Having someone to look up to is something that most of us are aware of in these modern lives. Celebrities such as actors, singers and sports players are the ones that influence our lives by the way they talk, act and live their lives. In their cases, it’s a hard work behind every public appearance and many people are involved in their image and how they are seen by the public.

This is why today we’ll bring you some great insights about the whole processes from behind a personal brand, the way a marketing agency in this field is working and what are the most interesting challenges when working in the celebrity marketing and branding niche.

Brands and athletes are a perfect combination for a successful partnership and we believe that if you are looking to scale your business or build personal branding, you’ll find in this article some great hacks that will help you get the ball rolling in the next period.

It is a well known fact that in order to be successful at something, you have to like it and to project yourself into it because where there is no passion, there will be no result. This is a powerful advice we learned from Aaron Zak, the founder of Revolving Mind Media Agency, specialized in the NFL field of activity and not only.

Aaron started as a passionate sports player, but he realised that he was more into the marketing and business and he has decided to take his life into his own hands and start a business based on his love for sports but also for marketing and branding. At the age of 25, he launched his agency and became one of the youngest NFL agents that is now working with big names from this industry, such as Dez Bryant and Jaylon Smith and NBA players like Dennis Smith Jr. 

Aaron’s expertise is bringing together both brands and players and with the work of his team, the agency is creating great partnerships between the two parts involved.

In the sports industry, the influence on the public is really big, because everything is associated with a sport player or a kind of sport in general, such as soccer or basketball in the US.

People are buying LeBron shoes because they love LeBron, not because the shoes are comfortable. People see individuals wearing them and promoting them. This is the influence level we are talking about, and it’s crucial to take advantage of it and create long term partnerships - for one year, two years, three years partnerships, focusing both on the business and the player. 

Building a strong agency is something that brought Aaron to the point where he receives lots of partnership requests. This is something very important for the businesses he is working with, but also for the sport athletes, because it creates the perfect situation for a partnership.

One thing that is crucial in these partnerships is that the athlete needs to truly believe in the business, because they can really help businesses grow.

As an agency activating in this industry, it is pretty hard to scale from the beginning, because the partnerships are most of the times small and for a short period of time. That is the moment when you need to look into perspective and realize that you need to bring the brand's side in the discussion, because they are the ones that need to grow, to make the athletes work with the agency. Starting to add more services to your agency is one step ahead for you, because your clients will find in you the whole package they need to scale their business: SEO services, web development, videographers, Public Relations Services, Search Engine Marketing, and so on. 

When it comes to the athletes' side of things and the management of their social media pages, the collaboration has three verticals: either the athlete is managing, the agency is managing, or an internal manager of the athlete is managing.

The role of the agency is to create a roadmap, the game plan and the strategy for the business and for the brand, which is different from one partnership.

It’s all about networking at events, pulling business cards, sending personal emails. As an athlete, you never know how long you will be on the field, playing, because anytime an accident can occur and from that moment, you are not seen as an athlete anymore and you’ll need to be seen as the person behind the helmet.

One interesting thing that Aaron brought together in his agency was in the moment when Jaylon Smith was injured and he needed a period of recovery - this was the time when he saw an opportunity for a collaboration and he put him in contact with a cryotherapy clinic for his recovery. Not only Jaylon became a brand ambassador for the clinic, but he also is now opening up his own clinics and his own businesses in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he's from.This is one of the examples where the athlete believed so much in the brand he was working with, that he took this very seriously and got fully involved in the collaboration. 

On the brand’s side of things, if you choose for your agency to work with smaller brands, that is the point where you will see visible results. There is a lot of creativity involved in this whole process and we came to realise that both athletes and brands have a lot to gain from these partnerships. For brands, it’s much cheaper to work with an athlete when everything is centered around equity partnerships. In this case, the athlete is more likely to be very involved in the brand’s product or service, and for the small businesses is a good way of saving some money. In the end, everyone will be satisfied with this.  

The KPIs in a business is something that’s worth looking into, because Aaron has quite a few interesting things to say about this, mainly focusing on numbers. From the brand-athlete side of the business, SEO, SEM and Social Media are the main components of partnerships, because they are quantified by looking into conversions, likes, comments, clicks per page etc. On the other side, if a consumer is navigating on the website and is spending some time on it, that is a moment worth looking at because you can look at clicks back to the website. Search Engine Marketing and Google Ads and Social Media Ads are very quantifiable and can also show you how long the user stayed on each page of the website and at the bounce rate.

As a wrap up, always look at the numbers because you want to see results in these kinds of partnerships- if a brand paid $1,000, they expect to generate around  $3,000 - 4,000 of revenue for that business for it to really make sense. 

In case you enjoyed our article, have a look on our digital marketing blog and find more information regarding scaling up your Food and Beverage business, growing your B2B SaaS business, or many other interesting subjects! 

This article is inspired by an episode of the Marketiu podcast - The Marketing Innovation Show.

The chat between Andrei Tiu and Aaron Zak- the founder of Revolving Mind Media agency, was a source of information and made us extract some interesting ideas for you from our podcast: “The Marketing Innovation Show”. 

To listen to the full version of the podcast episode, choose one of our streaming platforms, or watch it on YouTube: