Episode 239 Snippets: Nick Lawson of SQWAD

@njh287; www.dsmsports.net
On episode 239 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil
chatted with Nick Lawson, Co-founder and CEO of SQWAD.
What follows is a collection of snippets from the podcast. To hear the
full interview and more, check out the podcast on all podcast
platforms and at www.dsmsports.net.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 239: Nick Lawson

Nick’s Career Path
“'It’s been a saga, as I'm sure anybody in the sports industry has with getting
started. I played college football, I've always been in sports. My grandpa was
a sportswriter, so [that] really got me into that sports piece of it. Actually, my
undergrad degree was in art, so I thought, ‘Hey, I'm gonna be a graphic
designer for a team and, you know, make the posters, make all that.’

“I got my first internship with the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, a minor league
baseball team. [I] got brought into a few sponsorship pieces there and just said,
‘This is what I want to do. I want to get on the business side’, [while]
simultaneously getting my MBA. I did two summers worth of internships for
minor league teams. The other one was the Salem Sabres, which no longer is a
team, but it was an upstart, semi-pro basketball team in the city. For them, I did
just purely sponsorship sales. I then moved up to Portland, Oregon and said ‘Hey,
I'm gonna go get a job with the Blazers or the Timbers, or the Winterhawks…

“But [I] just got beat out by people who had much better resumes than myself
and that's kind of really what spawned our first company, Pick6. It was a mobile
app company for sports teams that fizzled out, but then eventually into SQWAD
starting really around 2018 to help teams sell more sponsorship, given that
digital inventory was lacking and hard to produce. Brands back then, but even
today, can't get enough of ways to reach fans on their phones, but also kind of
create those scalable one-on-one experiences.
“So that was a quick version of, honestly I couldn't get a job in with the big teams
[and] eventually created the product and kind of pushed from there to really get
to a spot where we could sell to our first team, first team turns to second team,
second team to the third team, and the ball kind of got rolling from there.”

On starting SQWAD
“We have a kind of crazy scrappy story. So I graduate, I'm doing interviews, I'm talking about
how digital can be important on the sponsorship side and, you know, earning leads and
building audiences. And a lot of teams are agreeing that I interviewed with, but, again, I just
kept not getting the job. Funny enough…I emailed Kelley Robinett, who is no longer with the
team, but he was the Senior Vice President of Marketing for the Portland Winterhawks, a
minor league [hockey] team here in town and I just said, ‘Hey, I would love to do an
informational interview with you just to chat. I have an idea for a product [and] would love to
just get your background.’ In all honesty, my goal there was to just get a job, right? Just [have
him] be like, ‘Oh, this is impressive.’ That informational meeting kind of turned into, ’If you
can build something like this, I'll give you your contract.’ I did the big dog thing and said,
‘Well, let me get you a scope together. Let me get you what it would require, get you pricing.’

“I created that thing on Photoshop mockups, came back in and next thing
you know, we had a contract. At the time I didn't code. Nobody who I
knew coded. So my college roommate at the time and my co-founder
now, Lee, was working at Nike. He wanted to get into the startup
scene…and I said, [it’s] a perfect time to join. The only problem is, is we
need a coder, so you should quit your job and go to a coding boot camp
for a month, learn to code and then code this product. We had a third co-
founder at the time. So Lee and him worked together to build our first
product — launched it, it broke, launched, it broke, launched, it broke. I'll
give the Winterhawks a ton of credit. They're still one of our closest
clients.

“But yeah, it was just refining in that time period. I was selling, so I
actually sold our second client while the first product was breaking. I
didn't think they would close the deal as soon as they did. So as soon
as the Winterhawks season ended the Seattle Storm season started
and that was our second client. So, again, a different journey there.
And yeah, come to your point, it wasn't as easy as just like, ‘Oh, we
had an idea.’ I mean, there were a lot of sleepless nights, there was a
lot of, ‘Hey, this is breaking,’ there was a lot of, ‘Hey, I'm so sorry.
We're gonna get this right.’ There also was just a lot of learning on
what do fans really want? What do brands really want? And can we
create a product that's gonna help that sports team reach their goal?”

