Is Your Athlete/Ambassador Program Working?

By: Lisa Slagle, founder  & creative director

I did something interesting this summer, and I have an extra smelly gear pile as a souvenir. I went on a massive road trip to put myself in the heart of the outdoor industry for a month. I set up meetings in different cities with amazing potential clients, and I went there, to meet marketing managers and business owners as human beings, eye-to-eye, and I also wanted to check in with the outdoor industry at large.

Living in Northwest Montana (practically Cananda) is awesome— don’t get me wrong— it’s the best, but sometimes I have to get out of this wild, wooded world and go check in on the rest of the industry.

I went to the U.P. of Michigan. I went to Fort Collins. I went to Breckenridge. And Golden. And Cheyenne. And Jackson Hole. And drove across Idaho with my hand dangling lazily out the window of my truck. Finally, I ended the trip with Outdoor Retailer in Salt Lake City. I balanced work and play in all of these places. I rode stunning trails, listened to great music, and met with fascinating, smart people at companies doing fascinating, smart things.

A question I asked at every meeting was “If you could pick anything, what would you want us at Wheelie to take off your plate?”

The answers varied, but I noticed a theme: A lot of marketing managers and business owners are having a hard time managing and measuring the success of their athlete and ambassador programs.

They feel like they are giving away gear and not getting anything in return. Or if they did receive photos or videos in return, this content was sitting in cloud servers on the internet, largely unused and unshared simply because there was no time to do methodically do anything with it. After all, one business owner or marketing manager can only do so much in a day.

Athlete Teams and Ambassadors/Influencers should be an incredibly powerful tool for building brand awareness, customer loyalty, honest and credible reviews, and driving sales. 
They are real people, posting real photos with their own captions and feelings about the gear they are using and the experience they are having with it. This is replacing old school advertising, and when managed correctly, athletes and influencers are crazy-important for your brand.

At Wheelie, we love this one. 

• We love managing athlete teams by setting extremely clear expectations across the board and then editing their footage into mini-video series for social.
• We love gathering photos and helping athletes craft captions.
• We love putting on private webinars specifically to teach teams how to get the best shots with their GoPros or how to take great shots on the fly with their phones.
• We even love designing, planning, and putting together product launch packets so your athletes understand what they should be looking for when using your new products.

Managing athlete teams is one of our sweet spots. Organizing the backflipping, jibbing, spinning, face-shotting chaos is actually quite fun for us.

In fact, we realized that this is one of our favorite aspects of what we do as a creative agency, even if that’s not normally what stereotypical agencies offer.

So, to share the love, I have an offer for brand managers, marketing managers, or business owners: 
If you aren’t sure how to measure the success of your athlete/infulencer teams, we can help you figure out what you’re working with.

• We offer a Discovery Session for your Athlete/Influencer Team so that you know who is pulling their weight and who isn’t, what is working and what isn’t, and which types of posts have generated the highest ROI for you. 

These Discovery Sessions are fun and eye-opening. You’ll learn a lot through a colorful, well-designed report explaining our findings and what you should do about them. And you don’t even have to commit to hiring us to manage it.

During my road trip, I realized managing athlete/influencer teams was a pain point across the industry, and I just want to help people out because I know how to analyze, solve, and make this problem fun and profitable for you.

​Because it seems like the right thing to do. 

If you'd like to know which athletes are working for you and which aren't, how many posts you should be requesting per ambassador, or how to help your teams produce higher quality content, request more information about our Athlete/Brand Ambassador Discovery Session. Just hit the orange button below:

YES PLEASE!