Kevin Brown (00:00.39)
You bet, bet. Happy to do it.

Steve (00:03.374)
Okay, so.

Steve (00:12.782)
Okay, just one last second.

Steve (00:59.246)
You know, what can be better when one of the mandates of your program, of your media broadcast, is to probe inside the bowels of the $100 billion sports sponsorship industry and have as a guest someone who for many decades and most recently for 11 years spearheaded some of the more significant

what I'll call esoteric but true sports sponsorship deals for their authenticity. Authenticity by virtue of the nature of the product which Kevin Brown represented and the way he sculpted deals with some of the most prominent leagues in the world in an effort to show the seamless nature that existed between his brand

and professional athletes, and by extension, his brand to his target market. Kevin K. Brown, welcome to the Transaction Report.

Kevin Brown (02:06.717)
Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

Steve (02:09.717)
And we're delighted to have you and I know our viewers, particularly so many of whom spearhead brands like you did as an executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Sleep Number where you led a major business, generating over a billion dollars a year in revenue, one of the leaders in specialized smart beds, if you will. And you led

Brand sponsorship deals, significant ones, probably high seven figure deals or more with the likes of the NFL, with the likes of Kansas City Chiefs, Los Angeles Rams, et cetera, Minnesota Vikings, National Football League, Players Association, All-Star or veteran, wait, there was another one. Help me out on that one. was the football hall thing. That we will never forget.

Kevin Brown (02:59.741)
Pro Football Hall of Fame. Don't forget my Cowboys now.

Steve (03:06.261)
because it was just, I believe two nights ago that you absolutely emasculated my Giants in the final seconds, or actually in overtime, I think, by a field goal. So that was a tough one to see. But congratulations on that victory and for doing deals in a way that while the teams and the Express League are of interest, they're really secondary. What's of interest to us is first and foremost, how you, having been at Sears,

a variety of other retail establishments, large ones, starting off in your early days, in the relative early days at Anderson Consulting, working in a very significant or a center, it became a center at that time, working in a consulting capacity and consumer strategy, large organizational structuring. First and foremost, what...

was your first foray into sports sponsorship, where you had a budget, you were accountable to either as a sweet sweep being external from it or being part of it. And you had to justify and you had to look at the numbers, you had to look at the fit. And it was the first time that you can recall making a decision as a leader within a business and being accountable.

What was it you looked at and ultimately chose to sponsor and why did you make that decision?

Kevin Brown (04:39.099)
Yeah, great question again. Thanks for having me. And while it certainly wasn't my first foray into me and my team leading and activating the deals, my most recent 11 plus year run sleep number.

It was probably the most significant. So I'll just use that as an example because what I looked for were the same whether it was when I was at Meyer and we were looking at our sports deals there or Sears back in the day as well. what we, first and foremost, it's got to make sense for, as you mentioned, your consumer and your brand. And that's kind of guiding light.

And when I started at Sleep Number, and you mentioned it, incredible product, nothing like it does what it does on the planet. But the brand was considered gimmicky. And as the brand launched SmartBeds to the world, what it was about was improving your health, being a wellness technology company.

And in the case of the sports piece of it, the science proved that it could improve better quality sleep, improved your performance, and your recovery. that was a claim that I had on my side to say, this is what I'm offering to our target consumer.

And then, why the NFL? And one, the consumer target audiences matched up. the as everyone knows, is like the largest marketing platform on the planet. And it gave the brand reach and relevance. And so that was certainly, certainly important.

Kevin Brown (06:36.989)
And so the rest is kind of like had to take care of itself. So it's like, okay, you have to sleep in your bed to get the benefits of the bed. And why do we start with the NFL versus baseball or basketball? Because they spent more nights in their own bed, just because of the the schedule works than any of the league. So it made sense to start with the league.

Steve (06:57.517)
So let's do two things. Do you remember your first sports sponsorship? Aside from SleepMember. We're gonna get deep into the discussion and I'm gonna share with you my evaluation if you had come to me as a sports consultancy group and asking our opinion even though we're a software AI business for sponsorship and the pain points within sponsorship that sports business main purview. But going way back.

As you mentioned, you were with Sears other organizations. Do you remember what was your first ever sports sponsorship that you were either a part of making the decision or you expressly individually made the decision?

Kevin Brown (07:39.038)
Yeah, the decision with Sears Holdings was the first one where in earnest, I had budget and had to help support connecting the sponsorship with the brand.

And at the time I was serving as the head of marketing services for all of Sears Holdings. And so I had all the media underneath me and my team. And so that was the entree into the partnership role. So it was really through the investment in media with the NFL properties to put the brand on their properties.

Everything had to, it was a, everything then and everything now has to show an ROI on your investment. And I remember having to make sure that we brought the organization along on, this is why this makes sense. This is why this is part of our media mix, separate from anything else we could be investing in.

Steve (08:42.925)
was probably 15, 20 years ago, I don't want to put you on the spot, but when you looked at return on objectives, return on investment, do you remember what were perhaps some of the more paramount variables that you would look at with your team to actually attempt to look at return on either objective or investment?

Kevin Brown (09:01.917)
Yeah, this goes back to my Accenture days. One of the offerings that we would bring to our clients and I brought with me when I moved from consulting into this C-suite was a sophisticated econometric modeling. So data-driven understanding what's the return on every dollar invested, that was in an NFL property or a partnership.

or anything else that the events, those kinds of things. And so those big large data sets while we're, like you said, 15 years ago or more in an empathy, more manual.

There definitely is sophistications come along today to where there's more tools for marketers to use to evaluate. But the principle is still the same. You had to call balls and strikes on whether the next dollar you spent was better spent on extreme home makeover or whether you spent it on the Bears broadcast that weekend.

Steve (10:06.413)
So what would that look like aside from an attempt to look at sales, which for so many you have, and again, I think the split, I haven't thought about it in a long time, but I do think that the split is less than it used to be. We've kind of had an upward trend and then a realization.

that ROI is so darn complicated. I mean, we're gonna factor in overhead, we're gonna factor in what I'm paying in salaries to my staff. How are we gonna attempt to take in all the considerations of what we just spent on a sponsorship to get to true ROI? So where the industry and sports business, the business has migrated is more towards this again, and I think it is in the eyes of the beholder for many, but return on investment definition.

Where KPIs are set but then KPIs can be set by people who set very marginal low-level KPIs Because they don't want to be fired and the bottom line is those KPIs were artificially low. They were not comparative so they really don't have any real foothold of authenticity because Okay, they were accepted by the team But how do we know those were not 50 % below what we could have gotten? So if you could just take us

If you don't mind with your center hat on for a moment, methodically through, what would some of those benchmarks you would use, take it, imagine you and I are just looking at one of your sponsorships at any of your organizations. You choose it, and let's just do a mini case study if you will. And let's roll up our sleeves, and again, you choose the company, let's pull out a sponsorship, and say, okay, we're now making that decision.

if that $500,000 or that $5 million or that $10 million spend was valid and did our brand justice? And are we certain to the best of our professional skill set that the opportunity cost wasn't too extreme and there was not a better option elsewhere? I'll put it back in your hands, Kevin.

Kevin Brown (12:16.829)
Yeah, so I'm going to go with recency just because it'll be more relevant on the case study again. Not that it didn't apply to my deals in the past, further past. Yeah, it's got sleep numbers. So certainly, was, as I set up, there was a strategic imperative in terms of the brand was very unique in a low interest category mattresses.

Steve (12:29.645)
We're gonna sleep now. We'll be at

Kevin Brown (12:46.141)
It was a long purchase cycle. It's the third, you know, biggest ticket item typically you're going to spend money on in your household. And, you know, and the brand was unique in that it wasn't like the rest. So it had to break out. So there had to be a strategic imperative. And, you know, that was, you then that, you know, that was the impetus.

Steve (13:10.221)
By the way, the third you mentioned just for our own knowledge base, what were the first two that are typically? We're not talking about internally within the household. We're talking about just associated with the home. So car, what was the other one, please?

Kevin Brown (13:16.433)
Yeah, home and car, home and car. Yeah, home and car and then, and then.

Yep, yeah, total purchase. Home, your home, your buy a house, car, and then mattress slash furniture, right? And mattress fell in that third bucket. So,

Steve (13:30.379)
homes, car, and-

Steve (13:37.421)
And was mattress isolated by the way? Are we saying mattress independent of say an elite refrigerator or stove top or is this aggregated with all home furnishing, all furniture?

