The document proposes creating a newsletter to promote the Chicago Sky WNBA team. The newsletter would be published every other month with a focus on sharing stories about the team and players, providing basketball tips, and highlighting the team's community involvement. It would target the Sky's season ticket holders as well as girls who play basketball and their families. The goal is to increase awareness of the Sky in Chicago and attract new fans to grow the fanbase and ticket sales. A budget outlines the estimated costs to produce, distribute and market the newsletter. Measuring success through increased season ticket sales is also discussed.

1. Ready to Soar: Spreading the
Word on the Chicago Sky
Prepared for: Margaret Stender, President and CEO
Prepared by: Jeanna Fazzalaro
April 30, 2007
4278 North Hazel Street Chicago, IL 60613 j-fazzalaro@northwestern.edu

2. Executive Summary
Objective
The Sky is about to begin its second season, but many Chicagoans are
unaware that a women’s professional basketball team has appeared on
the Windy City sports scene. You want to introduce the players to the
public and promote them as great athletes and good citizens. You want
to advertise the positive contribution the Sky organization makes to the
City of Chicago through school and hospital visits, fundraisers, and donations to charities. You want to
attract new fans and keep them informed on when the team will be playing and where they will make public
appearances.
The experience of seeing a game at the UIC Pavilion is an intimate one; each of the 6,500 seats is close to
the on-court action. You should keep your current fans and season ticket holders on top of the action even
when they’re not at the games. You want to give your fans a window on what it is like to manage, coach,
and play on a WNBA team. You need a forum to share your basketball knowledge and communicate your
values--your dedication to teamwork, community service, and physical fitness. By sharing stories about the
life of the Chicago Sky franchise, you can inspire your young fans to aim for a career in professional sports.
The benefit of being a new and growing franchise is that your fans have the opportunity to say they were with
you from the very beginning. You need something to inspire your loyal followers to have a sense of pride and
ownership in your team--a feeling they can’t get from any other Chicago sports club. You also need a
“calling card” you can put in the public’s hands that tells them who you are and inspires them to hop on
board the bandwagon.
Goals
My goal is to increase the penetration of your brand throughout the metro Chicago area. I want to get
Chicagoans excited about buying season tickets and to encourage suburban commuters who work and
attend school in the city to stay in the evenings to take in a game. I can help direct consumer traffic to your
website, where fans can buy tickets and shop for Sky merchandise.
Solution
To achieve this, I will create a high quality newsletter to be published every other month. Our newsletter will
be targeted at your season ticket holders and at the demographic most likely to grow your fanbase: girls who
play basketball and their families.
A print newsletter gives you the opportunity to deliver your message to a general public outside the core of
existing fans who surf your website or follow your games on television.
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3. Design & Production
Design Specifications
We will publish a four-color newsletter on 100-lb. gloss cardstock, size
11x17”, folded once to produce four letter-size pages. The look of the
newsletter will be clean, bright, and cheerful. The dominant color
scheme for the nameplate and borders will be the team colors of light
blue and yellow. To maximize the newsletter’s visual impact, we will use
full color photos.
The newsletter will utilize two typefaces: Marker Felt Wide (fun, playful) for the newsletter title and article
headlines, and Helvetica (clean, legible) for article subheads and body copy. The typefaces will scale from
large to small to show the reader where to look first: title (72-point font), headlines (18 points), subheads (12
points, bolded) and body copy (9 points).
Since we will be using a lot of art, we will utilize a three-column grid format in order to fit as much text as
possible on each page. Blue, yellow, and gray gradient fills will be used as backgrounds to create borders
around the articles and help the reader separate them visually.
The sample cover accompanying this proposal was designed using Macintosh Pages, a software program
which can export files to HTML. The HTML version of the newsletter can be quickly and easily linked to your
website.
Production and Distribution
The extent to which production can be handled in-house depends upon the availability of your marketing and
public relations staff. Producing each issue will require about 90 labor hours (news gathering/writing, 40
hours; editing/story development, 6 hours; photographing, 20 hours; graphic design/layout/scanning, 8
hours; proofreading, 2 hours). One of the most important tasks is marketing and mailing list development.
We will reach out to local basketball teams and youth groups to try to gather information about the young
women registered with their organizations. We should contact the athletic directors at local high schools and
colleges, the registrar of the Central Illinois Amateur Athletic Union, the president of the YMCA of
Metropolitan Chicago, the president of the Boys & Girls Club of Chicago, the leader of Girls Scouts of
Chicago, and others. We should also contact your corporate sponsors to see if their employees would be
interested in receiving the newsletter.
The budget included in this report assumes that freelance artists will be used to complete the majority of
production tasks. With editorial oversight from your marketing and PR managers, I will write the articles.
The print run for the first issue will be 2,000 copies. 1,500 copies will be mailed to season ticket holders. An
additional 500 copies will be distributed to the athletic departments of Chicago area high schools and
colleges and to basketball camps.
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4. Audience & Content
Our Readers
Our target audience is season ticket holders and people involved in youth and collegiate basketball. We
particularly want to reach middle and high school-aged girls. If we persuade them to attend games regularly,
they are likely to be accompanied by their parents and siblings.