“I think the big thing is when we first came in, we just kind of said ‘Look, we have digital
inventory. Brands want digital. Just go tell them it's digital and they'll buy it.’ That
worked to an extent, right? But I think the real shift we made was we started really diving
into understanding brand marketing, right? Like, what are brands looking for? What do
they currently spend on? And I think the bigger thing is, what is our competition out
there in sports sponsorship, right? If a brand spends on a Facebook ad, what do they get
back? And let's compare that to what we give them back with our current offerings, right?
“So I think the bigger thing became we started building our product more brand-centric
because we understood that brands are the end customer. While a cool trivia game on the
scoreboard will get you the awareness when they go back and huddle up and say, ‘Do we
wanna buy that again,’ what are they gonna be measuring it against? We started learning
very quickly it's Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Twitter ads. We created kind of what we
call the sponsorship funnel, really the levels within every brand marketing spend.

“The goal we started finding was to get through four levels — awareness,
which is kind of your given — does the person see this ad? Engagement —
does the person click on this ad? Does the person watch the video all the
way through? Is there more of a buy-in? The third piece is obviously the
call to action — are we earning leads? Are we sending out offers and
discounts to make a purchase? But then I think the fourth one that a lot
of people forget, especially in sponsorship, is the re-engagement. When
you run a Facebook ad and you earn that email, even if somebody doesn't
make a purchase, you can create an audience that reengages that person
who maybe put something in their cart. We didn't have that in
sponsorship, right?

“So what we started learning was if we really want to put teams in the best
place to succeed, we have to start thinking how can this product be better than
them spending on Facebook ads? Because that's the default of where else they
would go with their dollars. So we really started building that into our product.
You see the scoreboard with trivia; today, you scan the QR code and that's
your engagement. You're earning a lead, and sending an offer, right? But then
on the backside of it, are we helping you build audiences for that brand and
also for your team so that when the car dealership reaches back out, they don't
just say, ‘Hey, we have great terms on our cars.’ They're saying, ‘Thanks so
much for playing trivia, by the way, here are two free tickets to the next game,’
thanks to this car dealership. Now you're building a relationship with them.

“So I think that's the biggest shift that we found was just digital for digital's sake just
doesn't work anymore, right? You can't just say, ‘Hey, we have digital options that can
help reach customers.’ I think the most savvy brands, but even now, sort of that middle
group of brands as well, start to understand, like, what's the ROI? If I'm spending a
dollar with you, what am I getting back? I actually need to see that. And if I can't see
that, the first thing I'm gonna cut is gonna be you. While it's fun to invest in sports
sponsorship, because you get to use the team logo, if the team does well, you can say,
‘Hey, we're a partner,’ that's great. But when it comes down to, okay, I'm a CMO and I
have to cut marketing spend, all of a sudden I'm to a point where I'm gonna cut the
thing where I don't know how much money it's bringing me back, rather than cutting
the thing that tells me.
“And again, digital ads were really this case, tells me exactly how many people are
reached, who they were, how much they spent, and then put them into buckets to say
here's how you can reengage them to drive a purchase.”

On brands and partners using each other’s data to track a partnership activation
“I think we're going through a transition and, you know, I always go back to if you look at
1947 Ebbets Field [home of the] Brooklyn Dodgers, and just Google ‘1947 Ebbets Field
scoreboard,’ you'll see that they have scoreboard signs the same that we sell today, right?
So I think the first part of that we sometimes struggle with properties is, look, you've been
selling something for so long and haven't changed it, right? That is sometimes a struggle
to try something new. From there it becomes, instead of doing a logo flash on your
scoreboard, how do we replace that with a trivia that's gonna be more engaging? The
second part of that is really how much are these brands pushing back on you in these
meetings? Because we have some teams that get a lot of pushback to say I need ROI,
right? And that's when we come in and we say, ‘Great, we have reports that can really help
you with this toward activations and help earn leads and help send offers and all of that.’