Kevin Brown (13:49.502)
It's not, it was in a lot of households the mattress, I mean it was the third most expensive more than a fridge, more than your washer dryer. it's mattress itself was in a third most expensive purchase you'll make in your lifetime.

Steve (13:58.99)
Hmm.

Steve (14:09.249)
the average spend on a household in America on a mattress.

Kevin Brown (14:12.381)
On a mattress? Boy, that's a great question. The brand I represented was in the premium part of the market, which was anything $1,000 and up. And so...

Steve (14:22.669)
The ones that you did with the NFL that I read about were approximately around five five plus thousand.

Kevin Brown (14:29.469)
Yeah, that's – that – in the premium category, that was certainly the realm that we're talking. So we're not talking the sub-1000 category. So yeah, you're investing – there's a comma in some – four or five figures. mean, our top of the line would put you well over $10,000 at the time. So that was the strategic context. then – okay, so –

The company was about a billion dollars at the time and we had this incredible innovation. We got to change the conversation about what sleep actually means. mean, there's big, huge businesses, industries around nutrition and around diet and exercise, but sleep was actually the foundation for whether or not you're going to get the most out of your nutrition investments. And people were investing lots of money every year on that.

or their exercise and programs themselves. So that was the conversation that we were leading, changing. And so that was the strategic, the strategic imperative. And then, yes, we had to run models that said, OK, what do we need to generate in terms of incremental sales and profits to make sure that the ROI on the...

the deal itself made sense because it wasn't just a one year deal. The initial deal with the NFL was, it was a five year commitment, right? Yes, exit ramps, all those kinds of things built into the contract. we were, and that's another good point is like, we don't think of, you mentioned sponsorships a couple of times. I think that's not the right mindset around this. You've got to think partnership where it's got to be good for.

your brand and then it's also got to be additive to whoever you're partnering with. Whether that this happened to be the NFL as an example, but no matter which, what you're investing in, it's got to make sense for both sides and there's got to be mutual agreement to make the numbers work. In terms of setting those targets you were setting up.

Steve (16:33.847)
Which by the way, is such a 21st century concept and it's such a beautiful concept because you're the winner. Obviously, it's not just putting your money into a team, an athlete, league, it is, or a stadium, an event. It's the fact that what you are proffering.

is in need by that organization or entity. And therefore, it's a synergy that frankly, while they get the benefit of expressing the value proposition of your product, the bottom line is your product desperately needs that. It's ostensibly an endorsement that truly makes sense that they will use versus just money in the coffers of those who need the revenue generation.

the team, the league, the association, the event, the stadium. But you really, as the partner, are the number one winner in that equation when you do it the way you just referenced as a partnership.

Kevin Brown (17:35.878)
Yeah, unique to, this is what I would suggest everyone watching is like, how do you make sure it's not just a revenue deal, right? That it's not just revenue on one side, that it's truly a true partnership. And so in this case, at Sleep Number, it wasn't just a marketing deal. The brand was inside the locker room and the operations of all the teams, and then we partnered with

teams that you know there was a criteria for which teams we would partner with and you know those are the ones that you know ironically you tended to have better win-loss records they tended to have

Steve (18:16.903)
I was noting that Kansas City, Los Angeles, obviously Minnesota is your hometown. I was thinking you guys did an awesome job of picking Super Bowl champions, at the same time, please.

Kevin Brown (18:20.477)
.

Yeah, Vikings, Yeah, had good runs.

Kevin Brown (18:31.165)
But, I say cause and effect. They weren't cut to the world champions. Yup, that's right.

Steve (18:38.573)
So had 1600 athletes using your debts and you were literally bringing in many of your relationships $5,000 in value that you in just contra, in just barter alone, not even talking about cash contribution as part of your sponsorship, but $5,000 in a mattress's value. Please.

Kevin Brown (19:02.673)
Yeah, well, the players all reached, they also reached into their own pocket. That wasn't part of the deal where it's just we're giving away product. That was certainly not good business. But they saw the-

Steve (19:15.293)
It was a contribution of five grand for their acquisition.

Kevin Brown (19:18.267)
Yeah, that was part of the deal. But they invested beyond that. you think about, I remember working with Harrison Smith, his Viking safety. And his whole thing was he felt better and more energized at the end of the season, the first year he was on the bed, than he did at the beginning of the season.

And when you think about the value to the NFL, the NFL's brand is having its star players on the field when it matters most at the end of the season going into playoffs. And certainly, our brand was a piece of ensuring that they get dinged up, but they recover faster because of the better quality of sleep and everything else the training staff do with them.

for them. But yeah, that was certainly valuable to the brand, the NFL brand.

Steve (20:14.675)
I want to make sure because we're still looking in how you evaluated because it's so interesting and you just made me realize that these 1600 athletes who used your product and

Kevin Brown (20:19.141)
Yep, so I know.

Steve (20:30.125)
your margin, which is none of my interest per se, obviously it worked out in a fashion that if you had a $12,000 mattress and you were contributing $5,000 to the acquisition, and I'm just using hypothetical numbers on what the sales price of it was.

If that 5,000 in the article is, I believe, is represented by your words is accurate and there was an additional $5,000 to $7,000 contributed by the athlete and you had a 50 % or a 40 % margin, well, right there you did a smart business deal just right out of the gate because you've got folk on a very high tiered level. Some of those out in advertisements and commercial films talking about it. You then had a wonderful piece in 24 where Travis Kelsey is talking about his 10 hours of sleep a day rule.

which I never knew about, and how he broke the news to his fiancee that, by the they're married, correct? Are they married or they're engaged? Engaged, you. Forgive me for not following that so intently. But at the end of the day, telling Taylor Swift that he has a 10-hour a day sleep rule, and lo and behold, prior to your relationship,

Kevin Brown (21:26.621)
I think they're engaged. Engaged. like, yeah, yeah.

Steve (21:44.066)
He's using your mattress wins the Super Bowl and someone in Tech Radar wrote an article, going to correlation or causation. Did the mattress contribute? again, if I'm in your position, what music to my ears. Just unbelievable. Travis Kelsey, could this be one of the reasons he won the Super Bowl? But you just made me think of something, Kevin, and that is.

Kevin Brown (21:59.48)
It It was gold, yeah.

Steve (22:13.089)
Half of the year, these guys over 17 weeks are traveling on the road. What happens on those off weeks where they're not at home, not in the sleep number bed? Was there any type of innovation? Did you ever have a situation where you had either a deal with a hotel or you had an athlete who said, I cannot sleep outside of your bed. I've got to make sure this travels with me on the road.

Kevin Brown (22:37.433)
there were several, believe me, that was a topic. A couple of things on that was one, the team, and we worked with each of the teams on their travel schedule, especially for the international travel and for your giants going to play on the West Coast. And even though it was an away game, most of the teams don't get wheels up until.

you know, maybe Saturday before a Sunday start type of thing. So they're still getting, you know, as much benefit as can. They're just not getting it, as you mentioned, like the night before the most, you know, the game, right? But, you know, a lot of them brought their pillows with them, which gave them, you know, some benefit from the hotel pillows. One interesting story in that was, I guess it was maybe two seasons ago where, you know,

The Cowboys appreciated sleeping in their own bed that they gave them the freedom on that Saturday night instead of all sleeping in the team hotel. They all slept at home, which is a big, which is a huge change to the way NFL teams work because they want to make sure everybody's together and they don't want anybody getting stuck in traffic or whatever, not making it to the stadium. But that's how critical it was to them to get in their bed the night before the game. If you remember, the Cowboys had that home winning streak.

Steve (23:59.307)
That's so interesting.

Kevin Brown (24:02.971)
That was, I can't remember the number of games, but it was, they were like, no, we're going to sleep in our own beds to keep this thing going.

Steve (24:09.613)
Is it routine throughout most of the teams in the NFL that Saturday night before a Sunday game or the night before the next day's game that they will, most teams have a policy that you should be sleeping in a hotel even though it's a home game?

Kevin Brown (24:26.333)
Yeah, it's, it's, you know, they, it's, have had a, they've got a program because they'll all the, they'll have their final checks with each of the, you know, the position teams. Then they'll have, you know, dinner, then they got curfew. They just want to make sure the guys are lights out at a certain time. And, and then I get them up early for it they got a breakfast and they got travel to the stadium and all that stuff. So.

Steve (24:42.375)
I would have...

Steve (24:46.573)
I would have thought just out of fear that someone's pulling the alarm, like one of those really nasty, like pre-exam college, know, angst student who does something very silly, or someone's calling them in their hotel room. I would have thought for their own protection, frankly, that if I were a team owner, and again, just from the hip, I would have thought, you know what, keep my athletes at home.

