Transcript

The transcript below has been lightly edited for readability and clarity. Click any starting timestamp to jump to that exact point in the YouTube video.

Podcast Introduction

[00:00] Don Costante:

Welcome to the Rundown Podcast hosted by Don Costante, a sports and event management expert with over 25 years experience. This unique podcast provides an opportunity to hear from some of the best professionals in the industry. You’ll get valuable insight and perspective on what it takes to deliver authentic experiences, activate brands, and most importantly, connect with audiences. All on the Rundown Podcast. Let’s get started.

Meet Chad Folkestad

[00:27] Don Costante:

When it comes to storytelling and the creative process used to generate ideas, it’s important to point out that there’s not just one formula for success. That’s why over the past couple of years, I have utilized this podcast to highlight some of the best storytellers in the sports and entertainment industry to share their unique perspectives. My guest today is one of the most creative people I know. His name is Chad Folkestad. Chad is an award-winning producer who spent his first 16 years in professional sports managing the creative content production and fan experience for the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves and WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx. Recently, Chad has taken a new role as senior vice president of content and entertainment experience for the Arizona Coyotes in the National Hockey League. In this episode, Chad shares his career path, event presentation philosophy, and talks candidly about storytelling and the creative process he utilizes to generate award-winning content. During our conversation, you will quickly learn that Chad’s approach to the creative process contrasts with others I’ve interviewed. Listen as Chad illustrates his methods for creating an organic environment that relies heavily on spontaneity. Additionally, we touch on a variety of topics, including keys to great storytelling, getting players to buy into projects, tactics for generating

[01:55] Don Costante:

content ideas, facilitating meaningful ideation sessions, getting ideas approved through leadership, and much more. I’m ready to get started. Let’s meet Chad Folkestad. Hi, Chad. Thanks for joining me on the rundown.

[02:11] Chad Folkestad:

Hey, Don. You know, I was looking at the list of luminaries that have been featured on the first two seasons of this great podcast, and I always love that pop-up on my LinkedIn feed that says, here’s the newest episode. And I gotta say, looking at that list of names, I’m surprised that you got to me in this second season. I feel like with the names that you’ve been dealing with, I’m more of a season four, season five type of guy. So I’m honored to be here talking with you, man. It’s great to catch up.

[02:38] Don Costante:

No, it’s an honor for me. Now for those listening, I should tell you that Chad and I go back to the days when I was working in the NBA with the Spurs.

[02:46] Chad Folkestad:

Yeah. In addition to game ops meetings in New York, Chad and I spent some time working together on several NBA Jam Session.

[02:54] Don Costante:

Yep. We had some fun back then.

How Chad and Don First Met

[02:56] Chad Folkestad:

Yeah. Well, and I don’t know if you remember Don, but the way I actually met you, it was my second year at the Timberwolves. I was given permission to go on a road trip and check out some games. It might’ve actually been my first year, but either way, I sent out a note to the Mavericks and to the Spurs. They gave me some contacts and the Mavericks stood me up. I don’t even know who was there at the time, but they stood me up, but I got an email back from you and you met up with me before the game and kind of pointed around to a few things. And it’s funny that moving into like league meetings, people like yourself, people like the Grecos, Josh Richardson, Todd Bosma. There’s too many names for me to name, but the way that you guys sort of opened your arms up and sort of took some of us new people like under your wing. That gave me the confidence for basically every IDEA that I tried in the future. Cause you guys were all just like, go do it, man. And I still think about that to this day when I’m meeting people that are new in the industry, I think back to how you were one of the first people at league meetings to say, Hey, come sit with me, come sit over by me. And man, and you guys were doing everything back then. It was, I was worshiping that San Antonio Spurs show. So sorry about a bit of a tangent there, but, uh, it was, that was a unique time in my life.

[04:08] Chad Folkestad:

And you were the first person from another team to return an email for me. And you took some time out of a really busy game night on a Friday night to come meet me and chat with me. And, uh, that, that’s how it all started, man. It was nuts.

Chad Folkestad’s Career Path

[04:20] Don Costante:

That’s fantastic. Now I want to ask you about your experience working NBA All-Star events, but before I do, I’d like to begin by having you take a moment and share your career path to becoming senior vice president of content and entertainment experience for the Coyotes.

