The bustling young Wal-Mart FLW Tour is taking the next step toward achieving NASCAR-like prominence in the sports world with the introduction of pro angler teams. This year, several sponsors of the tour, like The Coleman Company, have formed teams in an effort not just to increase visibility of their products, but to boost the efforts and exposure of anglers as well as the sport as a whole.
When Coleman introduced its Team Coleman this year, they assembled a group of professional anglers who represent the qualities the sponsor considers important. Heading up the team are Wal-Mart FLW pro anglers Mike Wurm, Cecil Kingsley, Kim Stricker and Charlie Ingram.
“All of these guys have the interest in promoting the benefits and family values behind fishing,” said Drew Jones, Coleman’s director of sports and marketing. “Everybody has something additional they bring to the table. It’s not just fishing.”
Wurm, of Hot Springs, Ark., won the FLW event on Lake Murray in 1999 and has tour career earnings over $150,000. A quality fisherman, it was Wurm’s work with kids that drew Coleman’s attention. At FLW events where he’s not fishing the second round on Friday, Wurm accompanies Kathy Fennel, Operation Bass vice president of operations, to local junior high and middle schools to present a career orientation program. Wurm’s delivery urges kids to focus on the power of positive thinking and reflection about the future.
“I really enjoy doing it, and the kids are very receptive,” Wurm said. “If we can just get to one or two of the kids, we’re doing well.”
He also has formed a special relationship with a group of second, third and fourth graders from an elementary school in Vance, Ala. For four years he has sent postcards from his stops along the Wal-Mart FLW Tour to the classroom in an effort to help teach them geography.
Kingsley conducts a program called Casting Club in his hometown of Lawrence, Kan. Once a month he guides kids on fishing trips to local waterways. In July, he holds an overnight camping trip for kids where they can learn about the outdoors and catch their first fish. For Coleman, Kingsley’s efforts were the perfect extension of their “Coleman for Kids” brand of outdoor products.
“It’s the opportunity to really touch and interact with a core consumer market,” Jones said, “and we like to extend that.”
Ingram hosts a program called Outdoor Fishing University, which is also aimed at getting kids involved in the outdoors.
Coleman’s investment in the Wal-Mart FLW Tour illustrates the influx of non-endemic sponsorships into pro bass fishing. Anglers and those in the industry say it is these outside-the-industry sponsorships that have significantly heightened the Wal-Mart FLW Tour’s visibility.
“It’s a great tool,” Wurm said of Team Coleman. “Coleman’s really into this. It’s a valid market and a valid medium for them.”
For Coleman, promotion through the Wal-Mart FLW Tour was a natural fit.
“If you’re by a lake, you’re often going to be camping and you need Coleman products,” Jones said.
Wurm agrees. He said he was pleased when he was introduced to the Team Coleman concept because “I’ve camped all my life.”
More than promoting Coleman products, Team Coleman promotes its anglers. The pros are featured at tackle shows, on ads and posters. The anglers have even been included on trading cards that will be available at future tournaments. Plus, for the duration of the tourney they appear in distinctive Team Coleman shirts and fish from race-detailed Coleman Ranger Comanches. For the televised Wal-Mart FLW events, anglers benefit greatly from the team uniforms and colorful boats.
“The camera guy will just naturally focus on the Coleman boat,” Wurm explained. “For guys trying to get started in this field, it gives them a leg up and a good start. Anytime you can get your name in print or your photo out there, it’s a help.”
Said Jones, “We want to be highly visible, from serving at the pancake breakfast (held every Saturday morning at FLW tournaments) to signing autographs in the Family Fun Zone.”
Team sponsorship can be profitable for the pro angler as well. Jones said Coleman offers an incentive-based package for their anglers, providing them with financial and product rewards proportional to the amount of fish that they catch in a tournament.
Stricker, of Howell, Mich., who is also sponsored by Chevy trucks and Ranger boats, stresses that sponsorship is a key element in determining a tournament angler’s success and financial security. “You can catch all the fish in the world, but the steady stuff is in the promotion and the business of fishing,” he said.
As a team, Coleman is happy to be on board the rising Wal-Mart FLW Tour where, like the outdoor company’s involvement in the NASCAR series, both the sponsor and the tour reciprocate benefits. For the FLW Tour, they gain a high-profile, non-endemic, active sponsor to promote bass fishing. For Coleman, it’s a prime opportunity to showcase its products and deliver its company ethos.
“All of these guys have the interest in promoting the benefits and family values behind fishing,” explained Jones. “As they talk about products, it’s not so much a commercial as a way of life for them. The commitment to the FLW Tour is very deep and genuine. We feel a strong opportunity be with our consumers and support a great resource – that is, the fisheries that FLW brings to us. And let’s face it, a lot of America shops at Wal-Mart.”