“So, you know, a lot of the growth we've seen has been brands finally coming
through and saying ‘No, I need to like see these leads.’ And not just leads from
throwing up a contest that says, ‘Enter all your information and you're entered
to win a jersey.’ I think fans are too savvy for that nowadays to understand,
okay, you're not just giving me this information to try to win a jersey, I know
that you're gonna reengage me, so I know when I see that email from this car
partner that they got me, right? They got me in their system and now I'm gonna
send them to spam. You flip that with a trivia or scratch ‘em or a prediction
game, now all of a sudden it's a totally different thing. I'm entering my email to
be able to win something, right? With an experience attached with it. So,
therefore, if I get that follow-up…

“I think the second part of it is our brands driving this…I think the struggle becomes
sometimes brands don't bring this up in a recap meeting. You give them the recap,
they say, ‘Great. This is amazing. We really enjoyed our partnership.’ And then next
thing you know, you don't hear from them. And then next thing you know, they don't
renew. And you're kind of thinking like, ‘Hey, they were so excited about this
campaign with us. Why aren't they renewing’? It's a bit of a shock. And I think the
tough thing becomes, you know, numbers don't lie. If you can give, whether it's
through activations, whether it's through some other means, if you can give a brand a
singular number that says, look, in two months you were able to earn this many
leads. If you wanted to run a campaign on Facebook to earn that many leads based
on cost per lead, it would've cost you this much. Obviously, you didn't pay that much
for this entire package, not even just the activation, right? So now you're seeing a
value.

“I think the third part of it becomes, sometimes we'll be chatting with
properties or teams and it's like, well, you know, nobody's asking us for
these numbers. And the tough thing becomes is just because they're not
asking you for those numbers [that] doesn't mean they're not gonna make
a decision based on, you showed that this social tweet got ‘X’ amount of
views, if their north star metric was earning leads that means nothing to
them. And again, going back to if you're not giving a reason why return on
investment a brand should come back with you, they're gonna default to,
‘Okay, we're gonna cut something, what's it gonna be? Well, we don't
really need social impressions anymore. That's kind of a vanity metric for
us. So let's cut everything that has social metrics.’

“If you have a thing that says, ‘Hey, we're earning 1500 leads per month through this
team. I can't turn off that pipeline. That's too important, right? That's too important
for my organization. That's where it becomes [vital]. So I think for the most part it's
three parts. One is we're very old school in sponsorship, we haven't gone too far out
of the realm for the last, you know, almost 70 years. Now we're starting to have
brands push us to get outside of the realm. But I think the third piece is sometimes
brands push us to get out of the realm without telling us, and they just totally ghost
us. And you know, if you're being ghosted by a partner right now my follow-up email
to them would just be, ‘Hey, look, maybe there was a mess-up with the metrics.
What's your north star metric for this quarter or this year? Great, okay, it's leads.
Here's how I'm gonna help solve that.’ And that's the easiest way to kind of rekindle
that because it means that you care about what they're trying to get.”

“Whenever I see one of those [retweet to win] tweets I always think…the joke is for
Uber and GrubHub, it's like, ‘Hey, you know, VCs basically are funding me getting this
very cheap meal or this very cheap Uber ride’ because they're giving a discount. Those
dollars, because they're maybe not profitable, are coming from somewhere. When I
see social posts for like ‘Predict the first goal,’ the brand is basically paying to get you
more engagement, to increase the social media algorithm for you as a team. Now, does
that mean more awareness and more views? Of course. But again, if I'm, let's say a
bank and it’s the first goal partner. As a bank, really, I'm trying to get people to sign up
for my bank, right? There's building relationships, but to build a relationship and not
earn leads is insane to me. Because I'm building a relationship with somebody that I
can never come back to. Or if they inbound to me, I have no idea who you are. I don't
have this in my database that you engaged with this social media post.

