Tech-EM Chats With Vince Salisbury, Lexus' Event Marketing Manager

Vince Salisbury, Event Marketing Manager, Lexus

Vital Statistics
Age: 43
Lives in: Torrance, CA
Office based in: Torrance, CA
Size of events team: 3
Years at Lexus: 17

How is your event marketing portfolio evolving?
As you can imagine, there are a lot of opportunities with the sponsorship world. About two years ago, we tried to narrow down to territories where we can really have a big influence and drill down. One of those was affluent sports—golf and tennis. Then we looked at epicurean, the culinary arts, and focused on a number of food and wine events.

We looked at hotel partnerships where we could have test drive programs at luxury hotels where guests go to the concierge and sign out a Lexus vehicle to drive. We already have a long-standing relationship with the Pebble Beach Company, and we’ve just established a relationship with the Fairmont Hotels.

We focused on hybrids as a big area. Lexus just announced that we’re coming out with our fourth hybrid, which is called the HS 250h. While other luxury makers are just trying to get one hybrid out there, we will have four of them on the market by September. So that’s a huge focus for us.

Those are the big territories that we’re focused on. If a sponsorship opportunity doesn’t really fit within one of those territories, we try to say, “No thanks at this time.”

Is the economy impacting things?
As the economy became more challenging, we had to decrease the number of events within those territories. For instance, from our epicurean program, we had about ten events, and we’re going down to three for the coming year.

We’re becoming more targeted because of the reality of decreasing budgets and due to the difficulties in the automobile industry. We have literally gone back to the organizations that we work with and said, “How can we make these sponsorships work with less money?” Our partners have worked really closely with us; they understand that  automobile companies are going through difficulties right now.

The biggest change is the level of activation. We have to decrease [our activation spend] because we’re not getting the same budgets as last year or the year before. I’ve had to figure out where we are going to get the biggest bang for our buck, so to speak. I communicate that to our business partners and executives, saying, “We have less budget, so here’s what we’re going to focus on.” We still want the customers to have a great experience—we’re really trying not to decrease that.

What do you do when someone internal tries to get you to do an event that doesn’t fit into your defined territories?
If you’re in the sponsorship department, you get a lot of people saying “My buddy has this event, and I think we should sponsor it.” It’s not very scientific as compared with, “This makes sense in a business case because the demographics line-up with our demographics, and the objectives make sense with our business objectives.”

In the past, there was a lot of: “We’re doing this event because someone told us we have to do it.” We’ve really rebelled against that. We took [our selected] territories all the way up to our top execs and got buy-in from them. We said, “Look, at least from Lexus’ point of view, this is what we’re going to focus on. If events don’t make sense with these business territories, we’re going to reject them.”

Talking to other people, I realize that it takes a lot of effort to get that buy-in with executives all the way up the chain. [Many other marketers] are still dealing with doing events that don’t really make sense for them. I feel we’ve gotten out of that trap, because we’ve gotten that buy-in all the way up.

How do you evaluate which events are going to give you the biggest impact and return?
We looked at it in terms of our associations. For golf we already had partnerships with a number of high profile golfers, such as Peter Jacobsen, Annika Sorenstam, and Mark O’Meara. These are big names who’ve won major tournaments over the years. We also have a program we started about 20 years ago called “Champions for Charity,” which is the longest running grass roots golf program. [Because of these partnerships] we continue to do 188 golf tournaments around the country each year. At each tournament, our dealers are represented and we offer a hole-in-one opportunity with a Lexus as the prize. We also offer a trip to Pebble Beach that’s auctioned off at the end of the day. We have a real commitment to golf; we’ve been doing this for 20 years.

USGA—the United States Golf Association— is our crown jewel. The USGA is the governing body that puts on the U.S. Open [tournaments] for men, the women, seniors, and amateurs. This gives us display opportunities for our vehicles at those four championships and we provide vehicles for the players to drive.

How do you connect with attendees at those events?
We enhance the events for the attendees with interactive golf activities. At U.S. Open golf events we have the Lexus Performance Drive. It’s an upscale, open tent. We have an advanced golf simulator that allows guests to try to get closest to the hole. Whoever is closest to the hole each day wins a Lexus golf bag. And whoever is closest to the hole at the end of the week wins a trip to the next year’s U.S. Open. We capture each participant’s name and e-mail address so we can generate lead opportunities.

Then we have the U.S. Open trophy on display and people can stand next to it and even touch it.  We hired the e-Shots company to take photos of guests with the trophy and they can access their photo online and forward to friends. Of course we ask them a few questions—are you interested in any Lexus products? Would you like to be contacted by a dealer? They can choose yes or choose to opt out. We had tens of thousands of people have their photo taken with this trophy each year.
We’ve also used our golf legends for autograph signing—again it’s drawing people to our booth for lead generation opportunities. And with our lead generation tools, we’re able to overnight contact information so the dealer gets the information quickly.  

We try to create engaging activities that enhance peoples’ days. For the U.S. Open [in tennis] we’ve created something new this past year—the tennis ball car. We contacted Wilson Sporting Goods, another sponsor at the U.S. Open, and asked where they get their tennis ball felt. We purchased tennis ball felt material in yardage, worked with a prep company to cover a Lexus IS, (the model we were giving away to the tournament champion), and put the U.S. Open logo on the car. About 36,000 people had their pictures taken in front of the tennis ball car because it’s so unique.

We’ve had some fun experiences with our hybrid program where we’re doing a two prong approach. In addition to reaching out to the influential through work with celebrities, we do mainstream marketing and a little bit of a guerilla marketing. We’ve worked with companies like Whole Foods, Wild Oats, Trader Joes—those types of organizations. Our research has shown that if people are going to one of these types of those stores, they’re likely to be interested in the world of hybrids. We set-up vehicle displays in front of their stores, and hire product specialists to intercept people and offer a quick test drive. As they put their foot on the break, typically the engine goes quiet. It really drives home how hybrids work. And after they take the test drive—we don’t tell them ahead of time—we give them a gift card to the store.

Tell us about yourself. What do you do when you’re not at work?
I have a thirteen-year-old, so we’re doing a lot of exercising here in L.A.—biking and rollerblading—anything outdoors. In the wintertime it’s only about two hours up to the mountains for skiing or snowboarding, so that’s a nice. I came from Syracuse, so right now I’m enjoying not having to deal with inclement weather.