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Editors Note: Wow. What can I say? This was my favorite interview to-date. I felt like I was renewing my Public Relations degree just talking to Mr. Chauner for the 45 minutes or so that I did. Where would cycling in the United States be without this guy? In the 4th and final part of this interview he talks numbers. Want to think big? Read what he has to say...

SpokePost.com: Gosh...listening to you talk about this is just amazing...you're talking about the things that I've been putting much thought into recently while putting together the Maxxis-SpokePost.com Team and the Maxxis Upstate NY Cycling Cup. It seems that many people in the sport just don't get it. For instance, when I first told the guys on the team what I was trying to do, they all thought I was NUTS! They all thought, "hey, $500, $1000..." - I'm sitting there thinking that I need my sponsors to give me several thousand dollars AND equipment...

David Chauner: You know, that's true, and I think one of the problems is that this sport is sold so cheaply. Virtually whatever we sell or whatever we do, you can add at least one or two zeros onto whatever anybody else is talking about. We'll go out their and they'll say, "I thought it cost $5,000 to sponsor a cycling team?" - NO, it's costs $50,000 to sponsor a cycling team. "Oh, well the local guy was really happy that I gave him $5,000 and he said he could send the guys all over the country, do this, this and this for them..." - You have to almost look at it as a different sport, and that's sort of the way that we've approached it. We've said - how are we going to make events work that meet the goals that we want - that's reaching a lot of people and what not, and it's not the old model. It's a new model. It's a model that says, "Well, how are we going to get a million dollars from a title sponsor to run a bike race in a major market like San Francisco or Philadelphia, how are we going to do that? Then you have to go back and say - we aren't going to do it by saying that we'll put up a couple of signs on the side of the road for you - it has to be a whole package...

SpokePost.com: Exactly...

David Chauner: You've got to negotiate a television deal. You've got to negotiate a deal with the local newspaper? You've got to bundle all those benefits and add them all up and say for one million dollars you're getting two million dollars worth of value. That's not easy and not everybody knows how to do that. In fact, I'd say we're pretty good at it. That's how sponsorship is sold in everything from golf to tennis to...you know...cycling. Our problem is, that cycling, compared to tennis and golf - cycling is off the radar screen. But we've done some comparative analysis - and in order to sponsor a senior PGA Golf Tournament...

SpokePost.com: ...God, yeah...

David Chauner: ...it's four million dollars to be the title sponsor. For FOUR million dollars, we could give a sponsor title to four pro racing events in four major markets with 200,000 to 500,000 spectators, live television, and many other benefits that in a lot of ways are much more attractive and valuable to a sponsor than a four million dollar price-tag at a private country club somewhere off in the outskirts of a major city...

SpokePost.com: ...and unless you're a golf fan, you certainly don't stop on TV and watch...

David Chauner: ...but there's values to golf tournaments too - there's reasons why companies sponsor golf tournaments that in ways are hard for us to duplicate...there's a certain audience that you reach doing that is a little bit harder for us to quantify and reach. We still have very good demographic figures and we know who attends our races and we know who you're reaching by doing it. Once we turn the corner to get on the radar screen and a few people say "WHOAH! This is incredible!" - like BMC Software - they were blown away. They're spending well into the seven figures on cycling and they're completely happy with it. They're saying, "This is beyond our wildest expectations...don't tell anybody about this...this is great..."

SpokePost.com: Absolutely - I didn't have a clue who BMC Software was, but I sure do now, and I think a lot of other people do too!

David Chauner: Right...and when you look at BMC Software, you'd say, "they're unlikely to be doing this..." - because they're mainly business to busines, they don't even have their own TV commercials - yet they feel that it is money well spent to build awareness for their brand and reach an audience that they feel are ultimately in positions that make decisions on whether or not they use their software or not.

SpokePost.com: Interestingly, on that point...I get many of these free subscriptions to industry magazines for computer people because I'm a web developer...anyway...so I was flipping through this one magazine the other day. First I saw an ad with a bike in it and, you know, I didn't think much of it because you occassionally see a bike used in advertising in a non-cycling publication. I flip a few more pages...ANOTHER AD - with a bike as the main subject of the ad! So I start thinking, "wow, that's amazing...two ads in the same magazine..." - There were FOUR FULL PAGE COLOR ADS with cycling as the main subject. It was something like Network Computing or similar one...four full-page color ads that used cycling as the focal point of their advertising campaign - I was blown away by that! I thought, "WOW! So these companies think that cycling will grab the readers of this magazines attention" - it seems that many cyclists are in those technical fields. It tends to be a fairly affluent demographic. These companies that advertise in this magazine - they certainly should want to sponsor a big cycling event or team...that seems to go right along with what you are saying about your relationship with BMC Software...

David Chauner: It takes visionaries within companies to see the connection. It takes soembody who understands where cycling is - but also understand marketing and how the two can be blended in. Unfortunately, most people in most companies are not as visionary as they need to be in order to take advantage of that opportunity. Fortunately, the people who started the CoreStates Financial Corp. back in '85 - they were visionaries, they realized what this could be. BMC Software - visionaries. Loren Smith, when he came in to be the chief marketing officer of U.S. Postal Service, was a visionary. He put the United State Postal Service sponsoring a bike racing team...who but a visionary would see the logic in that? Yet, it's proven to be one of the most successful campaigns that the postal service has ever done to build awareness for who they are...

SpokePost.com: ...yeah...and what a wind-fall with Lance Armstrong - at that point, he was like a penny stock....

David Chauner: ...but still...the fact that the Postal Service team, with or without Lance, was going to go to the Tour de France as America's team...that in itself justified a couple million dollar price-tag way back when they did it - just because of the whole priority mail that they were promoting. It's not just the sponsorship, it's the activation - you don't just spend a million dollars, you've got to spend FOUR million dollars. You spend a million buying the sponsorship, then you spend another three million making it work for you - using it in your advertising, using it in your promotional pieces, and so on...

SpokePost.com: Very, interesting! Man, I love this stuff...well, I'd like to thank you for an awesome interview. I really appreciate talking to you, someone that is doing the great things you're doing. I don't think anyone in this country even comes close to the things that your organization is doing, it's pretty amazing.

David Chauner: Certainly, thanks!

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