Rocky Brands, Inc. and BottleRocket Marketing Create Winning Strategy Using Vontoo
First Round of Bull Riders’ Phone Calls Predicted to Earn Style Points with Fans

In a sport where a mere eight seconds can determine whether the athlete stands to be famous or can barely stand, sponsors are always seeking ways to maximize visibility. For the management of Rocky Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ: RCKY), the desire to enhance their support of the Professional Bull Riders’, Inc. (PBR) makes them no different from any other corporate sponsor. As part of a truly unique marketing strategy, Rocky Brands is delivering personal phone messages from top bull riders to their most ardent fans. Powered by Vontoo (vontoo.com), the world’s first on-demand, permission-based voice messaging company, the calls seem sure to earn huge style points with fans.

Rocky Brands not only contributes directly to the PBR; it also sponsors several top professional bull riders. “Our goals through these sponsorships are three-fold,” explains Rocky Brands Marketing Manager Chris Lorenzo. “We want to help grow the sport’s fan base, get our cowboys more exposure, and increase brand awareness.” To help better meet these goals, Lorenzo turned to Michael Thompson, Jr. of BottleRocket Sports and Entertainment Marketing.

“Most PBR followers are extremely passionate and knowledgeable about bull riding,” says Thompson. “They are constantly on the Internet looking for information about their favorite riders-visiting their MySpace pages, memorizing their scores and looking for updates on injuries. Impressing this kind of fan base was going to take something truly extraordinary.” After exploring more traditional marketing vehicles like blast e-mail, Thompson was left unsatisfied until he discovered Vontoo.

“We were immediately impressed with Vontoo’s capabilities,” recalls Thompson. “It allowed us to give fans something they could never enjoy before-raw, off-the-cuff personal calls from their favorite riders talking about wins, vacations, families, even how they are healing from an injury. We saw Vontoo’s technology as a great tool to help fully activate the PBR sponsorships while potentially translating fans into new Rocky Brands customers.”

Using Vontoo, Thompson and his staff at BottleRocket developed the Rocky Riders Rally, a high-end fan club. Still in its soft-launch phase, the full program will debut later this year. Bull riding fans that sign up for the club’s gold level will receive several benefits, including a subscription to Rocky Talk-a permission-based message service that will deliver regular calls to their personal phones direct from the rider or riders of their choice. Once a fan has joined at the gold level, there is no additional fee to receive the calls from the riders.

Vontoo uses patent-pending technology along with VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) to deliver prerecorded messages to any landline or Internet-based phone in the United States. In the case of Rocky Talk, a Web page designed by BottleRocket and partly supported by Vontoo, fan club participants first select which riders will call them and then provide their preferred phone number to receive the calls. Throughout the year, featured riders will record their messages using a simple call-in procedure. BottleRocket will self-manage the entire scheduling and distribution process through Vontoo’s easy-to-use Internet interface.

“We’ve already done some messaging and so far it’s been a pretty seamless execution in terms of getting the riders to successfully make the recordings,” says Lorenzo. “It’s a cool technology that provides what appears to be a turnkey execution.”

Thompson agrees. “In terms of our management, we’re very comfortable with the system and its ease of use. Truthfully, I think the biggest advantage of Rocky Talk is the personal connection it provides. For the average fan, this kind of up-close experience just isn’t something they can get other places.”

Thompson also sees the one-on-one relationship via Vontoo’s technology as key to making the entire fan club program stand out. “This is definitely a far deeper mass activation of the sport and riders than we’ve been able to achieve previously through more traditional methods such as print collateral,” he emphasizes. “The unique content delivery of Rocky Talk is huge.”

Vontoo also provides automatic tracking reports that detail which calls are listened to by a live recipient, how long that person listened to the call, and which calls reached a voicemail system or answering service. Using these reports, Thompson predicts BottleRocket will be able to provide its client with statistics on the program’s success.

“We’re going to be able to measure dollar-for-dollar how successfully we’ve incorporated Vontoo into this broad fan club umbrella,” he explains. “Additionally, the control and instant feedback Vontoo provides will allow us to constantly test and optimize our messaging.”

Equally important to these benefits, Rocky Brands is excited to be able to leverage the program for charitable purposes. “For every fan that signs up for the club’s gold level by a certain deadline, Rocky Brands will be donating a dollar to the Resistol Relief Fund for injured riders,” Thompson says. Given the fan excitement that the promise of personal calls from favorite riders is likely to generate, it becomes easy to imagine the potential size of the contribution.

BottleRocket is now exploring how it will use Vontoo with other clients. At least three additional projects are potentially in the works and Thompson views Vontoo’s ability to quickly convey a key message, to thousands at a time, using the emotion of a celebrity’s voice, as an outstanding asset in the firm’s niche market.

“Whenever you have a target market that is passionate about certain people, celebrities, a particular cause, sport or what have you, Vontoo is a terrific tool to fully activate a program or leverage a sponsorship,” adds Thompson.

Client: Memphis Grizzlies
Industry: Professional Sports
Goal: Increase Ticket Sales

Vontoo Helps Memphis Grizzlies Boost Game Attendance
1,500 tickets sold with one phone call

When the Memphis Grizzlies tipped off its sixth NBA season in Memphis, FedExForum was full of cheering fans, and for good reason. Head Coach Mike Fratello was the team’s all-time winningest coach the preceding year and the team’s seven-foot forward, Paul Gasol, became the team’s first NBA All-Star. Fans were anxious to see if the team looked like it could make a fourth straight playoff appearance.