Kevin Brown (25:01.479)
there.

Steve (25:11.187)
less could happen. I understand there's an issue of them going out and doing silly stuff, but maybe there's a mob psychology issue that if they're together, maybe more silly things happen. So let's keep them alone. Let them sleep unimpeded in the bed that makes them comfortable. Because it is such a phenomenally impactful issue in our life, that mattress, that I know so many people who are listening to this program as we speak. If you just stop and think about

What can be a battle in life? I I experienced this personally. A true battle I go through in an attempt to have a good night's sleep. I don't have insomnia, but I have issues from playing sports when I was in college that I have to have a certain type of bed meet. I have no idea what that is. I just know it when I see a kind of a Justice Brennan Supreme Court comment. So I mean, I kind of know it when I see it and or feel it. So.

Kevin Brown (25:44.765)
Yeah.

Steve (26:09.195)
With you, interesting, interesting. So you have the incredible sensitivity that your product, unlike so many other products that whom athletes can use in a way or which athletes can use in a way frankly that they don't have to think twice about it. Like you turn the key to the ignition on and the car feels good and you're just moving and it feels great.

But this is such an, for all of us human beings, such an everyday, it's an existential issue. So let's just go to one, let's see if we can color this a little bit further. And again, I appreciate these tangential points because they're important to understanding the world in which you operate it and the close proximity for which so many sponsors or partners don't have with teams or athletes.

very often endorsement deals, I'll tell you, with Caitlin Clark's recent deal with Goldman Sachs. To the best of my ability, she ain't in the war room making decisions on mergers and acquisitions. So that's really, in most cases, not where the athlete dabbles. Or with the car, she's not going under the hood, someone, well she's actually with Buick.

So they're not going under the hood and trying to look at a more efficient, energy sensitive, environmentally friendly engine. But with you, you collected hundreds of millions of data points. And in doing so, again, you could argue, not argue, you could certainly suggest that in building your brand, that's a return on investment, return on objective, because those millions of data points collected from athletes in a way that gave you sports science.

certainly helped you build a better product. So let's go through the nuggets, if you will, of what were the dominant factors that you looked at and said, okay, like you did, resign with so many teams, the four teams and the NFL, you resigned, you personally, a CMO. So if you will, what would be those big nuggets in that return category?

Kevin Brown (28:10.333)
it.

Kevin Brown (28:23.365)
Yeah, so I call it vital signs. So you think about your dashboard, right? So your vital signs were in the category of brand health. We had three check-ins a year where I was looking at major factors like consideration for the brand, brand preference.

Steve (28:26.795)
Love it.

Kevin Brown (28:47.136)
and awareness was not really the primary issue for the brand. But those things we broke down by audience. So I could see different audiences and I could see my NFL audiences, fans broken also down by different segments as well. So it was segmented. And so that was.

Steve (29:06.709)
Which are the, would you define those segments by priority, please?

Kevin Brown (29:10.301)
You know, mainly it was, do you self identify as a fan versus a non-fan? Because they would be more, again, we're trying to be relevant in the messaging. So do you relate to what we're saying? And then within that, back to partnership, we look to align ourselves with who the NFL was also investing their marketing against, which would be.

Women who were more than 50 % of the fan base. Latina Latinx, you know, was certainly a big, big group also. And then Black African American was another demographics segment that was important to the league. And we measured ourselves against that as well to make sure we were helping.

Steve (29:57.73)
Your average price point per product? What would be your average mattress sale?

Kevin Brown (30:02.517)
mattress sale. I don't want to to the latest financials. was, you know, but it was again, like I said, we started at a thousand, you know, we started at a thousand. it, you know,

Steve (30:06.812)
I mean...

Steve (30:11.213)
into five figures. So I'm being presumptuous or I'm actually being ignorant. Let me retract my ignorance. I'm presuming that your fundamental product to offer was a mattress. In the realm of total sales generated, what percent of your sales came from mattress sales?

Kevin Brown (30:31.965)
It's the vast smart beds, say beds and bases. That was the vast majority and the majority of the business happened at retail in the stores. that's when the players.

got invited when they joined the league as rookies or getting their bed for the first time. We tried different ways to have events on site to make it easy for them. Nothing beat the store experience. So all of them ended up coming into the stores to pick which exact solution was right for them.

Steve (31:03.757)
you looked at that you said obviously pillows I saw you were also very very involved which again is smart smart permit me to use the word sponsorship I'll interchange it with partnership recognizing that there is a distinction when sponsorship is more frankly reliant on just the benefits that you're getting from the property owner

Kevin Brown (31:13.373)
Yeah, that's right, it's fine.

Steve (31:29.299)
versus the innovative way to be authentic in using and maximizing because of the unique nature of your product, this relationship that I fully respect becomes truly a partnership. With that said, please don't go right ahead,

Kevin Brown (31:43.356)
Yeah. And again, the mic, right? The mindset's got to... Yeah, sorry. Couldn't interrupt you.

I was going say that's just this particular brand. But the idea is right. You've got to find how does your brand show up authentically with what the partnering organization is looking to do as well. so to your point, everybody sleeps. And we happen to have the science back and tied to performance that was backed by.

Steve (32:12.929)
But you did it brilliantly as well because you did one of the areas and kind of one of the 12, 13 areas of sports sponsorship that is so vital of what benefits can be utilized in a way that helped project the brand. And again, the real goal of doing it in a way.

that just seems seamless, natural, not contrived. And you did it with athletes going and literally bringing pillows to cancer patients through one of your partnerships with the Cancer Association, the American Cancer Society. We're not deviating back from ROI. So we're gonna be, we're still in this realm. And that's a huge realm of how do you tie in and social responsibility, but not to do it in a...

Kevin Brown (32:45.101)
Americans cancer society. That's right.

Kevin Brown (32:50.973)
It's all connected.

Steve (32:59.741)
I don't want to use fancy words and I'm not trying to do that, but in a preachy way, right? You're doing it in a way that it made so much sense. And when I saw you coming in and I was thinking, my God, what is the largesse of this organization? How many mattresses and frames, smart frames and products can you give away? And I saw the athletes coming out of the trucks with pillows and it dawned on me.

I have really never figured out, and I'm gonna say it once in a blue moon I do here, I'm gonna be 63 in a few weeks.

Kevin Brown (33:39.569)
You know, I would not, not that I'd guess people's ideas, but that would not be my guess. I would have gone prices right. I would have gone prices right on you. I would have gone low.

Steve (33:45.21)
If you tell me 72, I'm going to be very disappointed. But at the end of the day, avid mountain biker here, so at the end of the day, I will say this. I still haven't figured out what's my appropriate pill. I feel like when you graduate high school, this should be a mini course they give you. It absolutely should be a part of your graduation diploma.

that they took you through some type of sleep science and empowered every kid coming out of high school where you're almost fully grown and you basically know that for the rest of your life, who are you and what is this body of yours needing so that you can, because literally we all know, and I'm not talking about insomnia, but I'm talking about those individual nights that we either choose to abuse our bodies and minds.

and the physiological effects of having poor sleep. We had 400 years from Descartes where literally, could you believe in psychology? But only up until I think almost John Sarno of the last century, in the 90s, came out with mind and body, I forget the full name, but his messaging was a breakthrough that still many doctors refuted, that the mind and body have a direct causation. And if the mind is off kilter, the body is off kilter.

And if you think about it as a professional athlete, if you don't get proper sleep defined as somewhere between seven and nine hours, not Travis Kelsey's 10, but for him it needs to be 10, the bottom line is your product is, I I never dawned on me. What a beautiful product you have for the business of sport. So as we look at this, you said we have these vital signs.

Kevin Brown (35:33.435)
Yep, so right.

Steve (35:33.997)
And again, that other thing you did with social responsibility is absolutely a huge vital sign that proves its worth in many ways, tangible and tangible. But let's continue to follow your journey.

Kevin Brown (35:46.822)
Right, so, and social responsibility would show up in that brand health realm, right? And so then, the other strategic that you've touched on it, you touched on earlier was your brand storytelling, right? So.

How do we get the partner with the league and NFL films? How do we partner with our football club partners? And they're basically giant media content producers as well. And then the players themselves to talk in a way that fans care about and then make sure that the brand is represented in a.

not in an advertising way, but in a way that connects the story to how it could be really relevant to them.

