On Monday, March 19, Pizza With the Pros welcomed Eric Poe and Brandon Rost, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Cure Auto Insurance, and CEO/President of beMarketing.
Some notable athletes who represent Eric Poe’s Cure Auto Insurance are Tyrese Maxey, Kyle Schwarber, Jared Goff & Cade Cunningham. Brandon Rost’s extensive background in marketing dates back to his earlier years when he worked for the Philadelphia 76ers.
When choosing which athletes Poe wants to represent his company, he doesn’t pick them based on just their popularity. One athlete he used as an example was Philadelphia 76ers guard Tyrese Maxey.
“If you watch the 76ers, who doesn’t like Tyrese Maxey? This guy is selfless, he doesn’t talk about himself, he doesn’t celebrate himself, he works hard, and you just see on the court the energy that he brings to the table,” said Poe.
Cure Auto Insurance’s biggest success comes from its Super Bowl commercials. One commercial Poe spoke about came from this past Super Bowl when they signed Jared Goff a couple of days before.
However, the negotiating process is a lot harder than it seems. While Poe thought the price they would pay for Goff was reasonable, he wanted to make sure Goff was staying with the Detroit Lions. Detroit Pistons guard Cade Cunningham also represents Cure Auto Insurance, and the two athletes share the same agent.
After further discussions, they agreed that if Goff wasn’t signed back to the Lions, the contract would be over. The deal came on the Thursday before the Super Bowl, meaning they had to get to work immediately.
People usually assume that making a commercial doesn’t take long, and even though the commercial was only 30 seconds, it took a lot longer than that to shoot it.
“Most of these sports stars are terrible actors and they don’t like acting. They sign a deal, it sounds great, they think they’re gonna be on TV, but then they have to take 100 takes for a line that they really don’t want to say,” Poe said.
Rost started his agency, beMarketing, back in 2010. He currently has 35 employees who manage over 100 brands, with about 20% of those brands doing sports marketing.
Before starting his agency, Rost worked for the Philadelphia 76ers from 2003-2007. During that time, the product on the court wasn’t very entertaining to the fans, so the pressure was on the marketing team to sell tickets.
“Everything relied on the marketing department to sell tickets. We did different theme nights, we did different entities with Hip-Hop, and we tried to create this entertainment type of atmosphere to drive ticket sales because the product on the court wasn’t good,” said Rost.
Being relied on to drive ticket sales when a team isn’t performing well taught Rost what it feels like to be in charge of something, which helped him become the CEO/President of an agency.
Pizza With the Pros will continue next Monday, March 25.
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