Written on June 24, 2009

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Michael Croghan

How to extract more money out of Fry's Electronic vendors to support their Arena Football team and increase ticket sales

In 1997 John Fry owner of Fry's Electronics (which is the 5th largest consumer electronics retailer in the nation) and owner of then San Jose Saber Cats, Arena Football League team wanted to generate more partnership money and increase ticket sales for his team. They were already the number one sponsor team in the league. All the money came from vendor co-op money from Fry's vendor's deep pockets. I was hired that year as VP marketing and tasked with increasing the revenue generated by vendors. In the teams five years in the league they only did deals with Fry's stores and its vendors. They wanted me to think out of the box and create new revenue.

The first thing I did was to evaluate all current partnership deals and I determined there was little or no room to manipulate funds form the current vendor deals in place. They only did deals on a year by year basis. The reason was they never knew if a vendor would be on the shelf from year to year. They wanted to expand the exposure of the team to a wider audience to increase the game day attendance. The power of owning a retail store that wheels a lot of advertising dollars and vendor support are awesome. John asked me how I would accomplish the goal of increased partnership and tickets sales out side the way they had been doing business.

This is what I told him we needed to do. Fry's sells a ton on snack food products at the front end on the store in the check out stand area. In fact Coke and Pepsi were selling so much product it was and still is considered the number one non-traditional incremental sales in the nation. Coke was a $10K sponsor of the team. I asked John how much money he would like to get from them that year. He joked and said $150K, I they asked him if he was willing to kick Pepsi or Coke out of all his stores if they would agree to partner with the team for the $150K deal. He agreed and I called Coke. They came right down and in two days Pepsi was removed from the stores. I also knew that Fry's was the largest annual buyer on eight of the top Radio stations in the San Francisco ADI. The next step was to leverage the power of Coke the Radio stations and the team. I formulate a plan that would incorporate all the Radio Stations, Coke and two of their major grocery store accounts. When all the stations came into pitch Fry's on there annual business I asked to set in on the pitch sessions. My plan that I presented to the stations was if they wanted Fry's annual buy they would have to do the following.

Each radio station would give the Saber Cats 2,000 spots during the season that we could in-turn use to promote a season long promotion with Coke, Safeway, Nob Hill Markets and California Motorcycles Company, a custom motorcycle manufacture (CMC). They would also do a special live radio remote at Safeway and Nob Hill stores each week for twelve weeks. Coke would do POP / POS, secure off shelf end-caps in Safeway and Nob Hill, buy additional radio spots and create a discount ticket point of purchase promotion.

The retailer had mentions in the ROP ads for one month promoting the bike motorcycle giveaway and ticket discount. The promotion was, buy any two twelve pack of Coke products and get a buy one get one free tickets to a game and a chance to win the CMC mototcycle built a custom Saber Cat Bike in exchange for mentions in all radio advertising and Cokes pop/pos.

At the end of the season the tickets sales were increased by twenty percent and two games were sold out, a first for the team. Coke's incremental sales in Fry's doubled that year and the promotion was a complete success. Over 150,000 :30 radio spots on six radio stations for the Saber Cats, Coke, Safeway, Nob Hill, and CCM valued on Nielsen rationings at over $2,000,000. Taking a simple promotion and integrating it with as many different partners will create endless opportunities. To this day Coke is still the only soda pop sold in Fry's Electronics.