Anyone that knows my dad knows that he’s a huge sports fan. He has season tickets to the Texas Rangers baseball games as well as the Dallas Mavericks basketball games, and never misses a game. He usually comes back from the game with some interesting stories, and I remember a few weeks ago he told me something that got my wheels turning. Let me tell you about it…

So he was at the Dallas Mavericks basketball game where someone had won a new car. This wasn’t just any old vehicle though. It was specifically designed to promote the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. Check out this picture to see what I mean…



Pretty cool huh? That’s my dad in the pic by the way, a 2+ year cancer survivor (shameless plug alert)  wearing a t-shirt promoting Dadfest, a 5k race event that benefits prostate cancer awareness and sets up free screenings.  Anyways, to win the contest, the winner had to be the one to guess the correct number of golf balls (of course they were branded with the team logo on one side and the sponsor, Dr. Pepper, on the other) that fit into the vehicles trunk.

I think the Dallas Mavericks are really on to something here. They are taking advantage of what I like to call compound marketing. You know, kind of like compound interest (interest on top of interest), except with marketing. First they promote the contest to win the car, which generates excitement among the fans. To sign up for the contest, they have to fill out a form which helps collect marketing research and demographic information. Of course, the form also helps build the team’s e-mail list. The vehicle itself promotes the team while the proud owner drives it all around Dallas (even in the off season). Oh and after the contest, they handed out those branded golf balls to the participants.

This… dare I say it… orgy of marketing strategy can be used to promote any brand you can think of. Why not promote yours?

I once read somewhere (probably some old marketing textbook) that it takes about 9 or 10 impressions before someone decides to buy from you. In addition, most people discard 4 out of 5 marketing messages (this data could be obsolete, but I’m going to go ahead and run with it… sue me). This means that you may need to reach a person 45 to 50 times with your marketing message to get a sale. Why not take advantage of some compound marketing opportunities so that you can deliver multiple messages at one time?

Think about ways that you can use this to benefit your business. If you come up with something brilliant be sure to let me know so I can steal it… er um share it.