Q&A: U.S. Polo Assn. CEO Grows Brand with Olympic Event

By April Berthene July 22, 2024

J. Michael Prince, CEO of the official apparel brand of the United States Polo Association, sits down with Multichannel Marketer to discuss event marketing and how it plans to use organic content to drive a 20% lift during the 2024 Olympic Games.

The 2024 Olympics will have a tremendous impact on the U.S. Polo Assn. brand, said CEO J. Michael Prince.

U.S. Polo Assn. Global Licensing Inc., a $2.3 billion global apparel brand, is hosting the Paris Games Polo Challenge as a tribute to the last time France hosted the Olympics 100 years ago in 1924. Although polo is no longer an Olympic sport, this tribute event will take place on Aug. 7, the day after the equestrian events at the Olympics conclude. The 2024 Olympic Summer Games will run July 26-Aug. 11.

The USA vs. France polo match will be played at Club du Domaine de Chantilly, roughly 30 miles outside of Paris. ESPN2 will broadcast the event, and many global politicians, celebrities and social influencers will be in attendance, Prince said.

The retail brand will be providing apparel to both teams and staff, as well as saddle pads. U.S. Polo Assn. will sell limited edition merchandise including caps, t-shirts, scarves, pocket squares and duffle bags available for the public to purchase at the event and online.

Before leaving for Paris, Prince sat down with Multichannel Marketer to talk about how U.S. Polo is marketing the match, how events can be an effective way to acquire loyal customers and why he thinks this post-Olympic game will drive a 20% lift for the brand.

Multichannel Marketer: What is the goal for your retail brand for an event like this?

Prince: The media coverage I’m seeing already, and we’re three weeks out, is unprecedented. I’ve never seen it like this — the amount of inbound calls we’re getting, for people to write about it, to be there to film it, to be there to do interviews. It’s going to be amazing exposure for the brand. But amazing exposure for the sport as well.

MM: So with this exposure, are you seeing more traffic to your website?

Prince: Next week is really when the promotion starts and press releases go out. We’re doing this beautiful, official program that’s bilingual; so you’ll have one version in English, one version in French. What you’ll see once that starts hitting is website visits and global impressions just go off the charts. And we’ll push it hard on social media as well.

MM: With organic content or ads?

Prince: Mainly organic content, I like organic content. We’ll do a little bit of advertising. … Media buys are going to be incredibly expensive. The billboard prices we were looking at or wrapping a taxicab, it’s really, really expensive. And we said, ‘You know what, let’s push on media visiting, great VIPs, social influencers, the ESPN broadcast, get the digital piece and just push out lots of content, mainly organic.’ And we felt like that was our best strategy because it’s just so expensive to try to compete with those world class, huge brands like LVMH corporation that has so much capital.

We’re doing some official product around the event, a cool baseball cap, a collector’s polo ball with the logo on it, team jerseys. We’re actually going to give people the chance to buy a team jersey.

MM: Is that merchandise already available on your website?

Prince: Yes, you can go to USPAShop.com and you’ll see the merchandise on the website. We just put it out last week. It’s just a small offering, but we felt like it was important. We’re already starting to sell the jerseys. It’s pretty crazy. We did the first beta test a couple days ago and we got a lot of orders in. I can’t say how many but it was it was surprisingly good.

MM: Who are you marketing these event-specific products to?

Prince: We’re beta testing it against more of a sport following. And we’re seeing that on the test emails, the engagement, the click rates, the actual engagement in purchasing. And it’s been nicely done so far.

MM: And you are using your already existing audience?

Prince: Yes, that’s right, and taking the brands and looking at the customers and how they purchase. Saying this person tends to trend more sport, this person tends to trend more fashion. And separating the different buckets of consumers. And (we are) beta testing this with more of a sports fan.

MM: What is your prediction of how well this will do?

Prince: I think it’ll be tremendous. I really do. I’m already starting to see the buzz in the media. And media drives awareness. And awareness drives traffic.

MM: Do you think the impact will be more during or after the event?

Prince: I think it’ll be more before and then during. But one thing that we’ve learned for the after is we use the catchphrases ‘relive the moment, relive the highlights’ to give that consumer, that reader, that viewer, one more chance before it goes away. That’s tended to work for us on some of the other things we’ve done in the past.

MM: Can you share an example with me of an event you’ve done in the past using a similar strategy and what happened there?

