Friday, October 19, 2007

Connecting the Dots

No, this is not my "full circle" inference, that will be Monday.

However it does have to do with one.
A special opportunity exists which has been presented on a silver, (make that neon green) platter. If played out, it is certainly one that is ideal for Pay By Touch to both take advantage of and benefit from.

Pay By Touch has already sponsored PKV Racing for the Champ Car World Series. I'm aware of the reason...they agreed, in return for an infusion of capital, to forward a portion of the proceeds to sponsor PKV Racing. And it's been fun to watch. But for all that money, they are sponsoring 1 driver out of over 20. And he's not the most popular driver on the course, although this week, in Australia, Pay By Touch is in pole position.

Sure racing is has fans...but it's an expensive sponsorship too. For a fraction of the money, they have an inroad to sponsor the most popular sport in America. It's pretty popular in Canada, Mexico and Europe too.


The most popular spectator sports is NFL Football. It is watched by millions upon millions of fans. The most popular player of the most popular sport is the arguably the quarterback.

There is only one common denominator shared by all 32 starting NFL quarterbacks on all 32 NFL teams.

Week in and week out, on any given Sunday, Monday, and Thursday, no matter which team a spectator follows, no matter which game is televised, be it nationally, regionally or locally, there exists a very unique, relatively inexpensive sponsorship opportunity for Pay By Touch.

It would also give them exposure during SuperBowl which the world's most popular sporting event. And instead of paying $2.5 million dollars for 30 seconds of exposure for a SuperBowl commercial, Pay By Touch could have exposure during the big game on almost every snap of every play, no matter who has the ball.

With that said, here's the opportunity I see:


By now, everyone has seen and knows that the NFL has instituted a new rule which requires that NFL quarterbacks who have radio contact with the sidelines, must wear a green sticker on the back of their helmet.

The green dot is the result of a new rule in effect for the 2007 NFL season. The sticker on the helmet designates the one player is who wired with a radio for communications during play-calling.



I'm hypothesizing that in return for sponsoring the equipment needed to communicate from sideline to quarterback, PBT would ask to morph the green dot into the matching Pay By Touch "green dot" logo. Paying for sideline communication equipment for 32 teams would obviously be a much less costly than sponsoring a race car. Exposure would be exponentially increased, albeit the "cool factor" would be lessened.

If this is something that is doable Pay By Touch should consider locking it up now for next season. Otherwise, there's a Prepaid Card company, who has "Discovered the Prepaid Touch" called GreenDot, that might discover this idea and beat them to it.