“So I think the biggest thing here is — and this goes for brands, too, that
sponsor these — in my mindset if a team came to me and said, ‘Hey, let's
do this retweet to win, or let's do this first goal prediction on social,’ if my
north star goal as a brand for the year or for the quarter was to increase
awareness or increase fans knowing about me, and that was my only goal,
I didn't really care about anything else — I didn't care about sales, I didn't
care about re-engagement, it was purely just I want to be known, then
spend dollars on that. It's gonna work, right? People are going to see it
every game consistently. They'll see the brand logo. Hopefully the team
marketing hasn't made you make the logo tiny in the corner, which drives
me crazy…If that's your goal, then great.

“But I think again when we go back to these sponsorship levels or
these advertising levels, if you're offering an asset that only gets you
to awareness and let's call it a little bit of engagement and it ends
there, then again a brand's gonna go back and say like, well, ‘What if
we were to just target this team's fan with our own score predictor,
had the team colors, but didn't have the team logo and we had a thing
that you had to enter in information in order to make your prediction.
That gets me further down the funnel, right?’ If your team is not
offering it, then there are other ways to be able to mimic this
campaign.

“And I think that's the biggest piece here, which is you need to offer
that full funnel. I talk about this a ton…but it's so important because
I've seen deals fall apart because one piece of the funnel is not there.
And again the products for reaching consumers and getting them to
purchase have innovated at a rapid pace, and if we don't keep up with
that, if we continue to offer things that seem engaging, [but] maybe
aren't right toward that end goal, brands will stop paying for them at a
high level. And again, we have the brand of the team, we have the
sexiness of sports, somebody will always pay a lot.

“But I think if you can add in more of that ROI piece, earning leads —
so it's as easy as a tweak of like for what we do at SQWAD for our
activations, when they're social, it's like, ‘Hey, wanna make a
prediction? Click here in order to play.’ The first thing is you ask for
an email. Would you like to receive more information from a sponsor?
Right now, our average is 68% opt-in, so more than half the fans are
gonna opt into more sponsors. Let's play ‘Make your Pick’ and you're
good. That's not much more work than just posting a singular ‘Hey,
just answer in the comments,’ but the value you're giving to the
sponsors, you know, is 10x, 20x that.

“But I think if you can add in more of that ROI piece, earning leads —
so it's as easy as a tweak of like for what we do at SQWAD for our
activations, when they're social, it's like, ‘Hey, wanna make a
prediction? Click here in order to play.’ The first thing is you ask for
an email. Would you like to receive more information from a sponsor?
Right now, our average is 68% opt-in, so more than half the fans are
gonna opt into more sponsors. Let's play ‘Make your Pick’ and you're
good. That's not much more work than just posting a singular ‘Hey,
just answer in the comments,’ but the value you're giving to the
sponsors, you know, is 10x, 20x that

“I think the big piece of that is you being able to prove ROI, right? Like, I used to sell
restaurant ads in Portland, literally a paper book that went in hotels and this is just the
other side of the equation where, you know, a restaurant will come back to me and say,
‘Well, we didn't get anybody coming in from this ad. Why would I purchase it again?’
And I was trained basically to say, ‘Well, nobody's gonna come in with the book and
say, I saw this in the book. That's very rare. But you reached this many people, so
somebody came in and made a purchase.’ That didn't fly, right? I mean, we consistently
lost restaurant partners because of that compared to, if we would've added a QR code
onto that listing that scanned and then you won an offer that had a very specific code
from that book, you would've been able to say, ‘Yeah, we brought in 600 people.’
“So I think that's the big piece of it is, like, if you only do a social post of course you can
sell the messaging that somebody made a bank purchase or a car purchase or a real
estate purchase, but can you prove it? No. If you can prove it, then that's almost
guaranteed revenue coming back.”

