We’re big Tour de France fans in my house. My husband tapes the race each day and watches it pretty religiously and the kids and I enjoy it too. However, despite the usual buzz around Lance Armstrong, it’s just not feeling as big this year in terms of marketing buzz. (I do, however, think the [...]

As part of a consulting gig 4 or 5 years ago for a major pro sports team, we offered a number of recommendations on how to better engage fans – particularly as losses were piling up and attendance numbers were in decline.  One of our favorite ideas was something called “Sorry You Had To See [...]

OK, nobody asked, but I’ve got a plan for Zygi Wilf when and if he ever gets his new Vikings stadium. He shouldn’t sell the naming rights — exactly. What he should do is name the building Bud Grant Stadium. There’s nobody who resonates with Vikings fans like Harry Peter Grant. He’s one of us [...]

Editor’s note: This is John Reinan’s weekly marketing column for MinnPost.com. To see the original, go to http://bit.ly/acMqQu.   By now, you’d have to be living in a cave to not know about Lindsey Vonn. The golden girl of the Winter Olympics, a Minnesota native, got the big pre-Games buildup and delivered a gold medal in [...]

Sunday marked the 52nd running of the Daytona 500. The first race of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series is also the Super Bowl of the racing season, with nearly 30 million viewers tuning in to at least some portion of this year’s race, and in-person attendance upwards of 200,000. NASCAR fans are the most passionate fans around, and this passion extends [...]

A couple of us were talking about the Olympics the other day, and I mentioned Geoff Bodine, the former NASCAR driver who started developing bobsleds back in the 1990s in the belief that racing technology could make the U.S. teams more competitive. “Remember when Geoff Bodine was making bobsleds?” I asked. Well, little did I know that [...]

In my last update, I told you about an event we held at Penn Station in New York City to announce the participants in this year’s Sprite Slam Dunk. With the actual competition taking place on Saturday night (watch it on TNT), I thought I’d share the viral video we produced showing our speed painter in action. [...]

Once every four years, people around the world rediscover their passion for curling, speed skating, and skeleton luge.  I’ll certainly be tuning in to the Olympics to see my favorite skippers and sweepers, but I’ll also be on the lookout for excellence in Olympic design, or at least a few mediocre examples. Olympic host cities [...]

A couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to get a private tour of the new Twins ballpark, Target Field. My aunt is the executive assistant to Jerry Bell — the president of Twins Sports, Inc. — and Mr. Bell graciously allowed her to take some family members through the stadium. After my tour, [...]

It’s not a ’60s folk group. But it’s worth noting that our agency founder and president, Jorg Pierach, had the honor Monday of being the first guest in the post-Don Shelby era at WCCO Radio. Friend of the Pony Joe Anderson is in a six-day tryout to take over Shelby’s slot on the Great Neighbor, [...]