As he sat among staff members, trading ideas for a back-to-school
promotion for the Buffalo Bills, Russ Brandon couldn't help flashing back to
late nights in minor league baseball, where a front-office job meant
cold-calling sponsor prospects in the morning, hawking group tickets in the
afternoon and covering the field if it rained at night.
"Everyone in sports should work in the minor leagues," said
Brandon, vice president of business development and marketing for the Bills.
"You learn that when it rains, it's time to pull a tarp. No matter what
you do during the day, no matter what your job description is or what you think
your responsibilities are, when it rains, you pull tarp.
"I'm very proud of that experience."
It has taken Brandon, 34, only 12 years to go from an internship with his
hometown Rochester (N.Y.) Red Wings, a successful Class AAA baseball operation,
to being the ranking executive on the Bills' business side, sitting beside
owner Ralph Wilson at NFL meetings.
When Brandon arrived in Buffalo after five years in the Florida Marlins'
organization — first in the minors, then in the majors — he found a franchise
at odds with its own market. Coming off an unpleasant spat over stadium
financing, the Bills had to sell $11 million in suites and premium seats to
secure $63 million in public funding for stadium renovations.
The business community's initial response fell somewhere between a door slam
and a call to the police.
But, working with well-connected New York bank CEO Erkie Kailbourne and
several Bills executives, Brandon criss-crossed the region, building support.
The Bills made their deadline and got their renovations. They also created a
client base that Brandon has nurtured, growing sponsorship revenue from $1.5
million in 1998 to about $11 million last year in a shrinking market that
already is the NFL's third smallest.
Kailbourne opened doors. Brandon kept them that way.
The growth is most evident in Brandon's hometown, Rochester, where the Bills
hold a preseason training camp that NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue has pointed
to as a model for all franchises. The camp, held at Brandon's alma mater, St.
John Fisher College, doubles as a corporate playground where sponsors can woo
prospects and touch customers.
It also has knotted a long-dormant link between the Bills and Rochester, an
affluent neighboring city that has flourished as Buffalo has fallen.
"Rochester is critical to the success of this franchise in this
market," said Brandon, who saw a similar dynamic while working with the
Marlins, who rely on customers and sponsors from Miami, Fort Lauderdale and
West Palm Beach. "When we look at just Buffalo, the market is small. Too
small. But you reach out to Rochester and to Toronto and across New York, and
now where are we? That's the way we have to think here in order to
succeed."
The Bills also must think creatively, as they did when they hatched
bobblehead giveaways to spur ticket sales to three otherwise unattractive games
this season. Giveaways are unheard of in the NFL, where sellouts are the norm.
But after watching individual game tickets move slowly late last season, Brandon
decided to attach an incentive this year.
It hasn't worked as well as he had hoped, but Brandon believes interest will
increase as the games approach and fans get a look at the bobbleheads.
"In minor league baseball, you have to give fans a reason to come to
the game — and frequently that reason is something other than the game,"
Brandon said. "We're doing some things here that will remind you of minor
league baseball. I don't mind that. I'm proud of it.
"I truly feel it should be a prerequisite in our industry to work in
the minor leagues. It not only provides a solid foundation, it also provides
limitless boundaries so that you learn every aspect of the business side and,
in my case, of the baseball side as well. You learn to articulate between both
sides of the house. That's vitally important as you grow in this
business."