On developing the games/activations for SQWAD and its sports team clients
“I think the first part of it is, obviously, the activation should be fun and familiar is
kind of what we say. Like, when we're thinking of a new activation, the first thing
is, is this fun? Would I actually have fun doing this? And that goes back to
entering an email for a chance to win a jersey. Is that fun? No. It's only fun for one
person because only one person wins a jersey. So the fun factor is very low on that.
“And then again, familiar. I always go to this of like, somebody says, ‘Hey, there's a
new card game that I want to play with you.’ If they say it's like ‘this,’ then I'm
much more obliged to play than if they just say it's a brand new one, I have to
teach you all the rules. So familiar is the second piece of it. Is it fun? Is it familiar?

“I think the third piece though is a lot of the psychological stuff we look at is, is
getting you to actually play. We look at the marketing, we look at what it takes to
actually get somebody to scan that code, what it takes to get somebody to enter that
email, what it takes to get somebody to go to that store and actually make the
redemption — and I think two things really stand out. The first thing is easy, and the
second thing is consistency.
“So first, are you making it as easy as possible for that fan to be able to play? If
you're making it hard at any point, they're gonna do the internal thing of saying,
‘Well, I could win a jersey, but this is a really hard onboarding process. I don't think
it's worth it anymore.’ It's like what happens when I go to the grocery store and I
only need one thing and I see the line; usually, my answer is I don't really need this
one thing. It's not worth me standing in line for 20 minutes. Same thing your fans
are doing when they see that QR code. So how are you making it as easy as possible?

“I think the second piece of it is consistency, and that's probably the biggest piece.
Sometimes you'll launch an activation once, fans won't play it at the very first because
it's not familiar. And then you say, ‘Well, only 10 fans played, this is a bust. I don't want
to do this anymore.’ That's, [why] consistency is the key piece. Imagine going to a game
[and] seeing an activation for the first time — you're probably not gonna play it. If you
see it the second time — ‘Oh wow, is this a thing that's done every game?’ You see it the
third time, ‘Yes, this is something that's done at every game, I want to engage with it
now.’ So I think the key thing there is it's those pieces how easy is it to get a fan to play,
and then the second piece of it, are you giving it the consistent love, are you actually
saying, we're gonna do this for three months or an entire season? I don't care if it gets
low results; obviously in the first two months, if there's terrible results, make some
tweaks, right? Add in a grand prize, add in motion to it, give it longer love or more
shoutouts on game day.

“But those are the two biggest pieces that we see. And again, it's not
necessarily an activation thing. It's more of a how do I convince a fan
to take their time and enter their email to be able to play this
activation? Easy and consistent are usually the two biggest pieces.”

On where platforms like SQWAD fit alongside the rise of sports gambling
“Yeah, it's definitely an opportunity. I think what a lot of the gaming
companies we've talked to, and lottery companies and actual physical
casinos outside of sports betting — the biggest thing is they want to be
associated with winning, right? The excitement, that feeling you get when
you win. So it's very much how can we get you used to that exciting
feeling of winning, attach our brand to it, and then the next time you
want to have that excitement piece to it, maybe you take it a step further.
So it's almost like an introductory piece to it is a lot of what we're seeing.

“Then again, as we talked about, earning that lead to them, be able to engage
you. Maybe the way a casino gets you from playing a prediction game every
game to actually making a bet in their casino is by offering you tickets to a
show that's coming up, right? That might be the way that they get you familiar
and used to going in and making a visit and placing a bet rather than just
saying, ‘Hey, here's $10 in free play.’ $10 in free play is great, but at the same
time, it's that entryway piece to help build that relationship and then when
you're ready to take that next step, obviously they're the first brand that you
think of. Again, thinking of those trigger points or those trigger moments to
say how do I get you from playing this prediction game to actually coming into
my casino or actually signing up for my sports betting platform from there?”

