Marco Renda: Curtain Close

By Will Shoukri

Welcome back to another week perched in the Owls Nest. This week I had the honour of sitting down and speaking with Marco Renda, a sales executive working for MLSE. After graduating from York’s business school in 2023, he would go on to work as an associate with TD Bank before finding a role in MLSE as an associate coordinator, eventually climbing the ladder until landing as a sales executive.

What do partners want?

Knowing that I had a different guest today, I wanted to streamline my questions to his industry. Marco works for MLSE, or Maple Leafs Sports Entertainment. He is a sales executive in their partnership division, what does that mean?

“It means I’m more focused on the on-boarding aspect. So I’m trying to attract partners that would work with our athletes and brand and strengthen our relationships.”

So what does that mean?

“It means there is a lot of creativity in what I do. Coming up with marketing schemes/plans that fit within the scope of what we do and what our fans want us to do.”

All of that made sense to me. Partner with companies that share similar values or connect to the industry. Marco really doubled down on the importance of fan service as well. MLSE is a company that actually has fans (Leafs fans, but fans nonetheless).

So we’ve established that Marco is reaching out to potential partners and pitching different campaigns. But how does he know when a campaign is successful?

“when we’re forming these relationships, the partners will always come to us with a set of objectives. What is their idea of success? What metrics are they focused on?”

Great answer, but I prompted him to continue, and it went a layer deeper.

“Is this resonating with the fans? Is purchase consideration growing? We have a wide network of industry partnerships that we can leverage to kind of tell the story to our other partners and make sure that everyone is happy.”

Hopefully that brief fly-over (see what I did there? … Owls? … No? … alright whatever) could open your eyes to the power of brand partnerships and the vital importance of getting it right when you’re representing an organization that actually has fans, not just customers.

Unfortunately, that is going to be all from me… this time for good. The Owl’s Nest is no longer needed. The eggs have hatched and the little owls are ready to spread their wings and take flight into the world of content creation, public relations, or any media industry they desire.

Thank you and farewell.

P.S. Thanks, Jael, it was a great class; GH will miss you.