Steve (36:36.013)
What does that look like? You're known as a CMO, a public company, large company, significant public company, as a storytelling CMO. So could you give us an example? What is it? What would that, as a master storyteller, which is what you are known as in marketing,

What might be an example of you working with NFL films, working with an athlete, and one anecdotal experience that got to the public that you thought, you know what, that was a heck of a story.

Kevin Brown (37:09.373)
Yeah, one of the, it wasn't the first one we did, we had this idea, a lot of the activation was in season. That's when everything's at its peak. But then right after Super Bowl, there starts this other whole thing called draft, right? And so we partnered and came up with this idea and it was road to draft and getting, again, back to

having some criteria, but also being able to pick really folks of character to represent the brand and follow them through getting ready for the biggest interview of their life. And so we did that in in between and then activated at the draft. And so one of the films we did was with CD Lam and told his story about his family and how he...

grew up and what football meant to him and then just told that whole story. And then he was prepping for the draft and he slept on the sleep members smart bed so that's always helpful to telling the story because he was benefiting from the bed all along.

And that ended up winning a sports Emmy. You know, that whole story, can shoot you the link. still out and nothing ever gets off the internet. But that was just one example of a film series that we partnered on. And then each year it was all, I remember sitting with the team and everybody, what about this person? What about this person?

Steve (38:31.884)
Mmm.

Kevin Brown (38:51.299)
It was always like, who's going to be our guy? And then we'd follow them all the way through the season the next year. So we've been pretty lucky picking some good ones.

Steve (38:57.645)
Was that, Kevin, was that incremental? In other words, when you had a deal with a particular team, I mean, and it is a question I want to get to as well. we're still on a journey and I love doing this with you where we don't have to just do a list together. We're evolving into it. And that to me is storytelling. So this is honoring your expertise. We're telling a story, but we're also very much

Kevin Brown (39:18.631)
That's it.

Steve (39:24.619)
kind of navigating this one step at a time. He came out of CD-LAM when you look at him coming out of the Sooners at Oklahoma and playing at Dallas, which was a team you sponsored. So explain to us first and foremost, was that an additional fee you paid to CD-LAM's agent? Did you have to negotiate that deal?

Kevin Brown (39:37.788)
Mm-hmm.

Steve (39:49.622)
Or was that inclusive in any deal? I mean, you did so many deals with the NFL and you had to deal with the Cowboys. Where did this deal with Lam fit in?

Kevin Brown (39:58.96)
Yeah, so this is not proprietary information. way that it's structured is if you want to be able to use the NFL rights, then you need to do a deal with the league. And so that allows you to say you are the official X of the NFL and that designation.

Steve (40:21.761)
Was that important? Was that an IP? Was that important? Did you use that IP?

Kevin Brown (40:27.845)
Yeah, it's certainly part of the formula. And then if you want to be able to use the actual team marks, then you need to do deals with the individual teams. Otherwise, your communications have to show all 32 helmets or whatever. And so it's not as relevant as you're doing local activations.

Steve (40:50.669)
If you were doing commercial film that was going out in legacy or streaming, are you saying when you worked with NFL films to get those clips for your commercial film, if you were an NFL official partner as the official sleep and wellness partner, I'm not sure I understand what you're saying you had to use and expose at 32 teams.

Kevin Brown (41:12.645)
Yeah, we had to, in order to use the star, the Cowboys brand, we needed to have a partnership with the Cowboys. And so when we went to NFL Films, we selected games with the Cowboys because we were able to their...

Steve (41:22.657)
deal with the Cowboys. But if you got the... I'm sorry.

Steve (41:32.545)
But even though you're an official partner with the NFL, you could not take NFL footage and show any specific team's logo without having an individual deal with that team.

Kevin Brown (41:45.361)
There were rules and regs around it, yes. so, so yeah, so to your point about is it incremental? Yes, there's the.

Steve (41:50.765)
So why would you ever sponsor the deal with the NFL itself?

Kevin Brown (41:55.326)
Well, because I get the shield and I get the marketing power of their brand assets in the market as well. Yeah, nationally if I only did a Minnesota deal, can only market Minnesota and Dakota.

Steve (42:04.247)
because you're marking on a national.

Steve (42:11.339)
But your marketing, your commercial film was deployed regionally, locally, and nationally.

Kevin Brown (42:16.497)
Yeah, because we're, again, think it's nationally and then, you know, then as the league is expanding internationally, that's certainly attractive as a marketer, you know, for brands to say, okay, if I'm looking to expand from a domestic to a global player. Yeah, so the structure is, yep, league, team, and then individual player deals. So, you so you've got three tiers of,

Steve (42:23.863)
Yeah. Here.

Steve (42:30.273)
So back to CD, you had the deal with Dallas, CD is crafted by Dallas.

Kevin Brown (42:47.197)
partners that you're managing through, but for the collective payoff of the entire, you know, that's another, you know, I get another thing that I've learned along the way to pass on to, you who's, who's watching is, you know, the value of the, when you're doing the scenario on, this worth it or not? You know, in our case, certainly we believe so. And that's led to the renewal as well as continuing to invest.

It's not just the dollars and cents of the deal with the team or the league. need to be able, you have to invest, know, probably, you know, again, it ranges, you have to invest over and above that on your own side to actually activate it to get the value of what you just negotiated. And you have to account for it. And then so many, you know, I've talked to so many of my colleagues where they're like,

Steve (43:33.249)
You know, there are so many...

Kevin Brown (43:39.453)
We're two years into this thing, we're not gaining a return. I'm like, well, what are you doing on your side? They're like, well, we're not. I'm like, well, you're not going to get it by putting your nameplate next to the shield. You've got to have a plan on it.

Steve (43:50.283)
the activation.

It is quite shocking that 50, 60 years into our industry as a usage, meaning sponsorship, really popularized from the 70s onward, that it's still how many brands and how many brand leaders expect that simply being one of 50 or one of 30 official partners and just being among the herd.

and being put onto a website with your logo or occasionally expressed on a higher profile or showing up for VIP corporate hospitality. But if you're a B2C company, there's limitations in that specific benefit. But I want to understand, we didn't, for our viewers, finish off on one point with Lamb. Was that an incremental fee where it became an endorsement deal for CD Lamb that the commercial film you did with him and produced behind him,

was an additional incremental spend above the NFL, above the Dallas Cowboys, and now you had a tertiary level that required you to spend with him as well.

Kevin Brown (44:53.639)
There were, that was by choice though. So as part of the NFL arrangement, there were dollars we could use in our activation fund.

to do things like this. But you had to contract with, know, CD in this case. Because we didn't want to do it just for, again, we were about long-term partnerships, not about let's do this film just for the draft and be done. We wanted him to continue to represent the brand for the rest of the year, all the way through the following Super Bowl. And keep in mind, we didn't know who was going to draft him. We got very fortuitous that Dallas drafted him, and Dallas happened to be one of our partners.

That's happened too, where we had a guy go through and he ended up on a team that we didn't, we used him, but we couldn't use the marks of the team. And then he got traded to another team that we were partners with. We're like, okay, that worked out good for us.

Steve (45:31.757)
Fascinating. Yeah, I was thinking about that.

Steve (45:39.458)
Yeah. Which by the way is so interesting as you say that, particularly with NIL. We're not going there for today's interview, but discussion rather. But we're going to do a different one. But you raise such a fascinating point. Because when you and I were kids, and I won't be presumptuous about how old you are, but at the end of the day, when we were in the relative ballpark, let's give it a decade or so, I'm going to think younger than me. But at the end of the day,

Kevin Brown (45:49.339)
I'll come back for that one. That's a good one.

Steve (46:08.267)
You know, when we were fans of our local teams, we thought they were lifers. know, we didn't see, you know, Cleon Jones from the Mets being traded to another team. They used to have the life of my childhood. So with you and going back, it's a great point you raise about...

Kevin Brown (46:18.909)
I can't keep up.

Steve (46:27.085)
some of the instability behind an athlete when you're using them in uniform and you love that IP and you really want to show that athlete in Clemson's, this is going to be out of deference to Dave Wharton, so our CMO, out of respect to a uniform of Clemson and all of sudden the guy's three months later is in the portal and he's out of there, it makes for sponsors feeling a little bit more rickety.

Kevin Brown (46:39.195)
Right? That's right.

Steve (46:52.299)
Going back to your vital signs again, so you defined obviously fit with athlete, a sense of fandom and I gather recall in some capacity being definitive and important. You talked about social responsibility. You've talked or alluded to just outright incremental revenue generation. What else goes into those vital sign dash?

Kevin Brown (47:20.869)
Yeah, so yeah, great question. So I'll try to be more succinct, know, it's it's complex. It's complex.

