The San Diego Bowl Game Association, the nonprofit that oversees the annual SDCCU Holiday Bowl college football game and other year-round events, including a downtown parade, has announced that Cherry Park, senior director of marketing at Qualcomm, has been elected as the association’s 2022 president.
She succeeds advertising and broadcasting executive Bob Bolinger, who served as 2021 president. The 2021 game, scheduled for Dec. 28, was canceled a few hours before kickoff after the UCLA Bruins refused to play over COVID-19 concerns. The game was scheduled to be played at a renovated Petco Park that had been temporarily converted from baseball to football for this one event.
Park, a seasoned brand marketer and digital experience leader, has worked at Qualcomm for 24 years, driving innovation and transformative change, a statement said. With more than two decades of building Qualcomm’s online presence and digital strategy, she has led several high-profile initiatives, including the launch of Qualcomm’s award-winning “mobile-first” web platform and the creation of the Snapdragon Insiders fan community.
“I’m truly honored to serve as president of an organization that accomplishes so many great things for our community,” Park said. “I look forward to working with our team and finally kicking off the SDCCU Holiday Bowl at its new home at Petco Park, and growing Sports San Diego into an impactful force for attracting more tourism-driving sporting events to the region.”
Park became a member of the association’s committee in 2013 and joined the board of directors in 2017. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communications studies from the University of California Los Angeles and a master’s degree in business administration from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
The San Diego Bowl Game Association founded the Holiday Bowl in 1978 for the purpose of generating tourism, visibility and economic impact for San Diego. To date, the bowl game effort has generated an economic benefit of nearly $1 billion for the San Diego region, officials said.
In February of this year, the association launched Sports San Diego which, similar to the Holiday Bowl, is under the oversight of the San Diego Bowl Game Association. The mission of Sports San Diego is to recruit, support and host premier sporting events for the San Diego region.
(W)right On Communications Hires Relocated Aussie Terry Whitaker
(W)right On Communications, a San Diego PR firm, has announced it has hired Terry Whitaker to the newly created position of associate VP. He will oversee the agency’s lifestyle practice groups, which includes hospitality, tourism, senior living, wellness, higher education and major events.
Whitaker, a native of Seymour, Indiana, relocated to the U.S. in December 2021 from Sydney, Australia, where he spent the past 20 years in various roles, including consulting with creative advertising agencies, operating his own marketing agency that promoted high-profile American brands (Budweiser, IBM, BMW, Mattel, TEDx, NFL) to Australian consumers and implementing Major League Baseball’s global initiatives in Australia and Southwest Asia countries.
After serving two years in the U.S. Army, Whitaker earned a bachelor’s degree in sports management from St. Thomas University in Miami Gardens, Florida, and a master’s degree in mass communications from the University of South Florida in Tampa.
“I met an Aussie girl in college and went to Australia for a couple-of-week visit and stayed a little longer than planned,” Whitaker told Times of San Diego. “Sydney is a beautiful city and very similar in many ways to San Diego. But, we’ve wanted to return to the U.S. for a while.”
Whitaker and his wife have two young daughters. He admits the country’s recent COVID lockdowns contributed to his relocation decision.
“The pandemic restrictions added to and accelerated our impetus to make the move,” Whitaker said. “The country has undergone a lot of political turmoil.”
The Associated Press reported Melbourne’s multiple lockdowns were comparable in duration to Argentine’s capital Buenos Aires’ stay-at-home orders that lasted 245 days, one of the world’s longest.
“The livelihoods of many people have suffered. Especially in terms of mental health, the cost has been high,” Whitaker said. “But, we’re thrilled to be here and I’m looking forward to helping our clients.”
“Terry is a terrific addition and has been warmly welcomed by the team and our client partners,” said Julie Wright, president, (W)right On Communications. “We created this leadership position specifically to guide our lifestyle team and programs which have been growing sharply as tourism comes back with a vengeance.”
Wright said Chance Shay, associate VP, will continue to serve the firm’s business-to-business practice group that includes clean tech, high tech, manufacturing and professional services.
Founded in 1998, (W)right On Communications, with offices in San Diego, Los Angeles and North Vancouver, British Columbia, recently joined the International Public Relations Network (IPRN), a global network of more than 50 independently, owned-and-managed communications and public relations agencies in more than 40 countries. (W)right On Communications serves as IPRN’s San Diego member agency.
Jack in the Box’s New Ad Campaign: ‘Don’t Get McShammed’
San Diego-based Jack in the Box is trolling rival McDonald’s over frequently-broken ice cream machines in a new advertising campaign during March. Jack in the Box is milking the troubles of its golden arches competitor by warning consumers “Don’t Get McShammed” if they are seeking a reintroduced McDonald’s Shamrock Shake in the run-up to St. Patrick’s Day by visiting a Jack in the Box instead to try an Oreo Cookie Mint Shake.
McDonald’s is notorious for its ice cream machines being broken, even to the point that disgruntled customer and software engineer Rashiq Zahid in October 2020 launched a tracker website, aptly called McBroken.com. According to McBroken, a whopping 12.6 percent of the ice cream machines at McDonald’s 13,500 units across the U.S. have malfunctioned since the minty-flavored green concoction Shamrock Shake was reintroduced in February of this year. In San Diego, the current figure is 16.67 percent.
The new campaign is not taking a soft-serve approach. Jack is taking a further step by reportedly taking over the operation of McBroken for the rest of March. The website features a map that not only shows which McDonald’s locations have non-functioning ice cream machines, but will also direct customers to the nearest Jack in the Box. A Jack statement said it is helping “point shake-starved citizens to their closest Jack in the Box and get through their McDisappointment.”
The campaign is the first major effort from Los Angeles-based Small Girls PR, Jack in the Box’s new public relations and integrated campaign agency of record.
San Diego AMA Offers 3 Content Marketing Workshops
The American Marketing Association San Diego chapter has announced it will present “Boost Conversion,” the first of three in-person, content marketing workshops, from 9 to 11:30 a.m., Thursday, March 10, at Downtown Works, 4438 Ingraham St., in Pacific Beach.
Frank Cowell, CEO at Digitopia, will discuss how to develop and implement a strategy to create content that converts target buyers at every stage of the journey.
How-to topics will include: Revise your target buyer persona to make it pain-point-focused; Seven relationship levels that can unlock additional revenue in an existing database; Design a relationship-drive content journey that helps you systematically ascent from stranger to fan; Create a content calendar that consistently feeds the funnel; Define KPIs and metrics to help you easily find bottlenecks.
Cost to attend each workshop is $40 per person. For registration information, visit sdama.org.
Dates and speakers have not been announced for the two other AMA content marketing workshops, titled “Drive Traffic” and “Nurture Leads.”
Rick Griffin is a San Diego-based public relations and marketing consultant. His MarketInk column appears weekly on Mondays in Times of San Diego.