Isegoria

Chris Isidore calls Indy car driver Danica Patrick Kournikova on wheels:

Danica Patrick is set to start her third Indianapolis 500 this Sunday in the third row. But she’ll still be far ahead of the other drivers in the race in one important way: marketability.

Patrick has appeared on front pages, not just sports pages. She’s been in a Super Bowl commercial for GoDaddy.com, as well as spots for Procter & Gamble’s (Charts, Fortune 500) Secret deodorant and the Honda (Charts) Civic coupe. Her lead sponsor this year is cellphone maker Motorola (Charts, Fortune 500), a big step up from the subprime mortgage lender Argent that she had her first two years.

A survey of consumers conducted for Los Angeles-based entertainment marketing agency Davie Brown Entertainment found that 47 percent of those surveyed knew who she was.

That’s not only far above the 3.7 percent who were aware of last year’s Indy 500 winner Sam Hornish, it’s above some of the more successful drivers on the far more popular NASCAR circuit, such as Tony Stewart and Michael Waltrip, who are both recognized by about a third of those surveyed.

Among race car drivers, only NASCAR’s Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr., both with better than 60 percent recognition, are better known than Patrick, and neither of them have her appeal.

Davie Brown’s celebrity rating index gives her an 80 appeal rating, the fifth best of any athlete it includes in the survey. That not only tops Gordon and Earnhardt, it’s slightly better than superstar pitchmen Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan.

Selling less early may mean more later, when you’re a start-up selling a whole new category of product:

A distinguishing characteristic of many companies that make it, researchers discovered, is that they do not attempt to sell 50 products, but instead “go find early adopters, people who are risk-oriented senior executives who have been looking for it, [the new product] and haven’t been able to find it,” explains Dean.

Those executives, Dean explains, recognize that a given product could make a huge improvement in their firm’s competitive position if it works. They’re willing to put up with the hiccoughs of a new product to make that gain. “It’s a different mindset,” says Dean. “You’re trying to sell one product to the right person.”
[...]
“I saw tech firms say, ‘We’re hiring a sales executive from SAP or Seibel and we’re going to go out and blow the doors off the marketplace. That’s the model that does not work early in a tech company’s lifecycle.” Instead of a sales force or sales manager, says Dean, “You want an evangelist to go out and bring on one, two or three sales.”

Companies that believe they can sell a great deal of a new product, particularly one that is in a new category altogether, face numerous obstacles, Dean notes. First, target buyers probably do not have money budgeted for the new product, and even senior executives can’t do anything about that. “You just don’t sell a product out of a brand new category overnight,” says Dean. “You have to get into the budget and emotional cycle.”

The typical sales process from a standing start takes about six months, Dean says. “Sometimes you get lucky, but few people have the juice to change their company budget to do something midstream. In the best of all possible worlds, you want to evangelize the product in time for the next budget.”

I know that I regularly drink Sapporo at the sushi bar — and nowhere else. Now Sapporo is plotting its escape from the sushi bar:

For most of its three decades in the U.S., Sapporo has been sold almost exclusively in foodservice settings. About 70% of the brand’s 2.4 million annual cases are distributed on premises, and about 80% of those locations are Asian-themed restaurants. (Grocery and liquor stores make up the balance of total sales.)

But that’s slowly changing, said Sapporo USA marketing chief Frank Pronio. Last year, as Sapporo began to use hip-hop fashion tie-ins to gain broader acceptance, its distribution widened, and total sales rose by about 15%, Mr. Pronio said. The brand’s slim budget limits its marketing activity to events and some in-house print and out-of-home ads.

The brewer has conducted events featuring fashion designers such as Zac Posen and hip-hop artists such as Common. A recent fashion event positioned the beer as an urban lifestyle brand featured on sneakers from Jhung Yuro, a bikini designed by Jungle Gurl, caps from New Era and even in a snazzy four-can pack from Zero Halliburton.

