Sox just the latest marketing effort for Elk Grove Village
Elk Grove Village Mayor Craig Johnson is a die-hard Cubs fan, but he's hoping for a big year from the White Sox.
Johnson brought the village's Makers Wanted marketing campaign to the South Siders' game telecasts this year. The village sponsors the fourth inning with a logo alongside the score graphic, including a sponsorship note read by broadcasters Jason Benetti or Steve Stone. Commercials also air during the game.
The White Sox partnership is getting the village the desired feedback and publicity it received from previous sponsorships with the Cubs, the Bahamas Bowl college football game and, the last few years, national cable news shows.
"There's a lot more Sox fans around than I thought," Johnson said.
With President Donald Trump leaving office, Johnson figured cable news ratings would fall, so he turned back to sports for the marketing campaign. The White Sox looked like a team that could win a lot of games and attract a lot of TV viewers.
"The only sports team that's really up and coming in the Chicago market, as much as my tongue wants to fall off, is the White Sox." Johnson said. "They're very good to work with."
It paid off when a highlight featuring first baseman Jose Abreu was featured 39 times on ESPN's SportsCenter show with the Makers Wanted logo frozen on the screen above Abreu's head, Johnson said.
"It's getting our name out there in front of people, not just locally but nationally, internationally," he added.
Johnson has heard reports of people viewing the village logo or commercials in Wheeling, West Virginia; Salt Lake City; and Albuquerque; as well as China and Germany. And if business executives don't hear about the village directly through the sponsorships, they might hear about Elk Grove indirectly through news reports about the campaign.
The marketing campaign is geared toward attracting businesses to move to Elk Grove. The football broadcasts attracted at least one business, a Love's fueling station, to Elk Grove, a Love's executive told Johnson. That resulted in a 20-year lease that is projected to bring the village $1 million a year in sales tax revenue.
That deal alone will more than pay the village's marketing costs, which Johnson said range from $300,000 to $500,000 a year.
It's hard to know what other business has come from the Makers Wanted campaign because businesses don't always tell the village like Love's did. In fact, Johnson said, executives might not know when or where they heard the Elk Grove name or the Makers Wanted campaign, but it rings a bell in their minds and they find their way to the Northwest suburb.
"That's what we were trying to do is get name-brand identification and notoriety and catch people off guard," Johnson said.
Next up, the village is sponsoring three U.S. Olympic teams as they prepare for this summer's Summer Games in Tokyo: Track and Field, Wrestling and Triathlon.