1: Paraag Marathe‘s first major task as president of the San Francisco 49ers was to build a new stadium.
The team’s former stadium, Candlestick Park, was falling apart. As in, actually falling apart.
The team’s owners, the York family, had decided they would never move the team to another city.
The other option was to build. Which would be no easy task. “Imagine a nearly $2 billion project that you have to build in Northern California,” writes Brant Pinvidic in his book The 3-Minute Rule: Say Less to Get More from Any Pitch or Presentation.
“The family arranged to borrow the money to build,” Brant writes, “and in doing so they had to put up the team as collateral. Effectively, they would lose the team if the stadium didn’t get built.”
To repay the debt would require major sources of revenue. Priority number one was finding a naming rights sponsor for the stadium.
“The organization was deep into the construction phase and they still hadn’t found their naming rights sponsor,” Brant writes. “It was the big target, and the tension and pressure were ramping up in every board meeting.”
2: Brant had been hired by Paraag to help build the team’s pitch to potential sponsors. The 49ers had zeroed in on Levi Strauss to put their name on the stadium.
“Sports marketing departments for major corporations hear dozens of sponsor pitches for stadiums and buildings and ad campaigns every year,” Brant writes.
“The pitch for Levi Strauss to put its name on the stadium was classic and simple. All the elements and details [were] clear and clean,” he recalls. “Size of stadium, number of seats, media exposure, return on investment, signage.
“That was the easy part. But all that information needed a hook to bring it to life. “
“A story needs a hook. A song needs a hook. A movie needs a hook,” Brant writes.
And the 49ers’ pitch needed a hook to land Levi Strauss.
What is a “hook”?
Brant defines it this way: “It’s the one thing or element about an idea or story that makes us go, “Ah, that’s cool.’
“‘Cool’ is the perfect word for that feeling of acceptance and understanding and approval.
“Now, whether that’s a funny thing, a price thing, a life-saving thing, or an emotional thing doesn’t matter,” he observes. “That’s cool” is what we’re looking for.
What would be the 49ers’ hook to attract Levi’s as the stadium sponsor?
“Levi Strauss was founded in the gold rush. It’s a California company,” Brant writes. “The forty-niner is a miner. It’s a California team.
“Not only that, the Levi’s and 49ers logos had exactly the same shade of red. That meant every piece of merchandise and decorated or painted item in the entire stadium, including the players’ uniforms, would contain Levi’s red. The brands were meant to be together.”
“Ah, that’s cool!
“We had our hook, and that why it’s called Levi’s Stadium today.”
3: So, how do we identify the hook for our story?
In past RiseWithDrews, we’ve looked at Brant’s 3-Minute Rule framework.
We start with a stack of Post-it notes. We create a list of all the words or short phrases that describe what we do.
We ask: What do we do well? Why is it good? What do we want someone to do or buy? What’s in it for them?
We don’t edit ourselves. That comes later. Instead, we write down every relevant point about our business, product, or service. We should have a minimum of thirty Post-it notes.
Next, we turn each word or short phrase into a short sentence. Brant calls these “statements of value.” Simple, declarative sentences. We write these statements on index cards. “The ability to move them around is extremely helpful to the process,” Brant explains.
Next, we organize our statements according to Brant’s WHAC framework: W—What is it? H—How does it work? A—Are we sure? And C—Can we do it?
Each statement gets sorted into one of the four categories.
To find our hook, we identify one or two of our core statements that excite us the most. We ask ourselves again and again: Why is that important? As we do so, eventually, there will come a moment when we will burst out, “Great, right?!”
“If the audience understood our offering perfectly and we asked them, “What’s the best part?” their answer is probably our hook,” Brant writes.
So, where do we place our hook in our pitch?
More tomorrow!
________________________
Reflection: Think back on a time when I pitched an idea or proposal successfully. What was my hook?
Action: Be intentional about identifying my hook in my next pitch.
What did you think of this post?
