in the event itself.
It’s a gap that Bail has tried to address ever since, through his work with his own sports marketing and sponsorship firm S3 and now in his affiliation with
DraftWorldWide as SVP entertainment and sports marketing in its Chicago office. "I haven’t looked back since," he says. S3 merged with DraftWorldWide in the summer.
Bail began working at
Draft on Aug. 1. He has developed and managed hundreds of integrated sports marketing, promotion, and media programs for Sara Lee, Carrier/United Technologies, Pennzoil, Nicor Energy, and Pharmacia.
Bail has worked with just about every major sports organization, including PGA/LPGA, NFL, NCAA, NHL, MLB, NASCAR, and Major League Soccer, plus the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Through his
sports marketing work and his adjunct professorship at Northwestern University in Chicago, Bail advocates an integrated approach. Sports marketing is somewhat different than other fields because it
comprises a combination of advertising, public relations, direct response, and promotions. The best way to use sponsorships and promotion to an advertiser’s greatest advantage is to use the particular
sports property as a common thread to reach the target audience or audiences, he says.
"This is a field that needs more and more specification, bridging the gap between brand positioning
and image and strategy," he says. That’s a heavy way of explaining what Bail believes, which is that sports touch just about every part of American life, from teenagers interested in adventure sports
to seniors into golf or tennis. That comes from, among other things, taking a step back and looking at the demographic and psychographic profile of an advertiser’s target, and then deciding the best
venue to reach that audience.
In Bail’s previous firm, S3, he helped First Midwest Bank use motor sports to target the loyal enthusiasts who might be interested in banking. "We treat
sports marketing as an asset that needs to be managed, just like an investment," he says. "It’s got to be actively indulged and planned properly. We are very strict in keeping to the ROI and goals of
our client.”