tried; energy and initiative.” If there is any characteristic that de-
fines the pioneers in event marketing, it is that. The willingness
to stretch the bounds of reason, to sail into uncharted waters,
drove marketing’s original landscapers into the imagination and
conscience of the publics that they sought to attract.
What Would You Attempt to Do If You Knew You Could
Not Fail?They understood the natural inclination of people to experi-
ence something new, to be among the first to be able to describe
those experiences to their friends, and to become part of the inner
sanctum of the new enterprise. They wanted to “blow the doors
off the place” and dared to ask the impertinent questions.
Let’s take a look at just a few of these marketing pioneers.
BILL VEECK
Bill Veeck was professional baseball’s first promotional genius. As
owner of the Cleveland Indians, Chicago White Sox, St. Louis
Browns, and two minor league teams, he was a showman without
peer. He understood that in the 1930s and 1940s, a country com-
ing out of the depression and war years needed something more
than the game on the field in order to spend precious dollars. They
needed entertainment and excitement, and he was certainly com-
mitted to enterprise.
His greatest strength was his ability to determine what the fans
wanted and were willing to pay for. He constantly mingled with
spectators in his ballparks, prompting his son Mike to comment,
“I think people looked at it as quaint, Dad sitting in the stands. It
was just his way of doing market research.”
Veeck learned, for example, that many people in Chicago
worked afternoons and nights in the factories and stockyards. So
he scheduled a number of 8:30 A.M. starting times for games, at-
tracting national attention when he personally served coffee and
cornflakes to the early risers.
A visit to his ballpark offered constant surprises, including live
music and dancers, giveaways of everything from lobsters to boxes
of nails that he bartered from others, and the first “exploding
scoreboard” where a home run by the home team ignited fireworks
over the outfield fence. He planted the ivy on the outfield wall of
Chapter 1 Introduction to Event Marketing 3