Yet playing in the $250 million FedExForum brings challenges to the team’s marketing group. With 18,000 seats to sell for each game, they need to be creative to entice fans to fill up the arena for the Grizzlies’ 45- game home schedule.

One recent promotion focused on their rookie forward Rudy Gay. The team was offering free Rudy Gay jersey’s for the first 3,000 fans who come through the admissions gate, and a special “two for $22″ ticket plan for the general public. Since the team decided on the ticket promotion just 10 days before the game, the marketing group had to get the word out quickly and effectively.

The Grizzlies’ Vice President of Ticket Sales and Service, Dennis O’Connor, enlisted the help of Vontoo, the first on-demand, permission voice messaging company. Vontoo enables organizations to create, send and track permission-based voice messages to existing customers.

O’Connor’s idea was to motivate his database of 6,000 fans that had purchased single-game tickets over the past year and get them to attend “Rudy Gay Night.” To add even more excitement to the promotion, O’Connor enlisted the help of Rudy Gay himself to record the message inviting fans to the game.

Recording the message was easy. Rudy used a web browser to log into the Vontoo system and record his message. The marketing group imported its fan list and scheduled delivery through the same browser. Results could be tracked immediately. The team sold 1,500 tickets, resulting in $33,000 in sales with that one call.

According to O’Connor, the emotion, enthusiasm and energy delivered through Rudy’s message via Vontoo made the viral marketing promotion successful. “Using the player’s voice was the key,” said O’Connor. “The message boards lit up with fans telling us how much they loved getting a phone call from Rudy. It was a real boost to the fans.” There was even a bonus; some fans were so thrilled to get a call from an NBA player that they forwarded the Rudy Gay message to their friends.

Client: Boston Celtics
Industry: Professional Sports
Goal: Season Ticket Sales

Boston Celtics Draft Indianapolis Tech Company Vontoo
Permission-based voice messaging latest tool used to help increase ticket sales

Indianapolis-based voice messaging company Vontoo (vontoo.com) is creating a unique niche for itself in helping NBA teams increase fan attendance. After a successful campaign with the Memphis Grizzlies, Vontoo is being used by the Boston Celtics to increase season ticket renewals.

Vontoo allows organizations to record, send and track personal messages to their customers or members. With Vontoo’s help, the Celtics are reaching out to season ticket holders via personal phone messages from player Delonte West. At the end of the phone call from West, fans are encouraged to renew their season tickets by transferring to the club’s office. While still in its early stages, the campaign using Vontoo is demonstrating positive results.

According to the club, one day’s figures of season ticket renewals following the phone calls showed sales nearly double over business done in the same day the previous year. The Celtics’ experience with Vontoo follows a similar effort carried out by the Memphis Grizzlies. Looking to boost home game attendance, the Grizzlies enlisted Vontoo to distribute voice messages featuring favorite players. That effort resulted in more than $30,000 in sales
with one round of calls.

Company President Dustin Sapp believes sports teams are one type of client that can greatly benefit from Vontoo. “In any intensely competitive market, even the most effective messages can fall short without a memorable connection,” says Sapp. “Vontoo offers these clubs something more traditional methods cannot – a player’s voice fans notice immediately in a timely, permission-based format tailored to specific customer demographics.”

Teams manage the entire process via a user-friendly Internet interface. Using the technology requires no hardware, software, or third-party call center. “Vontoo took me less than an hour to learn,” says Celtics Director of Ticket Services and Operations Paul Cacciatore. “The learning curve and relatively low burden it places on players recording the messages were two reasons why we chose to try Vontoo.”

The Celtics plan to continue using Vontoo, contemplating ideas such as sending calls of thanks to loyal fans. Meanwhile, Vontoo hopes to offer its services to other teams in the NBA and similar organizations. Given that Vontoo’s headquarters are in a city known for its professional and amateur sports, this seems to be a logical next play for one of the latest Indiana tech companies to gain national attention.

Client: Cleveland Browns
Industry: Professional Sports
Goal: Increase Ticket Sales and Attendance

By combining technology and sport, the Cleveland Browns are joining the growing ranks of franchises finding a fresh approach to boosting ticket sales

Instead of selling games solely through mass e-mails or advertised offers, the Browns are literally doing their talking by finessing calling campaigns supported by Vontoo voice marketing.

Vontoo uses unique permission-based technology to deliver pre-recorded voice messages to any landline, mobile or Internet-based phone in the United States or Canada. By accessing Vontoo’s technology via the Internet, the Browns recently imported a phone list of more than 65,000 fans identified as potential season ticket holders. Next, they uploaded a previous recording by one of their players made
for another marketing effort.

After they scheduled the recording for distribution, thousands of fans answered their phones or retrieved a voicemail message to hear a personal appeal from a player encouraging them to buy season tickets with an automatic transfer option to the club’s sales office at the end of the message.

Positive results were reflected in real-time tracking Vontoo automatically generates after every voice broadcast. Each online Vontoo report shows which messages have gone out and reached a live person versus an answering machine or voicemail, as well as for how long a recipient listens to a call.

The Cleveland Browns are among an expanding group of sports franchises using such voice marketing efforts. Other Vontoo clients range from the Houston Rockets and Boston Celtics to major sponsors of professional bull riding. Meanwhile, the company’s dedication to customer service seems to be reinforcing its client relationships.