Chris Isidore calls Indy car driver Danica Patrick Kournikova on wheels:

Danica Patrick is set to start her third Indianapolis 500 this Sunday in the third row. But she’ll still be far ahead of the other drivers in the race in one important way: marketability.

Patrick has appeared on front pages, not just sports pages. She’s been in a Super Bowl commercial for GoDaddy.com, as well as spots for Procter & Gamble’s (Charts, Fortune 500) Secret deodorant and the Honda (Charts) Civic coupe. Her lead sponsor this year is cellphone maker Motorola (Charts, Fortune 500), a big step up from the subprime mortgage lender Argent that she had her first two years.

A survey of consumers conducted for Los Angeles-based entertainment marketing agency Davie Brown Entertainment found that 47 percent of those surveyed knew who she was.

That’s not only far above the 3.7 percent who were aware of last year’s Indy 500 winner Sam Hornish, it’s above some of the more successful drivers on the far more popular NASCAR circuit, such as Tony Stewart and Michael Waltrip, who are both recognized by about a third of those surveyed.

Among race car drivers, only NASCAR’s Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr., both with better than 60 percent recognition, are better known than Patrick, and neither of them have her appeal.

Davie Brown’s celebrity rating index gives her an 80 appeal rating, the fifth best of any athlete it includes in the survey. That not only tops Gordon and Earnhardt, it’s slightly better than superstar pitchmen Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan.

Selling less early may mean more later, when you’re a start-up selling a whole new category of product:

A distinguishing characteristic of many companies that make it, researchers discovered, is that they do not attempt to sell 50 products, but instead “go find early adopters, people who are risk-oriented senior executives who have been looking for it, [the new product] and haven’t been able to find it,” explains Dean.

Those executives, Dean explains, recognize that a given product could make a huge improvement in their firm’s competitive position if it works. They’re willing to put up with the hiccoughs of a new product to make that gain. “It’s a different mindset,” says Dean. “You’re trying to sell one product to the right person.”
[...]
“I saw tech firms say, ‘We’re hiring a sales executive from SAP or Seibel and we’re going to go out and blow the doors off the marketplace. That’s the model that does not work early in a tech company’s lifecycle.” Instead of a sales force or sales manager, says Dean, “You want an evangelist to go out and bring on one, two or three sales.”

Companies that believe they can sell a great deal of a new product, particularly one that is in a new category altogether, face numerous obstacles, Dean notes. First, target buyers probably do not have money budgeted for the new product, and even senior executives can’t do anything about that. “You just don’t sell a product out of a brand new category overnight,” says Dean. “You have to get into the budget and emotional cycle.”

The typical sales process from a standing start takes about six months, Dean says. “Sometimes you get lucky, but few people have the juice to change their company budget to do something midstream. In the best of all possible worlds, you want to evangelize the product in time for the next budget.”

I know that I regularly drink Sapporo at the sushi bar — and nowhere else. Now Sapporo is plotting its escape from the sushi bar:

For most of its three decades in the U.S., Sapporo has been sold almost exclusively in foodservice settings. About 70% of the brand’s 2.4 million annual cases are distributed on premises, and about 80% of those locations are Asian-themed restaurants. (Grocery and liquor stores make up the balance of total sales.)

But that’s slowly changing, said Sapporo USA marketing chief Frank Pronio. Last year, as Sapporo began to use hip-hop fashion tie-ins to gain broader acceptance, its distribution widened, and total sales rose by about 15%, Mr. Pronio said. The brand’s slim budget limits its marketing activity to events and some in-house print and out-of-home ads.

The brewer has conducted events featuring fashion designers such as Zac Posen and hip-hop artists such as Common. A recent fashion event positioned the beer as an urban lifestyle brand featured on sneakers from Jhung Yuro, a bikini designed by Jungle Gurl, caps from New Era and even in a snazzy four-can pack from Zero Halliburton.