Inside Las Vegas Sports Marketing: Knights $core Golden Billboard Site Near Raiders Stadium
By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com
One of LVSportsBiz.com’s new features is to get inside the mind of Las Vegas’ most prominent sports marketers to find out the strategy behind their marketing moves. This is the debut of “Inside Las Vegas Sports Marketing.”
When LVSportsBiz.com saw that the Vegas Golden Knights landed a prime billboard location next to the Raiders stadium construction site on the west side of Interstate 15 to promote is “Vegas Born” season two mantra, we caught up with VGK Chief Marketing Officer Brian Killingsworth to explain how the Golden Knights scored a prime site for its message.
Here’s Killingsworth in his own words on the billboard deal near the Raiders stadium and how it fits into the Golden Knights’ variety of marketing options. Killingsworth places the billboard into an effective business context to understand the VGK marketing strategy:
“We have a comprehensive marketing mix to promote the Vegas Golden Knights in the Las Vegas market. We utilize Outdoor Billboards, TV, Radio, Print, Digital, Social and grassroots tactics to market the team. In regards to outdoor advertising, we use a mix of static and digital boards in and around Las Vegas. We are currently promoting our Vegas Born mantra, as well as single game ticket messaging and the VGK Ticket Exchange.
“We have a dominant static board on the 215 that is innovative in the way we have used gold spangles so when the sun sets in the West it reflects on the board, giving a sense of motion to the otherwise fixed board. We also have a static board near the new Raiders Stadium next to the 15. We work with our media buyer to identify new potential locations for our messaging and these boards were the two best locations that became available to us at the right time.
(So, the static board near the Raiders stadium plus the static board along the 215 were deemed the best two marketing sites by the Golden Knights.)
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More Killingsworth:
“I think billboards definitely supplement our overall media mix and are great tools to showcase your brand. When combined with a more refined digital and content strategy, they help round out our overall market presence. We are proud of the fact that we are The first major professional team in Vegas and our mantra of ‘Vegas Born’ helps reinforce that and bring it to life. (Check out the LVSportsBiz.com story on the Vegas Born theme for season two.)
Golden Knights Chief Marketing Officer Brian Killingsworth
Killingsworth said the Golden Knights “are big believers in disruptive advertising. Last year we were able to work with a local company, Kre-8 during the Stanley Cup Playoffs to utilize an innovative out of home concept of Reilly Smith shooting a puck through the Caesars Palace tower. We also worked with NYNY to put a Golden Knights jersey on Lady Liberty. We are constantly on the lookout for new and innovative ways to showcase our brand that no one has thought of yet and will look to do more of that as the season progresses.”
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Alan Snel: Alan Snel brings decades of sports-business reporting experience to LVSportsBiz.com.
Snel covered the business side of sports for the South Florida (Fort Lauderdale) Sun-Sentinel, the Tampa Tribune and Las Vegas Review-Journal. As a city hall beat reporter, Snel also covered stadium deals in Denver and Seattle.
In 2000, Snel launched a sport-business website for FoxSports.com called FoxSportsBiz.com.
After reporting sports-business for the RJ, Snel wrote hard-hitting stories on the Raiders stadium for the Desert Companion magazine in Las Vegas and The Nevada Independent.
Snel is also one of the top bicycle advocates in the country.