Herschend Family Entertainment
Herschend Family Entertainment (HFE) is the largest family-owned theme park corporation in America with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. HFE serves over 12 million guests a year at 20 properties in 10 states. Examples of HEF properties include Dollywood, Silver Dollar City, Stone Mountain Park, and Newport Aquarium. The company mission and focus is Creating Memories Worth Repeating!
"We have been fortunate to be associated with TVX in the development and sales of our sponsorship programs. Their approach and discipline has more than doubled our income in less than 2 years, and has provided a professional, research-based approach that gives us confidence to consider this function as strategic vs. opportunistic. What’s more, the partnerships that TVX is bringing us are really more Alliances with our business that allows both us and our partners to measure our success and find mutually beneficial ways to sustain our relationships."
Objectives
Herschend Family Entertainment, owns, operates and manages various family oriented theme parks across the country. HFEC came to TVX seeking a consistent, proven, and results based sponsorship strategy that would reinforce brand standards and create consistent valuation platforms of their individual properties marketing and sponsorship assets.
Solution
TVX implemented Phase One of their process. This included a site visit to meet with various Property Department Heads and Leaders to document and observe the following:
- “how” each property was going about sponsorship, their current valuing process, strategy
- “who” was responsible for the sponsorship area at each property
- “what” results were the current systems and processes producing year over year
Once this face to face review was complete, TVX conducted their own custom Property and Asset Review and Discovery. Through the marketing asset survey, TVX was able to identify and evaluate not only current but discover and suggest new assets the select properties could monetize and bundle to build sponsorship packages. TVX then proceeded to determine the best sponsorship strategy for the select properties to maximize their assets and offer to potential sponsors the value and access to compliment their overall plans.
Result
In less than 3 years, the TVX Strategy implemented by HFEC has produced a 3000% return on investment from sponsorship activities.
TVX recommended a result’s based sponsorship strategy to HFEC that included adopting sponsorship brand standards whereby each property would identify a select number of pre-defined sponsorship packages to market to a select number of pre-defined brands that met and aligned with the core values and core target market of the property.
TVX implemented a valuation methodology at participating properties that objectively demonstrates the property’s value to potential sponsors.