[04:34] Chad Folkestad:

Yeah. My story is a bit unusual. I always find it strange that when I talk to particularly like interns and like school groups, business groups, things like that. My story is not a path that I would recommend, especially once I get into the college days, but basically from a young age, I was always messing around with creative vibes. I started playing piano at a young age and my dad got a video camera. I believe it was a VHSC video camera for all the video nerds out there. For those of you that don’t know, it’s a thick mini DV tape. As soon as we got that, I kind of started to talk him into letting me make some little like short skit things with my friends. And we’d spend an entire Saturday putting together like our version of little SNL skits. It’s terrifying that I do have the tape somewhere and I don’t, I’m going to keep those locked up. When I moved here, I definitely made sure that those were at the bottom of the barrel, but was always kind of interested in video and making things. This is back in the day, a lot of the young people that might be listening to this, there was a time when you were shooting a video and if you didn’t have access to like a studio, which nobody did back then. When you hit pause on the record button on your camera, your next shot needed to start as soon as you hit record again, because you were basically editing as you shot.

[05:49] Chad Folkestad:

And it wasn’t until my later years in junior high and high school that I discovered that you could hook up two VCRs, which is worse, by the way. That’s the worst way to edit. But in high school, they got those colorful iMacs. I’m dating myself a little bit. And they came installed with something called Avid Cinema. And I don’t think it’s the Avid we know today, but it was more like Windows Movie Maker. And man, even though I was studying music, I spent as many nights in that contact room as I could just making stuff on a computer timeline. It was crazy. Took that with me to college. Like most game entertainment people, I went in as a music education major. And like anyone that’s worked in the sports business, I quickly changed to a jazz piano major. So as you can see, my path is not one I would recommend. But throughout college, I was involved with a lot of sort of what I didn’t know was sort of producing events and working with friends to sort of make music videos. I got a bootleg copy of Adobe Premiere from a buddy of mine. Sorry, Adobe. It’s a long time ago. And this program was terrible. It was archaic. You’d have to wait overnight, eight, nine hours to see what your video looked like. If you put any effects on it, there was no rendering in real time at all. But that was when I continued to play with video.

[07:00] Chad Folkestad:

Despite studying music, I produced a couple of variety shows for my small private school that allowed me to sort of do what I ended up doing, which is the show opens and there’s a show open. In fact, Don, it’s exactly like the IDEA Conference GMAs where there’s an opening and then you come out and do a monologue and then you introduce the first act. And then you do a little bit in between the acts. So it’s basically kind of like an award show. And I got to do that two years in a row. The second year, we made it into a meta timeline where we actually had a storyline that started weeks before the show where we got into a fight and there was an election year. And so we were campaigning against each other with yard signs across the campus for this stupid show. And that was kind of my first exposure to like linear storytelling. And we just had such a blast. And when I got out of school, I was going to continue studying music, but actually went through a really bad breakup. I hope she’s listening. Went through a really bad breakup. And I suddenly needed something to do with my time because I had been dating this person for a long time. And within a couple of days, I was writing with a buddy of mine and we saw Timberwolves had made some huge acquisitions, Latrell Sprewell and Sam Cassell.

[08:07] Chad Folkestad:

And so we were both fans. It was like, well, let’s try and get season tickets. So we got season tickets, went to all the games with the exception of a few we sold off and went all the way to the Western Conference Finals. I know that’s nothing to the Spurs, but we went to the Conference Finals. KG jumped on the table, all of that. And in the offseason, I sent a note to my ticket rep and said, hey, I’m a huge fan of the organization. And I truly mean this. If there’s a ticket taker job, anything like that open, let me know. And he didn’t know anything about me. He goes, I’m sorry, man. This is the only job we have open. And it was game operations coordinator. And so little did I know, as I read the job description, this is a real job. And it’s all of the stuff that I was just talking about that I had been doing for years and years all rolled into one. And I just couldn’t believe it. Like it was the craziest month of my life. I was so nervous. And they interviewed me five times because my resume does not hold up to scrutiny of what the job was. But at the Timberwolves, it was great. I started in. And by the end of the first year, I was asking if I could work on some music videos and even then the intro video. And within a couple of years, I was able to take over management of the area.