Prince: One great example is the [men’s fashion tradeshow Pitti Imagine in Florence, Italy.] We’re always there. There are a 1,000 brands that show up, tens of thousands of people. This year, we actually had a chance to host an international event in front of St. Croce Basilica with about 4,000 people.

MM: How do you guys, as a retail brand, then benefit from hosting a large polo event like that?

Prince: At Pitti, you’ve got a lot of the buyers from the big accounts all over Europe there, so they’re actually looking at the brands to say, ‘Who do I want to buy from?’ And looking at who’s doing what. … We actually invested more in our booth, and then had this event on top of it. And a great example is, is that we’ve seen tremendous orders for next year, next spring/summer 2025. And I think part of that is from this event. My partners from there said the order book is the best it’s ever been.

And people could see the brand live, living and breathing right there. You could see it on the players and in the stands. We handed out 1,000 baseball caps to all the attendees with the logo. It shows that emotional connection brands need to have to consumers.

That’s a great event where the buyers could see that from the accounts and say, ‘Oh my gosh, this really resonates with me and the people here. So now, instead of buying this brand, we’re going to buy your brand, and we’re going to buy more of your brand.’ And we see a direct correlation with this in most cases, when we do these types of events.

MM: From the wholesale buyers?

Prince: Yes, that’s right. But when I look at the 4,000 fans in the stadium, those are consumers. They’re wearing your baseball cap. They’re seeing your brand, live and breathe so that maybe the next day they’re buying something off the website, or they’re visiting one of your stores in Spain when they’re traveling. And it just all builds that authenticity and that connection.

MM: Do you see that correlation from the events to buying at your store?

Prince: Yes, we do. We did an event in England called Polo in the Park. So imagine, 40,000 people show up in downtown London to watch polo for three days. … We gave out 3,000 caps over three days, with every one providing their information: ‘Are you okay if we email you with a follow up?’ ‘Yes, I am.’ or, ‘Text me’ or whatever. And so that’s just the engagement you get directly with consumers — where they get to engage with you as a brand at a beautiful event that they’re having a great time at, and they get to take something home with them. And then you’ve got that commercial connection, in addition to the experience connection.

MM: I’ve heard sometimes it’s hard to quantify an event sponsorship or event marketing.

Prince: It is. It’s really hard. What we’ve learned is you have to have that touch point where you can track it. Just being a sponsor, you’re like, does that drive or not? But when you have a merchandise tent, you can say I did X amount of sales, or I signed up, 1,000 people giving away the caps, then you’ve got at least something that you can point back to. Because a lot of people like to talk about impressions and this and that. And but to your point, does that lead to engagement and transaction?

MM: So for this post-Olympics event, how many caps are you giving away?

Prince: We’re expecting several thousand people, so maybe 800 caps. And the reason we’re doing that is that we want people to feel a part of it. And the great thing about the caps is they’re great branding us. Plus, it allows the consumer or the sports fan to take something home with them. For that great day they’ve had, it’s just a little bit of that connection to that memory.

MM: Can you talk a little bit about how the customer you acquire at an event compares to someone else who comes to your site from a Google search?

Prince: Well, the customer at the event is probably stickier because they’ve engaged with you. They have this beautiful memory of the event that maybe they got a free item from. … (For the upcoming event) I’m hoping that we get a lot of different people that aren’t in our database or on our radar that just got exposure to the event through the media coverage, or happen to show up and want to learn more about us.

MM: From the past, have you found that someone who engages from an event is more likely to become a loyal customer?

Prince: More likely. Highly likely to be honest with you.

MM: For this post-Olympic event, what do you think the lift will be for your brand?

Prince: I’m going to be conservative and say I think we’re going to see 20% lift in impressions, globally, over those three weeks. Maybe the day of it’s 40% and the other days it’s 10%, and it averages out. And I think that will lead into transactions as well.

MM: How does this compare to your other events?

Prince: I think this will be more. [A typical event would have a lift of] maybe 10%. So this would be 100% increase over that. If you would have asked me before I saw [the VIPS] who are coming, I’d have said the same or maybe a little bit more. The impact we are seeing globally with the media attention and interest level, it’s going to be significantly more.

https://www.mcmarketeronline.com/qa-u-s-polo-assn-ceo-grows-brand-with-olympic-event/