Making an Impact with Evan Ketai
The second speaker on day one of MCMP’s Winter 2022 Summit was Evan Ketai. Evan is an Account Manager at Overtime, a sports startup that is both a publisher and influencer. Evan graduated from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business in 2017, where he was involved with the Michigan Student Business Conference (MSBC). There, he saw the value of building relationships and utilizing connections, and he learned about the process of building a brand & selling products. This also helped Evan discover his passion for marketing, which led him to intern at Under Armor in 2016
Following graduation, Evan worked at VaynerMedia for three and a half years. He worked with many different brands and campaigns, but he was still drawn to the sports world.
Evan discovered Overtime due to an MSBC connection. He told MCMP that he had seen Overtime’s social media posts before, but he had never taken a deep dive into the brand. He soon realized that Overtime was more than a sports highlights page, rather it was about building community.
Evan started at Overtime in 2020. Overtime is the leading brand for the next generation of sports fans and has earned funding from moguls like Jeff Bezos, Drake, and a variety of NBA stars.
Evan continued his presentation by telling us about the ins and outs of his daily work life. Evan described what it's like to work as part of the “BrandFam” team (aka Brand Partnerships), which encompasses sales, marketing, content/production, account management (his role), media/ad ops, and logistics between clients and teams.
Evan explained to us a few of the ways that Overtime works with leading brands. These outlets include OT's original shows, social-first executions, live activations, media capabilities, and 360-degree partnerships that flex across all of Overtime’s offerings to create something even bigger. An example of a project that Evan worked on was a partnership with Ruffles to launch their new chip with Jason Tatum.
Evan also told us about OT's ability to impact the community with its brand partnerships. OT provides brands an opportunity for exposure, influence, impact, and brand advocacy. An example of a project Evan shared that demonstrated the OT Impact was with the brand Body Armor. Body Armor, a sports drink now surpassing Powerade, was integrated into a show with one of the top high school teams in the country (Watch HERE). The full episodes are on Youtube and the top clips were shared on various social media platforms.
To wrap up his presentation, Evan shared some advice with us:
That person who you're interested in talking to always has 10 minutes at some point. Be persistent, but in a professional manner
Spend ten minutes every day reading about your industry or your job; Evan shared that he frequents AdAge’s news page
Find people you want to work with
Practice patience
We want to thank Evan for speaking with us and sharing his experience at Overtime!
—-February 2022. by Rachel Coffield