Steve (47:25.837)
No, you're doing it right. I think you've been very succinct and very pleasurable to just have this kind of free-flowing dialogue. Please.

Kevin Brown (47:31.966)
Thanks. Yeah, but I also want to make sure that, you know, for those out there considering deals or have deals, you know, it's helpful. that's a mantra of mine. yeah, so brand health. And really it was about after the connection, know, would you consider my brand? And then I got into storytelling.

Steve (47:40.823)
Peace.

Steve (47:52.321)
How'd you do that research, the way?

Kevin Brown (47:57.342)
How do do it? There's many folks, there's many companies that'll help you with that in terms of having set up a established methodology on your target audience and then checking in with them regularly for a brand.

Steve (48:11.181)
Do you remember what your sample size was, what the universe was when you were doing that?

Kevin Brown (48:14.013)
Our universe, you know, statistically is relevant. It was in the thousands, you know, that we checked in because we wanted to, it was in the thousands because we didn't have just one target audience. We had other segments we wanted to measure our movement against. you know, brand health is something that just doesn't move super quickly. It's going to happen over, it's brand over time. So we checked three.

Steve (48:34.635)
Well, you can quickly on the negative side.

Kevin Brown (48:38.713)
It can, yeah, obviously if you have an event that's detrimental to your brand, you'll lose it fast, but it's slower to get back or to grow. And so we checked in three, frequency wise, three times a year. I know other brands do it quarterly, four times a year. But there's a panel of your target audience. You have a very scripted question. You have to keep the questions the same because if you change them every quarter, you're not going to be able to get the historical trend lines.

And so, that was the brand health. Then we started talking about the example of working with the athletes, in this case, and films. What was that about? That was about, and then we needed to invest to distribute them. I know that was the NFL would distribute them on their platform, and then we would put some investment to distribute them on our platforms. And that was about driving what I call engagement. So it's next level down. It's not.

It's about, I'm engaged in the story and it's not just recall, but it's like I get the key messages that the brand wanted me to get in terms of, I get it. This particular product can help me improve my performance. I don't have to be a world-class athlete like C.D. Lam. I want to be the best dad I can be, the best colleague I can be.

Steve (49:52.077)
Express slogan that you had at the time?

Kevin Brown (49:55.71)
It was a sleep smarter play better for the NFL

Steve (49:59.256)
Was that important to you to measure among your audience?

Kevin Brown (50:04.379)
Not necessarily the tagline itself, but the message that the main message was, you get that sleeping on our product gives you quality sleep because it effortlessly, you adjust for your optimal comfort, you and your partner. That's what I want to get. That's what I want them to come back say, I get it. You're different. need to at least when I go out mattress shopping, I got to at least put you on the list. Right.

Steve (50:20.318)
What about recall?

Steve (50:29.333)
How much was unaided by the way, Kevin, regarding when you would have these panels of thousands nationally and you're checking on brand health? How often would you go the unaided route and literally ask the target market if they knew what you have sponsored?

Kevin Brown (50:45.489)
Yeah, I'd go back to, we asked that for sure. The more important thing was our total awareness was very, very strong. But again, back, was category dynamics. It's a low interest category. And so, you know, don't really know, meaning it's not Coke or Pepsi. It's not top of mind, you know, and you're only in it every decade. So you don't know who the top brands are.

Steve (51:00.077)
I didn't understand that. What is a low interest category?

Steve (51:12.405)
Average mattress sales about every consumption is about seven years. Okay

Kevin Brown (51:16.251)
Yeah, to, yep, eight to, yeah, around, right in there. And then in our case, because our beds were designed to last 25 years, you know, I think we were in the, our, you know, our repeat was very, very healthy, but they tended to hang onto their bed because could continue to get benefit out of it, right? But we needed them, we needed to keep them upgrading into the better technology. So.

Steve (51:37.89)
So unaided knowledge that you were an official partner of the NFL or the Cowboys or the Rams or the Vikings, I'm forgetting one, Chiefs, the Kansas City Chiefs or part of the NFLPA or part of the pro, was pro bowl? thank you. I mean, you guys really went all in. So.

Kevin Brown (51:53.703)
Football have all the fame.

Kevin Brown (51:59.326)
Yeah, that was, that was, I got, I got asked that question a bit, which was like, how come not expanding outside? I was like, we've not done with, we're not done with this, with this deal yet.

Steve (52:08.205)
So just meditating on that a little longer. So for you, the idea that the multiple times a year, three time a year engagement of checking brand health, engaging in questions to understand that there was some form of response of this universe whom you were sampling had

some touch with your football relationship.

But the outright query about saying, because as you said, it's a low engagement product, it's not top of the mind, but for usually these moments that are not impulsive or could be semi-impulsive or could be an awakening, an epiphany, medical guidance, a partner who says your bed is absolutely, is there a parent saying, you see this bed is forever damaged, it can't be repaired?

a sale, were in a department store and something just appealed to you, you lied down and said, my God, this is phenomenal. It could be an impulse buy, even though it's a four figure, five figure acquisition. So with that said, you have the brand health, the football, were there football related questions so that you in understanding the football spend had some benchmark that could be brought to your

your partner in crime, who I know in earlier of this year, Shelley Eibach, is no longer with the company. She was a veteran of, I think, 17 years plus years, chairman of the board, CEO. If you will, was there.

Steve (53:58.996)
some correlation or call to action that you could measure and say there was a call to action in our creative and therefore there was some causation we could measure.

Kevin Brown (54:13.371)
Yeah, so give me a second. I'll unpack it for you. So Grand Health is the highest order vital sign. And whether you're an NFL fan or just our target consumer, I wanted to understand, did you understand the benefits of the product to you? It was less important to me to know that we were the official partner of the NFL. I wanted to make sure you got the message about the consumer benefits the bed provided. That's the highest.

Steve (54:16.652)
You got it.

Steve (54:38.157)
How would they have, how would they, but you have other creative film running that is independent of the NFL and you're doing your standard brand benefits, product benefits, unaided by an athlete of renown and doing it in a way that just talked a comfort to the common person that had, again, your ongoing advertising strategy.

So if we pulled out of all the NFL sponsorship and if it was collectively over 10 million a year, how do we know that that NFL collective pool that you were part of brought its weight to the table?

Kevin Brown (55:19.685)
Yep, so in the brand health, I would track NFL versus my general audience. So I would know that the NFL fan was much more engaged because of what we were doing then.

Steve (55:27.661)
Sure.

Kevin Brown (55:34.32)
other segments that we were targeting. So that would help inform effectiveness there. The most, know, as we move through, because that's brand over time, engagement, you know, that was that's and where did we distribute this? You know, we're talking, these are all the social video reel. So I could see, you know, not only did you start the video, but did you watch it all the way through? Right. So engagement is what I'm calling.

That was a much more important metric to us to say was the content that we're creating around our partnership compelling. And then, who's the best to distribute it, whether that was us ourselves, the brand, whether that was the Minnesota Vikings through their network, or whether that was the league itself. And in all cases, it was all the above. And that was the beauty of having deals with the league, the player, and the team itself. And then, so that was in the...

in you know engagement so moving you down the funnel like okay I that's where a lot of the mess you know that's where you get more connected to what the bed does and how you start to relate to yourself and then there was a third tier of activation that was

That was being the sales overnight bucket like doesn't need like, okay, help us communicate. We've got a big event coming up and help us distribute to your fan base that there's no better time to buy than right now. And we were strategic about that because you don't want to be peppering fans with advertisements, week in, week out. But there were certain seasonality of the business that was more important for the category than not and the teams.

would help us promote that and that led to and we could measure, did we stimulate more sales above baseline, especially in the markets where we had partnerships.

Steve (57:26.469)
So a lot of that, Kevin, was actually because of the relationship you had with the team or the league, and there was direct marketing activity done through their channels, their social media channels. They're not doing incremental spend on commercial time advertising you. They're using their existing platforms to market. That might be a X account. That might be an Instagram, probably more favorable, a Facebook platform.

Kevin Brown (57:38.737)
Yes.

Kevin Brown (57:53.18)
Yep, TikTok platform and then the email database is pretty significant as a performance marketing driver as well. So all their season.

Steve (57:58.35)
Very significant. So really, as a call to action, very often it came from your partner, the property owner, who helped you give these bursts, these moments to drive during those very important seasonal times which you had the calculus behind that this was the time of acquisition. And for you, that partnership.

sculpting of the message. You sculpted the message. They issued the email. They issued the social.

Kevin Brown (58:32.158)
came from their platform.