About the increasing value and demand for first-party data
“First-party data is becoming more and more valuable as you talked
about [with the] cookie apocalypse [and] Facebook not having as much
consumer data. So it really comes on brands to be able to say, ‘Hey, how
do I build my audience so I don't have to rely on Facebook's knowledge
because that audience might be going away?’ I think the bigger thing
though is when we started there was very little regulation around it,
which was great for ‘I can just earn leads and not have to worry about
compliance.’ But that was maybe bad for society, right? As we kind of saw
with earning first-party data and then exploiting it a little bit.

“So I think while the opportunity is still there, the biggest piece that you need
to look at is just not saying we need to earn leads, let's just earn leads. [But]
really understanding, okay, what's coming down the pipeline compliance-
wise? Am I compliant with these leads? Because the worst thing that could
happen is you get a government organization fining you for improperly
collecting [information]. But the second worst thing that can happen is you
get 15,000 leads in a segment, you're ready to hand them over to a sponsor,
and the sponsor's like, ‘Well, did they say yes to game rules? Did they opt in?
Do you have a timestamp of when they opted in? Do you have age?’ And there
are all these things that certain states are now starting to say, ‘Hey, if you're
gonna collect this, you need to have a lot of this proof of it.’

“Again, nothing is worse than like, ‘Hey, I have 15,000 leads, but I can't hand
this to my sponsor.’ Or they can't use them because it was not collected
correctly. So I think the bigger thing as we look at the next couple years is
there's gonna be operators that collect things non-compliantly and there's
gonna be operators that collect it compliantly. And the ones that collect it,
compliantly obviously, are gonna be in the better position.
“So if you're really thinking,’ Hey, I need to collect first-party data,’ it's not just
putting up a form. It's really understanding, based on state laws, based on
federal law, what are some things coming down the pipeline and what's actually
in the legal side of things to make sure I am compliant [and] I can get this to
my sponsor to be able to reengage them.”

Give us the scouting report of Nick Lawson, the college football player
“Not a great one. It was division three, but I came in as a 198-pound
offensive lineman when usually it was 260. So I would hope that my
coaches scouting report was ‘small but scrappy.’ But probably if we're
going NFL Draft report, it's the cons [are] ‘has a ceiling,’ just meaning
there's only so much that I can grow in height and weight throughout
that. I ended my college career at 220, so that just gives you an idea of
how much fat and muscle they put on you through a weight program.”

The biggest lesson Nick has learned as an entrepreneur about running a business
“It is gonna sound cliche, but a lot of it is relationships. And by that I mean the
best way to build a relationship is to have empathy. A lot of people think empathy
is tied with sympathy. The definition [of empathy] is understanding, right? So I
think the best way you build a relationship is [by] actually understanding the
customer, what they're struggling with, what they're going through, and seeing
how you can genuinely help rather than just sell a product. So I think the biggest
thing has been you're not just selling a product because you need to hit a sales
goal. It's, ‘Hey, can I actually help you with our product’. And then from there it's,
okay, great, if I can actually help you, I'm able to build a relationship.”

Nick’s favorite or particularly memorable partner activation fit that he’s seen
in his time with SQWAD
“It was one of our first big teams that we worked with, we digitized the
Dunkin’ race for the Chicago Bulls. So for years you would get a paper one
that you couldn't choose, you just got Biggie Bagel. To give a quick
background, the Dunkin’ race has been around since [Michael] Jordan and
Jordan used to actually make bets. The story goes is that he would ask the
game staff who was gonna win, and then he would bet money with players on
the bench…Now whether that story is true or not, it just adds to the lore of the
Dunkin’ Race. But it's been around since the ‘90s [and] we helped digitize it.

“It's just amazing how much brand the Bulls have built with that,
because, I mean, fans go crazy. There are Reddit conspiracies that
Cuppy Coffee wins more than other times. They've built a really good
activation around it and, and I loved how we were able to come in and
digitize it and bring even more ROI to something that already had
such a nostalgia feel for Bulls fans.
“So that still is one of my favorite activations that we do just because,
again, we were able to build upon something that has had tradition
for the last 30 years type of thing.”

