Robin: Hello and welcome to this edition of Brandonomics, an inside look at top brands and their marketing strategies. I am Robin Tooms, VP of Marketing at Savage Brands, and my guest and my guest today is Lisa Gagnon, VP of Marketing at the Houston Super Bowl Host Committee. So Lisa, welcome to Brandonomics.

Lisa: Thank you, thanks for having me.

Robin: Well I’m glad you’re here to talk branding, but we’re really here to talk about the Host Committee brand, not the major NFL brand like so many people are thinking of. So I’m curious, why not use the larger NFL brand? Why do we have our own Super Bowl Host Committee brand?

Lisa: Great question Robin, we are actually required to have our own brand. So the NFL is a separate entity obviously, they control the NFL brand called the Shield; they also developed a Super Bowl brand. So there’s a Super Bowl LI brand and logo that you will see later this year throughout Houston. As a Host Committee we are required to have our own brand and if you look at our brand itself you’ll see that Houston as the city is spelled out very large and dominant in our brand as a lot of pride for the city of Houston.

Robin: I can see that now. So that makes and a lot of companies don’t have a choice whether they have to have their own logo or not as dictated by their parent organization or related organization; in this case you mentioned that Houston is front and center right in the band, so is that really the kind of key difference here?

Lisa: It is. So again, the NFL’s goal is to promote the game itself, the Super Bowl. We as Host Committee have nothing to do with the game; we are in charge of promoting and planning all of the ancillary events. So our goal is to generate excitement with Houstonians and those in the drive market and to get people out to the events even if you don’t have a ticket for the game and to really promote Houston as the host city for Super Bowl LI.

Robin: Thank you for clarifying. I appreciate the distinction between the two and how that brand is helping that.

Lisa: Well thank you.

Robin: This has been another edition of Brandonomics, an inside look at top brands and their marketing strategies.