A BIG HIT
Jackson's Godwin Group Manages Louisville Slugger
A bespectacled Todd Ballard, 59, grew up in California playing baseball
into the junior college ranks.
Today, he sits on the eighth floor of One Jackson Place, popping
fish oil pills and nurturing the most fabled baseball product of all
times: Louisville Slugger.
Photos of Major League legends swinging Louisville Sluggers hang on
his walls; a bat collection stuffs one corner of his office; story
boards of new ad campaigns clutter the floor.
Ballard, Godwin’s Chief Creative Officer, clearly loves the game. “I
always swung Louisville Slugger. My dad never bought me any other kind
of bat.”
So when Jackson’s Godwin Group ad agency was invited a decade ago to
bid on Louisville Slugger’s account, Ballard took the lead. Godwin beat
out larger national agencies and has managed the baseball legend now for
10 years.
“It is just one of those serendipities that fifty years after I
played with a Louisville Slugger as a boy, I get to work on Louisville
Slugger stuff.”
Louisville Slugger and its Hillerich family dominate Louisville,
Kentucky’s landscape, much like Anheuser-Busch does in St. Louis. From
its first bat in 1884 in a small wood-working shop, the company has
steadily grown. It started making aluminum bats in 1970, but market
share dropped the 1980s.
Godwin set out to interview youth and college players, plus coaches
and dads.
Selling Louisville Slugger came down to two things:
• Reconnecting the company’s brand to its storied baseball tradition of Babe Ruth (36-inch, 42-ounce), Hank Aaron (35-inch, 33-ounce), and players today like Derek Jeter; 60 percent of today’s Major League players use custom-made Louisville Slugger wood bats.
• Louisville Slugger bats’ performance, “pure and simple,” is best,
Ballard says.
“You put a TPX in a boy’s hand and he gets three hits and pretty soon everybody will be hitting it.” The company makes TPS softball bats for girl players.
Today, Louisville Slugger’s TPX bats—Exogrid, Catalyst, and Omaha—are the best selling line. The company makes 300 bat models with 8,000 variations. The tradition-rich company celebrates its 125th anniversary in 2009 and Godwin has big marketing plans including touting the 125 greatest Slugger baseball moments and 125 greatest Slugger baseball players.
Top baseball executives who visit Mississippi admire residents’ high baseball IQs, Ballard says. And real baseball fans know “baseball has everything to do with confidence,” he adds.
“If you think you are going to hit the ball, you are going to. And if you watch someone else hit the ball harder with another bat, you are going to hit it.”
For Ballard and Godwin Group, the bat that hits the hardest is a Louisville Slugger. SS