How to Create a Distinct Entity around a Sports Partnership: The Duke’s Mayo Bowl Story

Pick a college football bowl game. Any will do. What is the 'brand' of the bowl game? Does it have a distinctiveness that colors the perception, even a personality, that's consistent over time?

The Rose Bowl has its pageantry and the Sugar Bowl has its New Orleans location, but for most of the decades-long history of the dozens of bowl games and their various sponsors over the years, there wasn't much distinctiveness to speak of. But when Miller Yoho rejoined the Charlotte Sports Foundation (following a stint earlier in his career), he and the team there had a hunch a strong brand could help them stand out and, in doing so, set a foundation to raise all KPIs for the bowl game they ran in Charlotte — today known as the Duke's Mayo Bowl (previously the Belk Bowl, among others). Because while bowl games are by definition an annual ephemeral entity, creating something distinct can be lasting.

"We've taken the long approach in understanding brand building is important," said Yoho, Director of Marketing and Communications for the Charlotte Sports Foundation, which runs the Duke's Mayo Bowl, Jumpan Invitational, and other Charlotte-based sports events. "People have seen our strategy for the Duke's Mayo Bowl — [that] started in 2014 when it was the Belk Bowl, understanding that no one was going to buy a bowl game ticket in October, so why not just be a part of the college football ecosystem? Why not have fun? Why not make jokes? And by doing that, people developed an affinity for the game and it became a destination rather than being matchup-dependent.

"Now we're still very matchup-dependent, but TV tune-in, things like that — people see the Duke’s Mayo Bowl as something they want to see. And we do have fans coming because of how much fun we are, how we wink at the camera and do all that."

There are so many bowl games crammed together in December that they can start to blend together, so Yoho and his team sought to be a purple cow amidst the herd. To put the game on the map — which would attract attention, drive more value for the eponymous partner, and increase the platform of the bowl game and the organization behind it overall.

There's a delicate dance, however, in developing a brand for the bowl game that necessarily comingles with the title sponsor. Because while title sponsors don't hold those spots in perpetuity (see the history of most any bowl game and the shifts in sponsors over the years), they are right there on the marquee of any and all bowl game brand accounts. The trick is finding those intersections, the north star for any good partnership, and building a relationship of trust and collaboration.

"[The Duke's Mayo team] is aligned in what we're trying to do," said Yoho, who noted that Duke's Mayo already has strong brand recognition in the south while they aim to increase their growing platform as a national brand. "They understand our mission, we understand theirs. It's aligned. They push us...There is that constant healthy pushing to be the best possible. They understand and we understand [that] we want our games to stand alone. We want in the crowded bowl season marketplace of 40 other sponsors, we want Duke's Mayo to be unique, and we want the Duke's Mayo Bowl to be unique."

Yoho continued, addressing the harmonious coexistence but distinctiveness of the Duke's Mayo and Duke's Mayo Bowl brands.

“Now, you do have two different brands," he said. "You have the Duke's Mayo brand and the Duke’s Mayo Bowl. There are places they intersect and there's places where they probably are not on the same train track — but the train tracks run parallel. I shouldn't be doing something that they deem inappropriate in the same way that they're not going to speak about the game in a way that isn't going to relate.

"So there's a lot of healthy conversations and dialogue. We meet year-round weekly just to talk through things and activations. And we're blessed in that they’re like rocket fuel to everything we do, they provide the substance to make all the marketing fun."

At the most basic level, both entities seek to reach and engage college football fans. That's who the Duke's Mayo Bowl wants to attract to buy tickets, tune in to watch, and consume their ancillary content; and to meaningfully reach that audience is why a brand like Duke's Mayo invests in a bowl game sponsorship in the first place. As Yoho noted earlier, the Duke's Mayo Bowl is just the name of an annual game until the opponents get announced. Yoho and his team can't affect those teams, but they can create a brand that gets fans and players of any team excited to get selected for the Duke's Mayo Bowl by building an appealing brand and reputation. It all works together, too, in that creating a valuable and distinct brand produces a valuable platform for a partner like Duke's Mayo.

It starts to sound pretty simple and logical in those terms, and Yoho's remit is clear in that the best thing he can do is create a distinct brand that's attractive to the broad college football fan base.

“There's a lot of trial and error and discovery and now it's become secondhand in terms of understanding, like, all we have to do is understand what college football is, which is probably the most chaotic and flawed of all sports and constantly changing, but lean into that and have fun and understand that it's also because of that it's beautiful," said Yoho, articulating the thinking behind the Duke's Mayo Bowl's approach to personality, content, and social media. "I would argue college sports is probably the closest you come to religion in terms of just how you feel in a stadium — so lean into that. A

"And by doing that, it's the long term payoff of you create a brand that people relate to. And then if you have a brand people relate to...[and then] out of left field [it gets announced that] you're playing in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl [fans are] excited because they know that it's a brand that's fun, it doesn't take itself too seriously and they're going to show up and have the time of their lives. So that's the payoff. It's a ten-year bet, but it's paying off."

The beauty of building a sweeping brand, too, is that it transcends social media and makes all the other elements of the game, and its activations, come together organically. It's all too common for 'brand' and 'personality' these days to get narrowly defined as social media copy and content; heck, sometimes 'voice' merely considers the tone of your tweets. But look around the Duke's Mayo Bowl — what you see on the broadcast, the fan experience, the interactive activities around the game — and the consistency stands out, compounding the effectiveness of everything they're trying to do.

And make no mistake, this all looks like fun and games (and it IS fun and games), but there's a point to it all. It's the synergy of putting all the elements together in harmony that leads to outsized results for the Charlotte Sports Foundation, its Duke's Mayo Bowl, and the title sponsor with a twang (Duke's Mayo, iykyk).

"There is the sponsorship fulfillment and we're crushing it in that," said Yoho, discussing the core objectives for his efforts. "Like, I think everyone sees Duke's Mayo as a household name — and it was before in the South, but it's expanded, and in the South it's penetrated even more, and that's due to their trust and awesome and incredible team.

“But also the payoff is the people going to the games, the engagement, what they're doing, and creating a spectacle where the football game is still the most important thing, the people are suiting up and going — but we also created an environment where it is fun to go to. It's different, it's unique; it starts with social, but in the end, if you go in and people are chugging mayo and whatnot, it's part of what we're doing all the way and everything's aligned.”

The terms 'sponsorship' and 'partnership' often get used interchangeably. But make no mistake, the best outcomes come from partnerships. From relationships that aren't a transaction that results in an agreed-upon activation, but a collaboration that starts with a foundation, but builds upon it — through teamwork, through exchange of ideas, through reacting and evolving activations — working together to achieve results that benefit all sides. Look closely enough and you can start to tell them apart — the Duke's Mayo and Duke's Mayo Bowl is undoubtedly a partnership. That truth comes out in the way Yoho describes the year-round meetings for two games all year (the Duke's Mayo Classic and Duke's Mayo Bowl), the mutual trust and alignment of goals, and the results fans see culminate each year with the famous 'mayo dump' that serves as a symbol of all those conversations, strategies, and elements coming together.

Said Yoho: "I think everyone has seen this is, I would say, the epitome of what brand marketing via sponsorship should be. And what’s happened for them and what’s happened for the game.

"That’s what happens when you work in harmony together.”

********************************************************************************

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH MILLER YOHO

READ THE SNIPPETS