Brad E. Bailey
A sponsorship check is fine. A sponsorship you can see is better.
The bottom line up front: Continental's bicycle tire group sponsored NICA's GRiT program. So I made a film with a youth team in one day, with two people and one camera, and NICA published it as their own.
The question: how could a sponsorship become something people could see?
01What we saw: a lopsided start line
In December 2020, Continental's bicycle tire group signed on as a Silver Level sponsor of NICA, the National Interscholastic Cycling Association, and its GRiT program: Girls Riding Together. GRiT existed to fix a lopsided start line. Girls made up about 20 percent of NICA's student athletes nationwide, and the program's stated goal was to push that to 33 percent by 2023.
The goal on our side was never the check itself. Tires are the business, and a logo on a jersey does not sell many of them. What we were trying to accomplish: help NICA promote the organization and its programs, and give them more than a sponsorship check.
At the time, my work was at Continental in Fort Mill, South Carolina, and this ran through the bicycle side with Madonna Conroy, Continental's Marketing Manager for Bicycle Tires. A sponsorship check is fine. A sponsorship you can see is better. So I made the film.
02How we aligned: one day, two people, one camera
One day, March 23, 2021, at Anne Springs Close Greenway, with the Catawba Ridge Riders, the NICA youth team for York and Lancaster counties, right in Continental's backyard.
The plan used what we already had instead of money we did not: a social media push behind NICA's own channels, promotion for their programs, and a film they could publish as their own work.
My wife Beth and I did the entire setup and teardown ourselves. That is the whole secret to doing this inexpensively: you do not hire a crew, you become the crew. We spent the day shooting interviews and B-roll with the riders and their families.
03What we built: the video
The cut was mine. NICA published it on April 29, 2021 as "NICA GRiT presented by Continental," calling it their latest collaboration with Continental and the Catawba Ridge Riders, and posted it to YouTube the next day. It runs 2:50. My master file and the published version are the same cut.
Two more cuts from that day survive in my archive: a general piece (3:07) and a longer team film on the Catawba Ridge Riders (5:17).
04What it cost
One shoot day, two people, one camera. No crew, no rental house, no agency. The edit was mine. That was the entire production budget.
05What it taught me
Sponsorships usually buy a logo on a jersey and a name in a press release. The better play is showing up. One honest day with the actual riders in the actual park did more for the partnership than any banner ad we could have bought, and it gave NICA something they could publish under their own name, which is worth more than anything with our logo forced into it.
The deeper lesson is relationships. Building them is the key to everything else, and working together does not have to cost a lot: one day, two people, one camera. A single sponsorship served more than one purpose at once. Continental got a partnership people could see, NICA got a film under its own name, and the riders got a day that belonged to them. Start with what you can accomplish together, and build from there.
GRiT's numbers are NICA's to report, not mine. By their own 2021 annual report, the program supported more than 106 grassroots, volunteer-led GRiT events across the country. What I know is what I saw through the viewfinder: kids who are welcomed tend to stay.
The bigger picture: none of this took a big budget or a big crew, only a bigger idea of what a sponsorship could be. Show up, make something useful together, keep the cost honest, and let one good day lead to the next. That scales further than any single film.
06Watch and read
The film is on NICA's own channel, and the links go to their pages.
Video: NICA GRiT presented by Continental (NICA on YouTube, April 30, 2021)
NICA's article, April 29, 2021
Partnership announcement, December 2020
07Who made it possible
Daniel Solorzano, a senior sales and marketing leader at Continental and my boss at the time.
Madonna Conroy, Continental's Marketing Manager for Bicycle Tires, who ran the sponsorship on the bicycle side.
Beth Bailey, my wife, the other half of the crew for the day.
Thank you to the Catawba Ridge Riders, the NICA youth team for York and Lancaster counties, whose day this was, and to NICA, the National Interscholastic Cycling Association, who published the film as their own.
