Phoenix Suns Gorilla Signs The First Team Mascot Endorsement Deal
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
One common question we receive from brands looking to partner with sports properties is should we consider assets or opportunities that are not typically considered as traditional activation opportunities. The new Guest List partnership with the Phoenix Suns Gorilla mascot announced earlier this week is a good example of how brands can expand their partnership consideration set.
The Gorilla, also known as GO, is one of the most popular mascots in the sports industry for his “outlandish antics” on and off the court. GO is now also the first “professional sports mascot in history to secure an endorsement deal inclusive of select footwear, apparel and accessories, also known as ‘Gorillawear.’”
Why would Guest List, a boutique fashion company based in Phoenix, want to partner with an NBA mascot? The NBA, its teams, and its players have made fashion such an important component of the league’s cultural identity that GQ magazine now even has an “Early-Season NBA Style Report.”
B6A also completed our own research using our Audience Inference Platform (AIP). AIP uses our natural language processing (NLP) capabilities and proprietary algorithms to surface keywords and topics of interest from organic conversations of any Twitter account with over 900 followers. We have seen that fashion and apparel are often frequent topics of interests for NBA fans across multiple accounts.
Fan’s organic interest in a company’s product or service offering is only one way that value is likely to be maximized in this partnership. Guest List’s new partnership with GO also demonstrates one of the specific contexts where maximizing brand awareness drives partnership value.
B6A’s Corporate Asset Valuation Model (CAV) was built to determine how specific companies generate specific value from specific activations. Many large companies do not benefit greatly from partnerships that maximize brand awareness because they are already very well known. For example, the brands may have more awareness nationally and regionally than the team does even within its own market.
For smaller companies, like Guest List, maximizing awareness does drive significant value. Partnering with a team such as the Suns likely enables the Guest List to reach a larger number of current and potential customers interested in fashion than the company could achieve on its own.
However, the Suns and Guest List found a novel way to maximize brand awareness by moving beyond traditional activations. More specifically, having the “first team mascot endorsement deal” generated earned media attention that does not frequently occur with partnership announcements.
For example, Nick DePaula who “cover(s) the sneaker industry & NBA shoe deals” for ESPN, has over 45.9 thousand followers on Twitter, and has 49.5 thousand followers on Instagram. His tweet on the Guest List / GO partnership, which focused on this being the first team mascot deal, generated over 4,500 engagements in a less than 24-hour period after the announcement.
It is very unlikely DePaula would be talking about Guest List or the company would receive this level of engagement without the company having the Suns partnership or this being the first team mascot deal. DePaula’s Tweet is only one example of the earned media attention this announcement received.
To clarify, there are good reasons that more traditional team activations are either included or need to be considered when companies are evaluating partnership spend with a team. They can drive significant value particularly when they align with a company’s specific revenue and brand goals.
The GO / Guest List partnership demonstrates a specific example where non-traditional asset consideration can drive value by driving brand awareness. The Suns deserve credit for identifying GO as a novel activation opportunity and partnering with a company that likely can maximize value from both a fit and brand awareness perspective.