Steve (58:35.705)
How much of your specific messaging, your creative messaging, came from your in-house team versus external creative partners?

Kevin Brown (58:44.445)
For the in total for the brand or just around the partnership itself? Yeah. You know, again, an estimate, you know, it was it was I always believed in a balanced approach versus an outs, you know, a complete outsourced approach because we wanted to make sure we had good guardrails around the brand story. And so, yes, you know, I needed, you know, it needed and wanted NFL films and V.E.N. them to tell our story.

Steve (58:48.113)
when it comes to the sports specific relationship.

Kevin Brown (59:13.021)
But then, you know, I also wanted to make sure that, you know, our national campaigns from the brand, you we drove those, you ourselves and as you mentioned before, sometimes we would interject some NFL film to give it some creative interest.

And then that was always around, you know, I think we had a wonderful, wonderful run with Dak Prescott. He was certainly a great ambassador and those, and then we tested the creative, you know, to make sure that, you know, it resonated and did what we wanted it to do for us. So pretty, pretty even split, you know, so.

Steve (59:46.413)
Could you give us a little color? Kevin, can you give us just a little split on testing the creative? A little color on that?

Kevin Brown (59:54.672)
Yeah, so we wanted to make sure that every piece of creative we measured multiple times, pre-market and then in-market to make sure that the new information being shared, especially if we're introducing a new product.

Did it create? And the other one was action. Like, are you going to take the next step? The next step could be go to the website and learn more about the product. And those were two of the five areas that we wanted to make sure that the message was breakthrough and you were going to do something about it. Call to action. that was either go to the web to learn more or go to the store to learn more. there was a...

Steve (01:00:33.879)
So call to action. had to be a call

Steve (01:00:40.055)
What were the other three?

Kevin Brown (01:00:43.965)
There was a memorable, there was a, was it entertaining? You know, kind of a, you did you engage with it? You know, were you leaning in or was it passive and leaning back? There was a memorable category, you know, back to your recall, we want to make sure we weren't just wallpaper, especially in this day and age. If you were distributing on...

Especially in game, my goodness, you got a live audience, that's when they go, that's when they're in between plays or timeouts. That's when they're getting the chips and whatnot. you gotta make sure you got enough interest to keep them engaged. And then where you placed it, certainly we wanted to make sure we were coming out of the two minute warning or right before kickoff in the second half, we wanted to place the ads in the right spots, especially for those live and streaming platforms.

Steve (01:01:36.787)
use third party creative agency to come up with.

Kevin Brown (01:01:39.393)
We, you know, it was a collaboration, but yeah, we had creative partners, especially, you know, not only for concepting, but also helping us with the production and execution.

Steve (01:01:49.598)
What about the athlete negotiations or the team negotiations or NFL negotiations? Were you having that as CMO or were you having a third party sports marketing group negotiate that?

Kevin Brown (01:01:55.322)
boy, wait.

Kevin Brown (01:01:59.742)
We did that ourselves, the deal ourselves, initially. Initially. And then as we got, and you know, was bold. had a good team and good partner on my team to help with that. But then as we got more sophisticated, we certainly didn't start at the max execution. We did bring on partners to help us with.

Steve (01:02:02.763)
Really? I still with you, Kevin. Good job. Intrepid.

Steve (01:02:17.389)
Okay.

Kevin Brown (01:02:29.039)
selecting which teams to partner with and helping us manage the activation of that. So we broadened it after that.

Steve (01:02:35.725)
So beyond the brand, beautiful, beautiful. Beyond the brand health, what did you end up, what would that composite then finally look at for you to give the nod that you know what, we're in good shape, we're in really good shape. Or you know what, we've got problems, we've got a remedy.

Kevin Brown (01:02:50.929)
Yeah, yeah.

Yep, had Brandelt at the top. Are we getting engagement in terms of click-throughs to site traffic from the stimulus that we're giving them? And then ultimately, are people showing up traffic to the stores and sales, profitable sales? So those are the three big buckets and then lots of different dials underneath to fine tune. But you got to get it.

Steve (01:03:18.509)
Were there often, by the way, in these calls to action, the ability to understand these individuals came to store, to dealership, to your, I think you had 800, what was it, 800 stores? 650? And were these franchised or were these wholly owned? Fine. So they're coming in to your wholly owned stores, retail.

Kevin Brown (01:03:34.191)
I think it was six, yeah, 650-ish. Yeah.

All company owned, it's exclusive distribution.

Steve (01:03:46.84)
You couldn't be happier. They did the perfect model. They clicked through. There was something that showed interest. You're feeling buzzed that the investment that you made, as for some, you would be called a risk taker going into all these avenues of the NFL and it proved effective. Your board decided and you decided to renew. Did you have measurables that you're

store analytics team when they were punching into the computer or scanning, was there barcode that people were coming in with? Was there some type of redemption element? I know it's an expensive product and you can't, as you said, be kitschy about it, but was there something that they got from Dak Prescott that literally they could come into a store in the Dallas metro area?

or anywhere relevant to your stores and your sales locations. And you knew this was 100 % causation.

Kevin Brown (01:04:50.417)
Yeah, in those, it was not on a, you know, it was by market. you know, if I think about, you know, Kansas City, which was, you know, a smaller market for us, but that was who we wanted to partner with. And so there was a lot of questions on it, you know, kind of smaller market support the level of investment, you know, like a Dallas could.

And so, you know, but when we added, you know, it was like when we added the NFL and the Chiefs to Kansas City, that team got behind it and we saw we could see the incremental lift and that market became one of, you know, moved up the market rankings relative to other markets that didn't have, you know, they had the placebo, if you will, but.

But we had 32 markets, but just when you added the extra activation of having the four partners that we had, those markets certainly, could see that. 32 is a market, but if I was only activating additionally, where I had either players or the four teams, and you certainly saw the difference in the numbers.

Steve (01:05:43.277)
32 market is the NFL for.

Steve (01:05:53.846)
You know what I like learning from you just now is that how you can go into a small market and again, not knowing the price and I'm not going to at this point get into the number side of it. But it is interesting how sports sponsorship partnerships are not just who's the goat. It has so much to do.

with understanding of how fertile is that market? How seriously do those fans like the cheeseheads in Green Bay take their team? Or where I was from in New York, in the Bronx, for example, the loyalty to the Yankees, for New Yorkers, pretty good loyalty. When you look at Boston, certain markets and where they don't have to be in Oklahoma City, for example,

Syracuse, here, there's a one I can give you as a really good example, and I simply don't remember population of Syracuse, but it's not insignificant. Buffalo, the loyalty when you're a one trick pony town or a one horse race town in many ways, it could surpass anything that a team in Metro New York experiences.

And what you described with Kansas City seems to be something that you tapped into a passion of the fan in a way that seemed to have proved very, very beneficial to your brand.

Kevin Brown (01:07:25.117)
Yeah, and again, back to partnership, was something that the team members, they were fans too. So, you know, was the whole organization. know, if I left, you know, if I leave you with another kind of lesson learned, you know, yes, yes, you've got to, it's not just the investment dollars and cents with the property. It is, it's, and to activate it, yes, you need to be willing, you have to put that in your models to understand you're going to invest more to activate it, to get the benefit out.

Steve (01:07:36.877)
Please.

Kevin Brown (01:07:53.544)
but there's also the softer investments of organization. so my team and I, many, many road shows to have this very conversation. Why the NFL? How is it gonna help the business? What is my role? And so little in big things. It went from, had to help our partners supported it and helped us with, okay, we're gonna change and allow on game day Fridays to wear our fan gear.

right versus brand branded you know in the you know in the stores if they had you know they had a game that weekend that was a small thing but it had to go through you know you you had to think about it you know as a as a company on whether you wanted to allow that or not and then um and then you know we had these you know athletes that you know the biggest week for getting your uh product was the buy week which is typically like october

You know, but we had, you know, it's not an off the shelf product. takes a little bit of time to select and then us to deliver and install it in your home. And a week's usually not enough. So we, you know, had to change process and invest in a VIP kind of service level, which we applied to all of our customers, you know, as well. But it came out of the partnership. Like that helped us improve us as a brand in terms of how our experience with our customers. So.

But it took, you that's just another example of another part of the organization had nothing to do with the marketing communications of the partnership on how, you know, how far reaching these can be depending on your appetite.

Steve (01:09:30.753)
How many cumulative athletes did you have as ambassadors?

Kevin Brown (01:09:33.785)
gosh, world. I can claim that over 80 % of the active players are sleeping on the bed at the end. It's probably 100, but that's only because of the changeover between the rookies haven't gotten their beds yet.