About The Inches, the podcast Nick co-hosts with Rich Franklin of the
Coachella Valley Firebirds
“The Inches has been fun. Rich Franklin who worked at the
Winterhawks, he's now at Coachella Valley Firebirds, the [Seattle]
Kraken’s new AHL team. [During] his time at the Winterhawks, I
used to just walk in and pick his brain on sponsorship because Rich
has had decades of experience in both radio broadcast sponsorship
sales and team sponsorship sales.

“So, [I] started realizing that we should start recording some of these
conversations because Rich would just give me so many good insights on
selling, on activating, all of that. So we've been doing it since 2018, it's
been a blast. We literally just recorded before I got on this podcast. But,
really, all it is is me asking Rich questions that I have in sponsorship and
recording it, which has just been really valuable not only for myself, but
hopefully for our listeners as well. So it definitely didn't start off as ‘We
should start a podcast,’ it started off as we had had like six or seven really
good hour-long conversations and I was like, ‘I gotta record these. We
have to put this onto wax,’ as they say, so that we can let other people
know that this is how you're thinking about it.”

The most memorable game that Nick has ever attended
“My parents went to Cal, that's why I grew up in the East Bay area, so I grew up going to
Cal games, my eighth grade year was Aaron Rodgers years. High school was Marshawn
Lynch years. And then [at the] end of high school was DeSean Jackson years. So I lived
during those key Cal moments. At the time our quarterback was being recruited by Cal,
so he brought me along because he had an extra recruitment pass. Against Washington,
Marshawn Lynch wins in overtime; actually, his touchdown put them in a position to
win. Desmond Bishop, who ended up winning a Super Bowl with the Packers actually
picked it off, which ended the game, but he housed it. He ran 80 yards to go house an
interception when he should have slid and taken it down. But that game was the
Marshawn Lynch golf cart game where he was on the field. I did not see that, because
right after the game we then went into the locker room because we had these recruiter
passes. So I didn't see the golf cart until afterward on ESPN, but I was able to be in the
locker room when Marshawn Lynch comes in after that game and the excitement.

“So, it's a little bit more than just being a fan in the stands, but that
memory was amazing just because not only could I see the on-field
excitement, but I was able to be in the Cal locker room to kind of see
the excitement of beating Washington in overtime and just the way
they did it.”

The sponsorship concept or idea that Nick hasn’t seen play out yet,
but hopes to see in action one day
“You know, we've been working on a prediction game that I haven't
gotten anybody to say yes to… I'm intrigued because, you know, our
prediction games, ‘Hey, if you predict it correctly, you win a prize.’
That's great. But what if we did a thing where you predict rushing
yards and if you are smack dab correct, meaning you predict the 262
rushing yards, or you're within 10 yards or whatever it is, you don't
just win a prize, you win that many dollars off your next purchase.

“So if you say it's gonna be 117, then you basically have won $117 off your
next flight. It just adds so much of a different mindset element to why I'm
making the prediction and it adds a fun storyline to it. So I've wanted to
do that for a while just to say, look, it's not just ‘predict the rushing yards
and you win’, which honestly is incredibly hard, but how can we make it
so that we can add a little bit of a side piece to it to say, ‘If you win, you
win $115 off your purchase’, because then that leads to a purchase. If I
win $115 off my next purchase and I won it because I get that exact
amount I'm gonna go make that purchase, right? And then obviously on
the back end, if you don't win, then maybe you win 25% of that number or
10% of that number or whatever.

“So I think that's something I've wanted to get off the ground for a
couple years. We've come close a few times, but nothing's fully hit.
But I hope this year is the year that we actually implement that with a
brand partner on a team.

