You have enemies? Good. That means you stood up for something at some point in your life.
-Winston Churchill

     No one has a monopoly on time. I wanted to know what it was like to promote an MMA show from the head honcho’s chair, but thirty minutes into the meeting all I knew was that a CEO’s time is like Lucky Charms-someone’s always after it. In a cramped room of a historic building just south of the nation’s capitol, his staff waited patiently to begin the initial planning meeting of the Ultimate Warrior Challenge’s fifth MMA show.
     “I tried to keep him on time,” Don said as he entered the room with Marcello Foran in tow a half hour behind schedule. It was a brainstorming session with a loose agenda on PR strategies that would set the tone for the next six weeks of marketing, planning, and consternation. The crew was impressive. No one brought a Magic 8 ball and the dress code was Brooks Brothers and Kenneth Cole, instead of Tapout and Cage Fighter. There were seasoned businessmen, professional marketers, and even a respected MMA journalist in Bloody Elbow founder Luke Thomas. They were clearly not wannabees, shysters, or fly-by-night profiteers as the sport has experienced so many times in the last three years.
     “We have to make it clear that people want to come see this show,” said a mid-thirties guy named Brian, who apparently drove the PR train. “We have to get the word out that this is worth leaving the house for. We’re going to get the message out to the right people, in the right places, and at the right times.”
     Good plan. Common sense dictates that it’s not cost effective to saturate the world with three initials, but instead to pick and choose when and where to make your brand known. It was a Napoleonic tactic-go straight at your enemy and engage him decisively on the terrain of your choosing. But would it work? Marketing an event takes more than just shouting your own praises from the rooftops, especially when it’s a young sport that still hasn’t been completely accepted into every mainstream household. The challenge was daunting. Chewing on tin foil sounded funner. 
     To make matters worse, there was an elephant waiting to topple the UWC’s house of cards and his name rhymed with smite. The UFC announced it was planning a show on the same night as the UWC’s, so there was an underlying current of trepidation. “We’re not going head to head with the UFC,” Foran announced to his apostles. “It would be stupid for us to do that. We’re not in any position to challenge them.” Sound advice. The corpses of so many other upstart MMA promotions were hardly cold at the time.
     But as much as Foran recognizes he can’t slay Goliath yet, he really doesn’t have a choice. If the UWC was going to convince MMA fans to put down the remote and come out to Fairfax, Virginia to see a live show instead of a tape-delayed one from England, they were going to have to launch a PR assault that showed why their product was superior. At this point it was all about marketing. They had a financial imperative to get as many people to show up without breaking the bank. In just six weeks.

The Conference Call

     I recognize the need to use teleconferences to link together multiple people from disparate locations, but that doesn’t...