The brand experience
Reporters who stayed at the MLB-blocked hotels in Seattle were often shuttled to and from the site in coach buses coated in T-Mobile magenta branding and featuring MLB players’ images. The hotels themselves were dotted with MLB All-Star Week branding featuring the Mastercard logo.
If you covered events on social media, the team at the Visit Seattle tourism group contacted you and had a bag of civic-minded swag—including local popcorn, All-Star themed dry rub, water and sunscreen—sent to your hotel room.
One of Adweek’s first brand contacts, Sodexo Live, invited us up to their suite for the Futures Game and Celebrity Softball Game. Sodexo chefs brought in small plates of watermelon salad, shrimp cocktail, miniature entrees and desserts. Cracker Jack chocolate bars were made for the occasion, and the chef team came in to speak about how the food they served at sporting events had upgraded significantly in recent years as suite-buying customers sought more creative fare and facilities tried to cut back on rotating chafing dishes and accompanying waste.
It’s important that each and every client … is going away happy and feeling like the event was special and specifically catered to them and their needs.
—Meagan Murray, general manager, Sodexo Live! for T-Mobile Park
Sodexo took us around T-Mobile park, first to a lounge that, until this year, had been a press box behind home plate that accommodated more than 200 reporters. They were since moved to a space a floor above and, for the All-Star Game, to an “Auxilliary Press” space in the Hit it Here club in right field. Now with rows of padded seats hanging over the tiers below, a full dining room with enough tables to accommodate those seats and serving stations.
Yet several floors below, in the recently renovated Diamond Club at field level, it was as if someone had relocated a Vegas sportsbook beneath the stands. A wall of various screens towered over the bar, tables and emerald-green banquettes blended into the wood-grain interior. Serving stations and coffee stands were tucked into cozy hallways just steps from field-level seats outside. In each club, concessions and merchandise had their own corners so visitors would never have to touch a concourse during their time at the park.
“It’s important that each and every client—whether it’s a water drop, a plated meal or a fancy hors d’oeuvres being passed—is going away happy and feeling like the event was special and specifically catered to them and their needs,” said Meagan Murray, Sodexo Live! general manager for T-Mobile Park. “Ultimately, it’s having conversations and working with those clients and hosts because everything is a little bit different.”