SoapBlog 2: Standing Tall Among Giants
Brian Polark, Founder of Cincinnati Sports Leagues
Growing a business in Cincinnati is a very unique and sometimes a very intimidating experience.
Cincinnati Sports Leagues (CSL) has been my labor of love since 2000. I was just out of college and could not tell if my business partner and I just didn’t want real jobs, or truly believed or understood what we were undertaking. Although I hate to admit it, to this day I’m still not sure what I have my hands on and exactly where it is going.
I struggled early on to find where CSL fit into the business landscape of Cincinnati. We knew we wanted to provide an outlet for young professionals to be active, athletic, and social all in one place. The concept wasn’t a hard sell to your average 21 year old, but I worried about how it would it be perceived in the larger, more established business community. We knew that being a one-city entity would hurt us in the short run, but if we grew and positioned ourselves correctly, it would benefit us in the long run.
Believe it or not, young professionals actually survived prior to Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn! (We like to think of CSL as the original social network!) Their behavior was similar, but how we reached them was different. After figuring out how to reach YPs en masse, we were able to achieve a critical mass at all of our events. Achieving this at an early stage allowed us to build a strong following for all of our offerings. This helped us realize that we had something on our hands larger than some sports leagues and parties.
The holy grail for advertisers and marketers is a concentrated population of a specific demographic, and the most highly sought after demographic is 18-34 year olds. CSL encompasses that demographic (21- 34) in Cincinnati. The development of this aspect of our business allowed us to position ourselves as a marketing vehicle that could provide area businesses with a way to reach a concentrated population of 21-34 year olds that are educated, savvy, and important to any company developing a product or service aimed at YPs.
Over the last eight years, our ability to be fluid, change, and adapt to advertisers’ and marketers’ needs have kept us positioned as a premier outlet for reaching young professionals. In our continued effort to be fluid, especially during this time of, shall we say, fiscal uncertainness, CSL continues to develop cost-effective ways for products and services to reach young professionals. In 2008, we developed the
goAgency, which specializes in executing on-site marketing programs, and in 2009, we will launch our ad management initiative, which will give advertisers the chance to deliver their message on
www.goCSL.com, outside of our traditional marketing packages.
Our goal at CSL isn’t to be all things to all people, but rather to be really good a providing a few services to specific clientele. Succeeding in doing that will allow us to stand tall amongst giants in the Cincinnati business landscape.