SBJ Marketing: Oak View Group adds brand consulting

"It's amazing how we spend so much time inventing devices to kill each other and so little time working on how to achieve peace." -- Walter Cronkite

Largely known for top-shelf sponsorship sales and venue operations, Oak View Group is buttressing its forces with the addition of a brand consulting practice, to be headed by longtime Visa sponsorship chief Andrew Cohen, who will take on the title of SVP of OVG Brand Consulting and Solutions.

"There’s great vision at the top of OVG and even after seven years, a strong entrepreneurial spirit there," said Cohen, who spent 10 years on the agency side at Momentum before joining Visa in 2004. "I just sensed an opportunity to have some real impact, even within a fully formed organization."

Cohen, an SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree in 2010, leaves Visa after 19 years. His new role will see him report to OVG President/Global Partnerships Dan Griffis, who told SBJ last year that he was eyeing the consulting space. Griffis noted OVG has sold to more than 400 brands over the past six years.

"I’ve been convinced of the need for this for some time. We just wanted to find the right person," said Griffis. "There aren’t a lot of agencies with two established brand leaders [Griffis was VP/marketing at Target before joining OVG] who have made buy-side decisions across leagues, teams, global properties and athletes. We manage 400 facilities and own and operate seven arenas, which gives us a unique relationship with fans, unique understanding of brands and ways to differentiate our consulting practice."

Cohen will eventually move to Denver, as OVG establishes its new HQ there. Griffis noted the new division will scale appropriately from a current team of a dozen. Existing capabilities include activation, creative, data/analytics, strategy, negotiation and event/experiential. "It's about harnessing a lot of what’s already there," said Cohen.

Added Griffis, "We already built a lot of trust there, it's now just formalizing those relationships, because we were doing a lot this sort of work for our [sales] clients anyway. If we just get 5% of our client pool for consulting, we’ll be in great shape."

The move means OVG will now be competing not only with top sales agencies in sports like AEG, CAA and Excel but also with agencies more focused on consulting, like MKTG, Momentum, Octagon and Wasserman.

While industry sources said OVG had already converted some of its sales clients to consulting clients, Griffis was loathe to name any specific ones yet.

Less than seven months after MVPindex  closed a $20 million Series B funding raise that it said was to "accelerate growth," the sponsorship measurement and analytics firm has laid off around 30% of its workforce, quietly sending pink slips to 12 of the firm’s approximately 40 employees late last week.

By whatever name -- analytics, insights or valuations -- sponsorship data has become more in demand by brands and properties, which have been seeking definitive ROI metrics for decades (actually, forever). MVP’s difficulties, which follow the demise of FanAI last year, calls into question the future of any standalone sponsorship data/analytics firm.

Industry sources tell me of an environment where money is tight and "pure play" data analytics firms are short on funding with many exploring sales or mergers. "We get offers to invest in data collectors all the time," said Elizabeth Lindsey, president of brands and properties at Wasserman. "But data as a whole is a commodity. You can be drowning in data at the same time you are starving for insights. My most important client has whittled their data needs down to one metric so good we can forecast with it."

So the primary question now is whether these services can only be commercially viable within a larger agency structure.

"The problem is the generally cyclical nature of that [analytics] business, when it comes to consulting," said Michael Neuman, co-head of Playfly Consulting, which has an insights offering. "It’s not seen by all as a must-have resource all the time, like digital, social, or mobile. ... Most agencies long in the consulting game have built up in-house capabilities, but when business is good, insights can be overlooked. When business is bad, they’ll lean in more to be able to justify budgets under pressure."

MVPindex back in July signed a "strategic partner" relationship with the NHL, which it helps with measurement and evaluation of its digital dasherboards. It's unclear if the league is an investor. However, multiple sources said, the league deal did not yield nearly as much business from NHL teams as was hoped.

Other properties, agencies and brands MVPindex calls “partners” include Ally Financial, Amazon, Apple, CAA, the Cowboys, Ford and the PGA Tour.

• Levi Strauss and the 49ers agreed to an early 10-year extension to the naming-rights deal for the NFL stadium in Santa Clara, reports my colleague Ben Fischer. The deal is worth $170 million, or $17 million annually, which is a 55% increase over the inaugural 20-year, $220 million deal signed in 2013. If approved by the Santa Clara Stadium Authority, which owns the facility, the new term will start in 2034 and run through the end of the 2043 NFL season.

• GMR Chief Partnership Officer Adam Lippard, whose agency launched a soccer-specific division last year to advise brands in advance of the 2026 World Cup, told SBJ's Alex Silverman that he is keeping close tabs on FIFA's approach to fan fests for 2026 and that proactive brands are already strategizing.

• As it kicks of its Championship Tour season, the World Surf League added Lexus, Eventbrite and Bonsoy as sponsors, reports SBJ's Rachel Axon. The WSL also extended sponsorships with Apple Watch and Red Bull, among others.

• Visa and Cash App will be the new co-title sponsors of Red Bull's B team in F1, formerly known as AlphaTauri, reports SBJ's Adam Stern. The deal is valued at over $20 million annually, sources told SBJ, and it will see the two San Francisco-based financial service companies compete against American Express in F1.

• LIV Golf brought on Jigsaw Labs, a N.Y.-based boutique consultancy, to support its commercial strategy over the next six months, notes SBJ's Josh Carpenter. Jigsaw principals Ron Skotarczak and Evan Frankel have joined LIV as strategic advisers and will be based out of the league's N.Y. offices, working alongside SVP/Global Head of Partnerships Monica Fee.