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KIA CLASSIC PRESENTED BY J GOLFMarch 28, 2010Jim FelechnerMichael SpragueCARLSBAD, CALIFORNIA DAMIAN SECORE: What has the impact been for KIA? MICHAEL SPRAGUE: For us it's been a great week to see the turn out, the fans, the avid fans. When we were looking at doing this, one of the reasons we came -- we liked the fact that the LPGA chose La Costa was because it's in northern San Diego County. Traditionally we have not done well here in this market. So it was a great opportunity for us to expose the brand to people who wouldn't normally consider us, and just seeing the fans and the 6- to 700 volunteers that we've been able too expose ourselves to. The players have been incredibly gracious and very hospitable and very thankful to us, as well. In fact, I had Christina Kim yesterday was walking between 9 and 10 and I had just passed her, came out of the pro shop area, and I heard my name called. I turned around and she was walking back to me, and she said, "Mr. Sprague, I just want to thank you and KIA for being the sponsor of this event," and I'm thinking to myself, you need to focus on the game here. You're in the midst of a major tournament. Don't worry about me, you can thank me later, but I just thought, wow, that was really nice. In summary, we've been have positive on the experience. Q. Expanding on that, having La Costa be a proven venue, how much does that influence your decision to sign on? MICHAEL SPRAGUE: It did, as I mentioned, because historically we've not done well here. I know they were looking at some other properties in Southern California, so all of them were acceptable to us as the title sponsor. This allows our San Diego dealers to have a great participation in the event. To your point, it has had historical significance. It's hosted tournaments, so we knew that the group here could quickly activate it; whereas some of the other properties haven't had events before, so at the end it worked out really well. Q. You guys haven't traditionally sponsored sporting events. What drew you to the LPGA? MICHAEL SPRAGUE: We're the official automotive sponsor for the NBA. We've been there for the last three years, so that was kind of our first foray. This year also we went into motor sports for the first time, so we are in the Continental Challenge, the streetcar -- sorry, the Grand-Am NASCAR series. We've had two events there so far, so we are dipping our toe in, but we like the fact, the avid fans that come with the LPGA, similar to the fan base with the NBA and the fan base with motor sports. Because these are the people who are going to come out to the tournament, and then on Monday morning go back and talk to their colleagues and friends and say, "Hey, I happened to see this" -- "I went to the KIA Classic over the weekend. I heard you're in the market for a car. You should see those KIAs. It was surprising to see them all over the course out there." We also like the brand, the LPGA, we think it's a brand in transformation, similar to KIA being a brand in transformation. If you look at what they're doing, the women are young and dynamic and just incredibly competitive. It's just a lot of fun, and our brand is a brand in transition, we're bringing out a lot of new product, so we saw a lot of synergies there. JIM FELECHNER: Michelle Wie drives a Soul, and the Sorento is the official vehicle of the NBA as well, as well as other partnerships. Q. How many cars do you have on site? MICHAEL SPRAGUE: I think it's 13, but in total it was over 50 because some of the players -- we gave some to the LPGA to use for their purposes, so the players are driving them as well. 13, yeah. Does everybody know Jim? JIM FELECHNER: I'm the tournament director, for those who don't know. Q. Jim, how are you doing with the attendance and the crowds? Feeling good about that? JIM FELECHNER: Yes, we're very pleased. Obviously we've been talking about putting this together on a short schedule. We pulled it off. Obviously. It was a major team effort, we had a lot of good talent, we had support from lots of people, and typically you would have about a year to mobilize an event of this magnitude, and we didn't have that luxury, but we put a good talent pool together and had realistically about 16 weeks to mobilize this. It was a good undertaking, but we majored in the Majors, and that was our philosophy, to focus on the things that really matter, let's do them really well, and I think we accomplished that goal. Q. Would you say this went about as well as you could have hoped? JIM FELECHNER: I would say from an execution standpoint it was extremely smooth. Every moving part that was necessary to execute the event worked, and anything that needed to be fixed along the way we fixed it. We're not perfect. It's a new venue for us, 625 volunteers I've never worked with before, so I would say overall it was exceptional with all those different hurdles. This volunteer crew, it's like I've been working with them for three or four years; they're just that good. We were able to pool all of our volunteer talent, or our chair persons, from -- they worked Torrey Pines, Accenture, U.S. Opens or Samsung, so we had an experienced crew, and they had a database to pull from, from their resources, and right out of the gate, Mike, by Christmas, we had 350 volunteers signed up. We put the notice out, and in two weeks we had half our core in the database. Then to mobilize this we only had six chairman meetings over the course of the first of the year, and for them to come out here and be trained and to execute was really a testimony to them. They did a great job. Q. Ballpark figure for attendance? JIM FELECHNER: Not right now. There is a lot of moving parts to go along with that number, but we should have that in a few days. Our goal was 30,000 for the week, and I think we're going to be -- we're going to be close to that or a little north. At least from the preliminary data that's the indication. Q. Michael, how difficult is it to give sponsorship dollars these days? MICHAEL SPRAGUE: It's hard to part with any dollars these days, let alone sponsorship. We were one of three brands that were up last year, so there was a lot of momentum behind the brand. So for us, we were approached by a lot of people for different sponsorships, and obviously the return on the investment is what we measure. So it is, one, the association with the sponsorship or the brand, the LPGA, which we liked. Two, being in Southern California, KIA's U.S. headquarters is in Orange County, so it was good from that standpoint to make that association, based here in Southern California. And also, looking at the numbers from the Golf Channel, the attendance, the volunteers, there is a whole number of things that we looked at to make sure this was worth the investment. At the end of the day, obviously we did think it was worth it. Q. How long is the deal? MICHAEL SPRAGUE: It was a one-year deal, and tomorrow morning at eight o'clock we will sit down and start evaluating it to see if it did meet our projections. Q. What are the thoughts going forward? Is there any indication -- MICHAEL SPRAGUE: I can't say too much with Jim here. (Chuckles.) No! JIM FELECHNER: I'll get all excited! (Chuckles.) MICHAEL SPRAGUE: As I mentioned, we've been very pleased to see the reaction to the consumers and the players. We've been watching the exposure that we've gotten on the Golf Channel, and that's been very favorable, but, again, like Jim, he's going to look at his numbers and we'll look at our numbers, and I can make the call. It will probably be another month or two before we figure it out. Q. Knowing the time constraint when KIA signed on, do you as a company temper expectations because of that window being so small? MICHAEL SPRAGUE: Nope. No, we are -- when we commit to something, we jump in and go full force. Our plant that just opened in West Point, Georgia, our chairman came over for a visit last fall, maybe summer, I can't remember, and he said, "Let's start this two months in advance of what all of the timing indications were." November 16th we started production, two months ahead of schedule. When we commit to something, boom, we go fast! JIM FELECHNER: You can see that in the products that are out now, the Soul, the Coupe, the Sorento, and we'll have three more debuting at the auto show, three brand-new models. MICHAEL SPRAGUE: We appreciate all the media coverage that you guys have done for the tournament; it's great. Without you, we wouldn't all be here as well, because you're out there promoting it as much as we are, so we greatly appreciate that, and it should be a very exciting next couple of hours, right? We'll see. DAMIAN SECORE: Thanks for your time. End of FastScripts |
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