Steve (01:09:46.935)
But how many did you have the right to use their usage of your product in commercial film?

Kevin Brown (01:09:52.347)
you know, every year we switched that up. I probably had a dozen athletes under contract in the evening.

Steve (01:09:56.13)
Was there one in all of the athletes, as you come to a storytelling closure, I'm gonna yield to you on this one. Was there of all your 11 years or 30, 25 years of working in the sports sponsorship partnership realm, let's stick it since we've spent on sleep number the whole time and you only aggressed there earlier this year.

Was there one particular asset, I know they're all gems, but was there one that you could look back on and you had to tell your grandkids one day, just a great story of someone who endorsed your brand in a way that was just above and beyond the rest and you could see the benefit to the brand in the box office, at the retail, please.

Kevin Brown (01:10:43.345)
Yeah, like that's a, I think you set me up. Like by far, Dak Prescott. So, you know, we met.

Steve (01:10:53.599)
Not Travis, not Travis Kelsey.

Kevin Brown (01:10:56.285)
I mean, the Kelsey story is also a good one because it was Donna and him and his brother. in terms of, yeah, so the difference with Dak was, I think everybody knows his story, fourth round pick, he's quarterback of America's team, so big spotlight, a lot of expectations. And he's serious about his craft and always looking for something that was gonna help him improve. so.

Steve (01:11:02.894)
So we'll go to DAC.

Kevin Brown (01:11:24.029)
We met before we decided to work together. He was helping us out at a Super Bowl event. And then he said, there was a spark there. And so once he started actually looking at the data and using it the following season, there was a stretch there where the Cowboys were like three and five at the halfway point.

And then we started, you know, we, the company and our team started and his team started looking at his sleep IQ scores to say, you know, and, and his performance during practices leading up to the next week, his velocity wasn't getting where he wanted it to be, you know, the spin rates, all the things they track on, on his passing. He wasn't getting game ready until like Thursday. And the difference was his sleep.

earlier in the week. so a couple of adjustments on his sleep schedule on Monday, Tuesday, got him ready like a day, 24, 48 hours back to where his peak performance was.

Steve (01:12:36.525)
When you say, just to be clear, when you say some tweaking of his sleep, are we talking about sleep technicians, experts from your organization collaborating to find the right fit? What was the nuance of changing his sleep?

Kevin Brown (01:12:50.866)
Well, yeah, we, you one, you know, my team was making sure that he and his team were paying attention. Like, first and foremost, take a look at his trend, right? On the Sleep IQ squad. You guys are, and you're three and five and know, Tiva's got a lot of pressure on him. And so, and so then, and then we did offer up and you know, there was probably one or two sessions where it's like, let's have some coaching. You know, it's not a service that the brand offered, but it was like, we want to, you know,

Steve (01:13:01.164)
Interesting.

Kevin Brown (01:13:20.796)
help one of our partners get the most out of their product.

Steve (01:13:24.553)
And I really don't think of your 3,500 employees, too many of them would be hesitant about being the Kurtz for a day with Dak. A lotto inside your own company. Great way to actually sell tickets internally to do a, you know, that would be a good one. I like that, you know.

Kevin Brown (01:13:29.886)
had to, believe me, the, our,

Especially the well in Dallas based team was absolutely crazy. Yeah

Kevin Brown (01:13:43.849)
But wasn't us. Yeah, it wasn't us. It was Dak. He's like, all right. So he was seeing his score drop on Monday and Tuesday. And Tuesday, for the league, you don't know, that's like they're not at the facility. That's when they go do their charity or community service work. And

You know, so he wasn't like, you know, he was recovering on, you know, light on Monday from the Sunday hits. then Tuesday was a lot of, you know, his own work. But those were the days where he was getting behind on getting back up to game speed and sleep was one of those things that he wasn't staying disciplined about. So he made like, made those changes and then lo and behold, they ended up what they end up 12 and five, the rest of the, I mean, they ended up, he ended up winning out. I think they had lost one game the rest of the way, went to the playoffs.

Steve (01:14:23.105)
Fascinating.

Kevin Brown (01:14:36.144)
you know, that was in his performance and he credits getting better sleep to the rest of that season.

Steve (01:14:43.225)
And it could be just your analysis that, you know, I remember I heard this, I don't know if it's true, I read it, I believe it's true with...

Bear with me, the former captain of the Yankees, Derek Jeter. I met Derek one time. He was going to play in one of our tournaments in a celebrity, pre-celebrity golf tournament. And in our waning moments, I just want to cover three small items. But I want to mention one thing that I had read about him was that 10 o'clock lights out, doesn't matter where he was, he went to bed 10 o'clock every day.

Kevin Brown (01:15:00.072)
Derek Jeter?

Steve (01:15:22.465)
didn't matter where Derek Jeter was. Are we saying that the nuance of what Dak might have seen was a sleep pattern of going to bed at different times, or was this how his bed was rigged and he had changed some of the, how the bed was conforming to his body?

Kevin Brown (01:15:40.659)
Well, as we all know as humans, there's multiple things that affect your quality of sleep. He certainly, know, certainly being consistent on his bedtime was one of the things. Certainly, you know, the other one was when he ate his dinner. So like eating late, eating late, you know, it keeps you up and doesn't let your body, or if you do fall asleep,

Steve (01:15:51.917)
So big, so huge.

Steve (01:15:59.022)
Mmm. Makes you so tired of sleep, yeah.

Kevin Brown (01:16:08.828)
your body is not getting good quality sleep because it's still doing things it's not supposed to be doing. And so you mentioned the time of sleep. Why is it eight hours? Why is every human engineered this way? The first four hours is to restore your vital organs. That's why your body temperature drops to fall asleep from normal 98.6 down because all the heat goes to restore your organs.

And then your next four hours is about cognitive, know, pluming, like in making sure that you process everything you process during the day, because you've got this massive computer on your head all day long. And so when you were mentioning, you know, sleep deprivation, or only getting like, you know, four or five hours of sleep, you wake up groggy, not on your game, mentally sharp, emotionally balanced. You know, it's all like you said, it's all related. But certainly, you know that, you know, 11 plus year run incredible.

obviously still very passionate about

Steve (01:17:02.861)
You know, I really think as I think about it, I'm looking at you, Kevin. think with many things that I could see you mastering and doing or continue through your mastery, choosing to do. One, you could be like the preeminent sleep, literally coach in America. And I think there's gotta be big money behind, I think for corporate exec, for any human being, but particularly for corporate execs and for athletes who have game day performance, there's a lot there. I wanna just...

Kevin Brown (01:17:17.828)
That's nice.

Steve (01:17:31.595)
kind of bringing this to our first conversation wrap up by making just quick hit tactical questions that I meant to ask earlier. There's a lot of formulaics and the formulaics are wrong.

In our industry, there used to be certain research groups that used to say, hey, you know, when you sponsor and put money into a rights fee and you paid it to a team or a league or an athlete or an event or a stadium, you've got to be two to one, three to one on your activation. Well, that's an absurdity because a rights fee is different for each specific sponsorship. And just because you have a sponsorship with a Dak Prescott,

or you might have had a early, more in the Genesis realm sponsorship with the CD Lamb. Well, the cost of entry for a Dak Prescott and the cost for entry for a CD Lamb in his rookie year are radically different expenditures typically. We're not talking about, and even with Caitlin, what she'll get in her next round will be radically different if she stays healthy and continues to grow.

than where she was in her rookie era or when she signed 12 of her endorsement deals pre-Turning Pro. So did you, were you of the school that there had to be a formulaic on your activation? You made a very keen insight.

that brands can just go along with the show and miss the whole point of sponsorship because they didn't engage in partnership spend below the line. So with your good self and above the line in their own custom constructed messaging, did you have a formula in mind or did you just know and feel the balance?

Kevin Brown (01:19:17.054)
Not formula. I very much knew we needed to invest to make the partnership pay off.

I would say the, there's no substitute for just curiosity and the grind. So what, you know, what, you know, I believed in and what the team believed in was, you know, rapid testing and learning. And so the deal we started with at the beginning, you know, was a lot of what you'd expect, you know, because again, we were new to it. You know, it's things we thought we needed to activate. We thought, you know, cause the league is telling us this is how this works. But for our brand.

they didn't make sense and we learned that really quickly heading from one season to the next. know as a for instance you know a lot of game day activations at the stadium. Well shocking people are not looking to stop and do a demo of a bed while they're heading into tailgate or to the game right. So you know it was nice and you know and the team did a really excellent job of executing the activation at the stadium.

but we didn't get the lead gen that was expected. And that just turned out to be something that was not, you know, right place. However, you know, we really liked the storytelling. So we converted those investments to, okay, let's use your media properties to tell the story and not try to capture fans like they're walking into a store on game day.