Our newsletter will benefit this audience by demonstrating how participation in athletics builds confidence
and leadership skills. It will promote the advantages of healthy eating and regular exercise. It will keep the
readers informed of the Sky’s community activities and allow them to connect with women who are positive
role models. It will inform youth organizations and sports teams that the Sky is willing to donate time and
merchandise to help them raise funds and raise their profile in their local areas.
Editorial Style and Story Ideas
The newsletter content must strike a balance that satisfies fervent fans who follow the Sky coverage on the
Internet, yet remains accessible to the reader who is discovering the team for the first time. The writing style
should be crisp and compelling to the adult reader but should use vocabulary and sentence structure that
can be easily understood by a seventh- or eighth-grader.
The publication should cover a wide scope of basketball-related stories in addition to updating the reader on
team news. We should include some news features that teach younger fans how to improve their skills or
pursue a career in professional sports. Here are some ideas for articles:
Regular or Recurring Features
• Players Q & A: The players sound off on their pregame rituals, their favorite places in Chicago, etc.
• Player Profiles: Longer features (500+ words) on players’ personal lives
• Coach Bo’s X’s and O’s: Coach Bo Overton gives tips on fixing your jumpshot, improving footwork, etc.
• Fitness Focus: Players and coaches give advice on developing a healthy diet and workout regimen
• Community Superheroes: 250-word newsfront on public appearances, basketball clinics hosted by
coaches and players, and donations for local organization fundraisers
• Promotions: 1/8-page clip-out coupons that can be redeemed for admission and concession discounts
(“Youth basketball players: Wear your uniform to our June 12 game against the Seattle Storm and bring
this coupon for a half-price admission”)
• Calendar: 1/4-page listing of upcoming games and events
Other Story Ideas
• Profile on how Stacey Dales got her job at ESPN and her advice for working in broadcasting
• Short feature on auditions for the mascot, national anthem performers, and halftime acts
• Longer news feature on joining an AAU team and developing strategies for being seen by college coaches
• Fan photo contest with game tickets and merchandise offered as prizes
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5. Budget
Production Costs (Per Issue)
In developing a budget, I have assumed that the newsletter will be produced by freelance artists and
agencies outside the Chicago Sky organization. Because there is no need for a centralized office, there will
be no start-up costs. You will not need to pay for rent, office equipment, or telephone and Internet service.
Your investment will go directly to the production and distribution of the newsletter.
The newsletter will be free, so we will rely on advertising revenues to defray some of the production costs.
Selling three or four business card-sized ads at $175 each will offset about 15-20 percent of the production
expenses.
Description Quantity Unit Price Cost
Writing 40 hours $15.00 $600.00
Editing 6 hours $25.00 $150.00
Photography (per 5x7” color photo) 6 photos $50.00 $300.00
Graphic Design/Layout/Scanning 8 hours $20.00 $160.00
Proofreading* 2500 words $0.01 $25.00
Marketing/Database Management 14 hours $12.00 $168.00
Printing & Folding** 2000 $0.46 $920.00
Mailing House (labeling) 1500 $0.10 $150.00
Postage (Standard Bulk Mail)+ 1500 $0.23 $345.00
Delivery 20 hours $12.00 $240.00
Miscellaneous Supplies (labels, CD-Rs, etc.) N/A N/A $200.00
Total $3,258.00
* Quoted by Proof and Edit 4 U, http://proofandedit4u.com
** Quoted by Sir Speedy Printing Center, 311 S. Wacker Drive, Chicago, http://www.sirspeedy.com
+ Quoted by KD Mailing & Fulfillment, http://www.kdmailing.com
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6. Conclusion
Measuring Success
The newsletter must attract new fans to the games in
order to sustain itself. If the newsletter costs $19,500 per
year to produce, it must attract 100 new season ticket
buyers per year in order to break even. This goal can be
achieved through persistent outreach efforts to expand our readership. We should try to get each issue into
the hands of 100 to 200 new readers.
We should use promotions to build our mailing list and give readers an incentive to buy season tickets. For
example, the first issue should include the name and number of an account executive to call to review the
various ticket packages. If the caller mentions the newsletter title, “Skylines,” to the account executive, he or
she will be entered into a drawing to win courtside seats to a game or the chance to participate in an
autograph session with the Sky team. “Skylines” could also be used as a promotional code for ordering
tickets via the website.
In addition to spearheading the drive to increase season ticket sales, the newsletter can be used to publicize
the Sky’s “Group/Theme Nights.” Fans who aren’t aware of your website may not know that June 12, 2007
is Sports Career Night. A new fan may not be able to attend games regularly, but he or she may want to buy
a single game ticket to attend your pregame symposium on starting a career in sports administration or
marketing. The more the newsletter can be used to get people to the Pavilion to sample the Chicago Sky
experience, the more the production costs will be worth it.
Summary
A newsletter can move the Chicago Sky’s mission forward in a number of ways:
• It helps you reach an audience beyond your existing core of fans.
• It delivers information about your team directly into people’s homes and places of business.
• It expresses corporate values such as teamwork, physical fitness, leadership, and self-esteem building.
• It is a public relations tool to promote the good works the organization does within the community.
• It helps direct consumer traffic to the games and to your website.
Most of all, a newsletter acts as a “calling card” to tell the public what your organization is about and why
they want to get involved.
If you would like to hear more about developing a newsletter for the Chicago Sky, please call Jeanna
Fazzalaro at 860-919-4936.
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