Ultimate Fighter Teams up with DealerSocket

Jeff,
That is really cool. As huge UFC fan I am glad to see DealerSocket think out of the norm for advertising. GO FAST, a Colorado sports drink was an early adopter to the UFC back in the day. MMA has really taken over. The Vera vs. Jardine fight is going to be a good one.

Didn't you get into the Ultimate Fighting ring last Wednesday night at LAX in Vegas?????

Yea, someone's lucky I didn't have my bow staff with me that night.

If the local Dealer Socket rep brings this UFC fighter with them on sales calls, I don't think there will be any other choice but to sign on...

That is insane but smart! I would agree with Kevin. I have very close connections with my dealers that are all about UFC!! Hold on Mr. Dealer I also have my close friends Bisping & Leben coming with me I hope you don't mind? Along with the CAGE!! Guaranteed sale! BANG!! UFC is huge and now that the ladies are into that now ( not to be bias ) maybe I should start doing that... Hmmmm? Now I am thinking. I would wear the TK shirts pounding out a deal or two! haha Again great way of marketing!

Good marketing medium? Yeah, I'll give them that, but it seems like a lot of "muda" if you ask me. Perhaps they got some great sponsorship rates but still...not very targeted advertising. What percentage of viewers are going to be decision makers at the dealerships? What percentage of those DM's are going to pay attention to the logos on his robe or trunks? What percentage of those are going to research what the product actually is? And lastly, what percentage of those are going to be in the market for the product? Will dealers be watching the fight? Without a doubt many will. In my opinion though, this sponsorship makes about as much sense as sending a direct mail piece to the entire state of Virginia with hopes of reaching a few dealers. I hope for their sake the ROI is there.

Agreed Joe, branding is a good thing. My only point is that branding to the entire UFC fan base (in my opinion) is the equivalent of using a sledge hammer to hang a picture. Would your dealership run a national superbowl ad with hopes of selling more local customers? A large portion of your reach would be to prospects that would never buy from your dealership. Seems like too much waste to me, and it just doesn't make sense. Sure, a lot of your local shoppers would see the ad, but would it be worth the price tag (even over the long term)? Would DS money be better spent in targeted media like an industry publication or conference sponsorship? I think so. Again, I'm not sure what sort of rates they've negotiated, but I'm assuming they're fairly high for something on the national stage. I would bet that for whatever they're paying they could instead pay for an entire campaign targeted to their actual market which would make a bigger impact. Again, I hope for their sake it pays off, but even over the long term I don't think they'll see a good ROI. I do have to give them credit for an unconventional campaign though, and I hope it works out for them.

Jake, This sponsorship is more about spirit than ROI. It's an exercise in branding and branding is all about connecting emotions to a product. A frustrated CEO's Example: If your sales have plateaued and your daily efforts are not changing the trend, then, it maybe time for a good hard look at your branding. Branding experiments are big and expensive and not easy to find ROI (quickly). Pulling the trigger on these kinds expenses often require leaders take a chance and go with their gut. UFC is new and fresh and has a killer under 50 male demo. Possibly DealerSocket has been to enough of our auto industry events to see that a lot of the decision makers are into UFC and the UFC demos are expanding (aka room for growth). just my $0.02 Joe

I'm with Joe on this, it's about the spirit. Sometimes I think we get too cynical within this industry, so something like this is refreshing. Now I have to get back to work, I have a 3rd party lead vendor coming in with their new Sales rep, his name is Kimbo Slice and I hear that he will offer me a deal I cannot refuse...

I think Mile One should sponsor Anderson Silva!

@Shaun - I'll get right in that! Sokoudjou got cracked. I would guess that DealerSocket knows someone that knows someone and got a nice deal on the sponsorship. Who knows..maybe there was an internal bet and this sealed the deal. Eitherway, I hear DealerSocket is doing quit well.

Sokoudjou did get pounded. He did come out hard and strong and damn! His legs are HUGE!! That boy has a lot of power but as they said there are the disadvantages for the large muscle mass. Too Bad. Dealersocket did a good job on getting their name out there that way. Maybe I will have to throw in my sponsor! Can you see JEN SCHRADER on one of their rears? I sure can, okay enough of those thoughts but it was a good idea for that short hot moment!

Jake, This is a wonderful exercise in exploring the variables in marketing. Your review was a top down. You start with the advertisement/sponsorship itself, look at its audience and drill all the way down to your prospect base. You run the numbers and you see a lot of waste and... You are right. Flip your study and go bottom up. Start with projected profit per sale (over the life of your avg contract), put a number on the size of your prospect base (25k dealers?), estimate how many of your unsold prospect base are UFC followers (example: if 3% then = 750 dealers) and NOW you've got an idea on how to "work" the UFC sponsorship. If you can identify 750 rabid UFC fans in your audience, what would that be worth to you? UFC has a big Vegas connection and has a tour. How hard would it be to exploit? Can you get 75 dealers from this group to give your product a good hard look for 2009? I'd say so. ROI time. Lastly, what's your break even? How many NEW dealers are needed to reach break even? We'll never know, but, we do know that subscriber based software gets exponentially more profitable the higher your counts get.

thnx for the fun!

Joe <---marketing is my middle name

Jonathan, thanks for chiming in and giving us the low down on the sponsorship. It's fantastic to hear that you have had a tremendous response.

Thanks for all the great comments and kudos. This was actually a test for us that worked out really well. (aside from the him losing...) To give you some information to some of the assumptions above:

1. The sponsorship was driven by some of our internal people that train with Sokoudjou and Team Quest

2. The sponsorship was relatively cheap due to the relationships in play and compared to how much some of the other direct to the industry related stuff that we do... NADA, Autonews, etc... are not cheap.

3. We have had a tremendous response from those that we thought we would hear from as well as a great response from people that I thought we would never hear from... We will have some great follow up ads coming in some of the publications building on the theme. And Sokoudujou will also be at our booth on Sunday and Monday at NADA.

Regardless of the lose he is a great guy and is extremely thick!

On a side note we also helped the Galpin Automotive group this last weekend at a charity event for three charities in LA... Galpin did a great job and had Ozzy, Slash, Dave Navaro... all playing on stage together! It was an amazing time and good to be a part of... Hopefully we can all find better and more efficient ways of getting people to understand more about our products and services with the end result to SELL and SERVICE more cars.

Thanks to all for commenting and giving us some other good ideas... if you post some additional ones we will try to try them as well! Best, Jonathan Ord if you have not seen our stuff lately please take a look!

That is awesome. It is great publicity and I believe it will help the company stay strong in the market.

Yeah That is awesome!

so how was this sponsorship executed? i watched the fights and the rerun at 1am, and i saw nothing.

Great idea, they just need to pick a fighter who can fight. Pick Diego Sanchez or JSP next time.