A sports sponsorship that did NOT involve SQWAD that has caught Nick’s eye and why
“For a couple years they've done it well, but the Duke’s Mayo Bowl — it takes what
we've seen in both sponsorship of just like generic, ‘I'm just a name partner of the
bowl,’ but they actually put it together very well to where, honestly, my wife was
watching because she wanted to see the mayonnaise cookoff. They have people in the
stands eating straight mayonnaise, which, you know, in my mind is disgusting, but for
some reason I wanna watch it. They introduced a new mascot, which is Tubby, and they
did some things around that. And then obviously the dumping the mayo on the coach.
That's gonna make SportsCenter every time. Because even if it's an uninteresting bowl,
you want to see a coach [have] mayonnaise dumped on them. It's just something you
wanna see, it’s a spectacle.

“So I'm very impressed in how Duke’s Mayo has taken a bowl game
that honestly is, you know, being a name sponsor [of a] bowl game
has gotten kind of stale and really put their spin onto it. And again, as
we talked about, it's all awareness, but that type of awareness and that
type of standing out makes it so that when I walk down my [grocery]
aisle. I'm looking for Duke's Mayo if I'm buying mayonnaise rather
than the other brand partner, because it's sticking with me.”

The best meal to get in Portland and
where to get it
“The non-fancy [option] is Papi
Chulo’s, the best Mexican restaurant.
It’s kind of that street taco place, not a
sit-down, but coming from California
and living in Portland where, you
know, obviously Mexican food is very
good in California, [Papi Chulo’s] is
the most authentic that I've gotten to
for Americanized Mexican.

“But I have to give a shout-out — there's a wine bar
in town called OK Omens, run by Brent, who's a
wine connoisseur, and became a good friend of
mine. Their food there is insane. Like, their fried
chicken. They basically take very common dishes
and make them very, very good. It has a great
ambiance, they have a great patio, and great wine.
Brent will come over to you and chat about wine
and say, ‘Hey, try this wine, try that wine.’
“You have to make a reservation because it's that
popular. It's easy to make reservations, but if you
walk up, chances are there probably won't be seats.
If you’re headed to Portland, definitely check out
OK Omens. Amazing food, great atmosphere.”

Which other major pro sport not currently there should be in Portland, if
any?
“Honestly, I think WNBA. And there was a WNBA team here, not while I
was here, called the Portland Fire. It makes so much business sense. It
makes so much geographic sense. You know, obviously, the Seattle Storm
are great clients of ours…and I'm a fan of the Seattle Storm because of
that. So I don't know if I would become a Portland WNBA team fan, but
it's a great market for women's sports. You have Moda Center that you can
play in, to that degree. You have basketball fans with the Blazers. You have
entire statewide reach, so you don't have to compete with different cities.

“But I think the third thing is, from what people tell me, between the
Blazers and the Sonics and even the Portland Fire and the Seattle
Storm, the I-5 rivalry is something that — Seattle is the bigger city,
Portland's kind of sometimes seen as the little brother city. So I think
just that rivalry is something that can really push it. So, all of the
leagues, I think the one that would be the most successful here would
actually be a WNBA team.”

Nick’s social Media All-Star to Follow
“This is gonna be not an individual one, but an overall one; I love what the
Zoomph team and Amir [Zonozi], just does on social. The analytics, the
insights they put out constantly — if I was at a team, just looking at some
of the free reports that they put out will help you sell more partnership
dollars. So definitely follow Amir over at Zoomph. A lot of their other team
members and even their account put out a ton of sponsorship audience
metrics that can really help on that side. So I'd give a shout-out to them…”
(@Zoomph and @Zonozi on Twitter)

Where to find Nick, The Inches podcast, and SQWAD on digital and
social media
Check out SQWAD on their website at sqwadhq.com for digital
activations and opportunities for teams to drive revenue, find Nick
Lawson LinkedIn in particular, and check out The Inches podcast,
published weekly on all podcast platforms

@njh287; www.dsmsports.net
Thanks again to Nick for being so generous with his time to share his
knowledge, experience, and expertise with me!
For more content and episodes, subscribe to the podcast, follow me
on LinkedIn and on Twitter @njh287, and visit www.dsmsports.net.

Episode 239 Snippets: Nick Lawson of SQWAD

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