Hey guys,
Here are some tips from the Affiliate Summit West 2012 Keynote by Jon Spoelstra, President of New Jersey Nets at Caesar’s Palace on Mon 9th Jan 2012:
Jon was President of New Jersey Nets NBA team. They did direct response only – if they couldn’t measure the response, they didn’t do it
They sent out 70,000 letters to a list of people that had attended Nets games, for every $1 cost to print and mail they get $10 back
Did 6 of these before the season and the ratio stayed the same
Asked a team that spent $6m a year, he said how much does that result in ticket sales? They said we don’t know, we just do branding
Steve Jobs – excited when the players could fit 1000 songs, other execs said why would you want more than 12 songs on a device? Sony invented portable music but missed this one entirely.
Apple makes more money off music than they do off computers, all started as “new is a way of life”
Your antennae have to be up all the time
Didn’t have the best players – signed player Yanka (?) who played 2400mins and never got an assist, Jon says you could put a dead man down on the floor for 2400mins and he would get an assist, the ball would bounce off him go into someone hands and they would get a basket
Jon asked, what is it going to take for us to be able to compete for a championship in 1 year or 2 years? They said money. Jon said, how much more money, says 5 million dollars.
They said to compete for a championship you need 2 superstars, and we only have 1 (Derek Coleman – he wanted it written into his contract that he didn’t have to practice with the team and wouldn’t get fined)
When Jon asks companies “What is it going to take for you to do this?” they always say money, and nobody can ever say how much
Push the outrageous envelope
But vet the idea yourself before you go to someone else, so you have already thought what they naysayer is going to whack you with
Jon said he wanted to hand out jockstraps, wanted to do 500,000 tickets so need 500,000 jockstraps, his colleague nicknamed “Phil the Chinaman” came back and said $3 each, so $1.5m.
