{"id":5932,"date":"2010-09-03T16:57:57","date_gmt":"2010-09-03T21:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/?p=5932"},"modified":"2010-09-04T01:39:18","modified_gmt":"2010-09-04T06:39:18","slug":"steel-challenge-shooting-teams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/steel-challenge-shooting-teams\/5932\/","title":{"rendered":"Steel Challenge & Shooting Teams"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Steel Challenge is not a team sport but you wouldn’t know that from the large number of’ blue Smith & Wesson shirts on the range during the World Speed Shooting Championships.<\/p>\n

With 13 members of their shooting team competing, and 9 titles won, I’m surprised you can’t buy “We Came. We Saw. We Conquered.” bumper stickers from the S&W online store. In lieu of bumper stickers we have this video…<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=s9SKGFGgVR0<\/p>\n

The success of the team – titles from Julie Golob<\/a>, Janae Sarabia, Molly Smith, Rachel Crow<\/a>, Jerry Miculek<\/a>, Phil Strader<\/a> and B.J. Norris<\/a> – paints a clear picture of the importance of a company sponsoring a shooting team.<\/p>\n

While less forward thinking marketing execs and CEOs dismiss the value of a shooting team, Smith & Wesson has artfully put the team to good use as a PR vehicle providing constant content for their expanding social media efforts.<\/p>\n

If you asked me today which company I would want to shoot for it would be Smith & Wesson despite the fact that their firearms are not my first choice. If all you want as a sponsored shooter is a free gun – or one “on loan” to you as one big name company does, proving it’s name is big but it’s support is not – then pick any company to shoot for.<\/p>\n

However, the smart shooter would go with Smith & Wesson because it has built a serious team you’d want your own personal brand associated with, and it supports its shooters through an aggressive PR and online promotion effort. The video above, promoted this morning to S&W’s nearly 31K facebook fans<\/a> and other social media connections, is proof of that.<\/p>\n

At some point the big name gun companies that aren’t taking shooting teams seriously will begin to if for no other reason than out of the frustration of watching Smith & Wesson lead the pack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Smith & Wesson’s huge presence at the 2010 Steel Challenge helps prove the value of shooting teams as a marketing tool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,9,193],"tags":[999,54],"class_list":["post-5932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-paul-erhardt","category-scsa","tag-steel-challenge-2010","tag-team-smith-wesson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}