Steve (01:20:38.029)
commercial.

Steve (01:20:43.639)
Clever. Clever. So experiential, was experiential then moved elsewhere? Did you try to get out of retail from your store? It didn't work at tailgating. Was there a sports specific or sports fan location where experiential could be effectively deployed?

Kevin Brown (01:21:02.822)
Yeah, we again back to partnerships. We lined our set selves up with the tent pole events from the NFL. So we activated draft. We activated Canton. We activated, you know, first game of the season, maybe depending on the year where the matchup was Super Bowl for sure. And Super Bowl was another learning experience as well.

Steve (01:21:23.253)
My final query is when I looked and assessed all your sponsorships that I could come get my hands upon. I'm gonna go back to the first comment I made or one of the earlier comments I made as we bring this conversation to a really delightful conclusion. And that is if you had asked me to choose a sponsorship environment for you, I would have said hands down the PGA tour. And I would have looked and said, if we look at the...

you your bed that was called the Sleep Number 360. It was this high-end product. You position that with the athletes. Obviously, I imagine you had custom-made beds for these giants that were trying to sleep in. never even, another time I'd love to know about reinforcement. Reinforcement.

Kevin Brown (01:22:10.782)
I get all kinds of stories.

Steve (01:22:13.317)
It must be fascinating from a manufacturing standpoint. What do you do when you have a 360 pound fellow sleeping in that? Does it deform a bed that was made for someone whose average weight was 185 pounds or 200 pounds? But setting that aside for a moment, again, just tactically.

It seemed to me that your demographic fit, because you're not going up against Casper. You're not kind of in the mind of, test this product, and you get a 90-day or one-year guarantee. Send your mattress back. It's like a Ginsu knife commercial, right? In a more sophisticated way, at least in my mind's eye. For me, your brand is a sophisticated product, an elegant, dignified product, a product for those who

have real sense of discretion and they want the best and they're willing to invest for the best in such an important product spend that so many of us make such poor decisions in.

What led you to the NFL? And again, just in a just kind of just a big picture way, you had you had the world was your oyster in sport. Clearly, the PGA tour was an option. You have an enormous amount of opportunity to do experiential marketing, to tie in with the affluence and in a way, folk who really the target market.

was quite extreme and it's different from its NFL in its diversity of market. What made you go to the diversity over the again, perhaps a little bit more sculpted in a Broadway, 81 million people watching at least one PGA event a year to a certain level, I think an hour minimum viewership. That's a big audience of perspectively interested fans.

Kevin Brown (01:24:16.126)
To me, the essence of our brand was, our mission was to improve lives through individualized sleep experiences. That was sleep members' mission. And it's higher order purpose, which pretty much everybody in the company can recite, is to improve the health and well-being of society through higher quality sleep. And so...

Steve (01:24:31.082)
Awesome.

Steve (01:24:41.707)
And by the way, unlike so many other slogans, yours is true.

Kevin Brown (01:24:46.364)
Yeah, I we walked, I walked the talk. mean, was, you felt it, you know, you, that was the reason people show up at the office.

Steve (01:24:54.091)
Well, how much road rage would probably... I'm talking really scientifically. Yeah, absolutely.

Kevin Brown (01:24:58.324)
know, Shelley, yeah, Shelley was always famous about, I she says it all the time is like, you know, it's kindness, you know, it's it delivers kindness. And so, you know, we we believed everybody deserved a great night's sleep. And and if and one of the big impetuses for buying a mattress is you're not getting good sleep and it's really hard to solve and you try lots of different things.

Steve (01:25:05.003)
violence in society.

Steve (01:25:14.614)
Yeah.

Kevin Brown (01:25:27.218)
before you decide the mattress is the thing. Again, for all the things we talked about before on why people don't jump to it first. And we wanted to help as many people as possible. And the business was, when I started, was about 900 million and then tipped over $2 billion a couple of years ago. So it grew the business in a way that...

I don't know, maybe in hindsight, the PGA could have done the same thing, but it narrowed the target to me too narrow for what we were trying to do.

Steve (01:26:02.507)
And you know what, as I think about listening to what you just shared with me, it's a really nice learning experience. I don't think you have the Travis Kelceys and the Dak Prescotts and the CD Lambs in the golf mentality. It's just not there. The personas, they're just not chill the way the athletes whom you described have the ability to relate to the common person.

No matter what we said, I worked in golf for a long time, owned a lot of significant golf tournaments and owned the marketing rights to a major tour internationally. There's always a sense of propriety, if you will, with a little bit more stiffness. Even though there are, I worked with John Dehli in his prime. You don't get more chill than John.

I mean, literally, you don't get more chill with John. I have stories that I don't even, I shudder to share. No, I can't. But I can tell you that the executive CEOs of major corporations will never forget me for facilitating VIP corporate private affairs of men in having memories that their grandchildren will be told.

Kevin Brown (01:26:57.67)
You can't share.

Steve (01:27:19.307)
What went on beyond when I was not there and where they went out is none of my business. But with that said, I get it. I really got it. didn't get it until now. And I'm feeling it much better than I did at the outset. That you have this range I couldn't buy into the idea.

that all of your deals for the athletes were being done with your Sleep Number 360, this very expensive five-figure product to acquire, but yet you are appealing, as you said, to every common man and woman and young person and you did outreach to young people and you tried to reach a million, I think, young folk through some program and obviously with the social impact with the pillows. As I come to a true closing, you have a choice.

Someone gives you as a gift the world's best pillow or the best mattress. Now that you're no longer CMO and you've been liberated from sleep number and you can talk off the record, you got a pillow to be gifted or a mattress. Give us which one you choose and how much more was that worth than the other percentage wise in the value that it gave your life.

Kevin Brown (01:28:29.361)
god, I've got curse of knowledge. It's the mattress. It's the what you sleep on all day long It's a third of your life is sleeping and

Steve (01:28:34.413)
Okay. But you know what? I have a stiff neck today because I sleep on my pillow. But I don't wake up with a stiff stomach, Kevin. So it's hands down, it's the mattress. By the way, I want you to know as a looker,

Kevin Brown (01:28:40.831)
Yeah, but only 20 % of your comfort. So 80 % of the benefit is the bed. 20 % you get... We'll start with the pillow. It's a gateway to a better night's sleep.

Kevin Brown (01:28:57.265)
it's what, yeah, the mattress matters. It absolutely matters. That's been the mantra for trying to get America to wake up to that.

Steve (01:29:03.637)
Okay, well I do want you to know, I hope, I wish them the best, but I think, you know, having what I read about you and your former CEO with Shelley, you guys were rock stars. This is just post-COVID era, and you guys were doing a darn good job. And this new mantra from Sleep Number about efficiency, forgive me for saying it, Sleep Number, but if that just means cost cutting, and just jettisoning what smart people worked on that worked for a long time.

You're in for a, in my opinion, perhaps some unpleasant surprises that come when everything just becomes slash and burning. But that's just one man's opinion. With that said, you Kevin, have a lot ahead in many, many exciting ventures ahead. I'm looking forward to meeting you if I ever come to Minneapolis. We'll go out with Dave and we'll have a nice chat together and I'm sure we'll do this again.

I mean, literally, this is one of those I could spend hours and hours and hours speaking with you because it's so beautiful. Your knowledge is real. Your experiential side is, it's not in any shape. It's only deep, tried and true. We didn't get into some of the tougher learning experiences. That would certainly be some of the worst stories of what I call what makes you true expert is that that's how we get here.

is that we went through it like you said, we spent money in an area. It didn't yield the results. I have empirical and scientific data to show that if I do that again and again and again, it ain't gonna work well. So I now know what someone else might not know having gone through it. And if I do it enough times, well, you're gonna call me an expert. And it's just that I've had enough experience, which to me, a crude experience ultimately leads to someone's level of expertise. You clearly have it in many regards. Kevin Brown.

Kevin Brown (01:30:45.695)
Exactly.

Steve (01:30:52.383)
What a pleasure from Accenture to Sears, many other companies and most recently with Sleep Number. I'm really delighted to have you as a guest here on the Transaction Report.

Kevin Brown (01:31:02.173)
Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.

Steve (01:31:03.894)
It really has been a pleasure. I'm going to ask you to hold on for one moment.