[09:14] Chad Folkestad:

We were just a two-person show. And over the course of the next few years, we added bodies. We added all the things that a lot of the NBA already had. Hosts, DJs, performance groups, all these things that Minnesota was way behind on. And over the course of time, we eventually ended up in a spot where we could actually create a video area just for the in-arena show, which we had seen happening with other teams. We were able to have some great success there with some really talented creators that did so much hard work. And finally, after all these years of really grinding as sort of a bottom feeder team that didn’t have a lot going on to be proud of, we were finally getting some recognition. And people were really excited in our area about the work we were able to do. You touched on All-Star. I had the chance to grow quite a bit over the course of several years thanks to yourself and other friends of mine at the NBA. And I’ll say that I ended up here in Arizona because, frankly, the time in Minnesota was going so well that my staff was doing such a great job that I honestly felt like there was never a question of whether or not we were going to get things done. And there was never a question of whether or not our stuff was going to turn out dope. I was missing that sort of like uneasiness that I feel was like the driving force of a lot of my creativity early in my career.

[10:26] Chad Folkestad:

So when this opportunity came up with the Coyotes and they have a brand new ownership group that’s really looking to basically reinvent everything that they’re doing on the video content side and entertainment side, I saw a huge challenge. And after all of the conversations I’ve had over the years about potentially leaving the Timberwolves, this was the one that really felt right. And seven months later, Don, building a team and here I am. So I don’t know if that was the longest summary that you’ve gotten. It probably was. But it’s a weird one, right?

[10:56] Don Costante:

No, you know what? What you just illustrated going from general music, jazz piano, all the way to senior VP content entertainment for the Coyotes just shows you don’t know where your path is going to take you in life. And it doesn’t really matter. I mean, if you put a lot of hard work into it, you can do anything. So it’s pretty cool.

[11:15] Chad Folkestad:

Yeah. And Don, to piggyback on that, I would say that as I’ve been posting positions and looking at job descriptions around the league, I’m finding more and more creative positions are actually taking college off of their application process. When I came into the league, you have to have had four years in college or you have to have graduated with a two-year or a bachelor’s degree. Finding more and more that just sort of snuck that aside because with YouTube and with all the different outlets that people have to learn, they can get as much of an education in one summer as people used to get in two years at a university and for no cost, right? So it’s a crazy time.

Lessons from NBA All-Star

[11:51] Don Costante:

So let’s go back to your experience working NBA All-Star. Talk about what you learned and how that enhanced your career.

[11:59] Chad Folkestad:

Well, you were a big part of that, Don, because I did – my first All-Star was in 2010. Mike Champ from the NBA gave me a call and he said, would you like to work All-Star? And I didn’t know what I was getting into. I was a stage manager for the Saturday night show and helped out a little bit on Sunday and I was addicted. I was hooked. The next year, I got a call from you and you asked if I kind of wanted to be one of your go-tos for Jam Session, which was a little different back then. But for those that don’t know, NBA Jam Session, basically a live stage and a live court that’s open most of All-Star week and we had to program it. There were scheduled things like Celebrity Game and some other things that were on national TV. But then there was a lot of filler. A lot of filler. And, Don, that’s one of my biggest takeaways from my early years. I want to say I did that with you three years.

[12:44] Don Costante:

That sounds about right.

[12:45] Chad Folkestad:

And I think what was really interesting about it, specifically like in moments where I was feeling stressed and I was like, wow, we’ve got some big things going on. Seeing how calm you were, how much trust you had in your staff had a big impact on me because I was at a point in my career where I felt like I needed to do everything. I hadn’t developed a good trust yet. And to see you just sort of deputize all of us with really important responsibilities to program this event that obviously at any moment, any NBA bigwig could pop in and say, hey, what’s going on here? And I know you had Chris Miles on the podcast. And Chris Miles and Simon Says, to this day, those of you that have seen it, it’s one of the funniest things. This man led an hour and 20-minute game of Simon Says. He made kids cry. He had parents absolutely dying, laughing up in the stands. But that opportunity of getting together every day and saying, what are we going to do? I think it flexed a lot of my creative muscles. It’s like, OK, we’ve got to come up with some things. And there were some times we kind of had to phone it in a little bit. But the camaraderie with you and Jackie and Josh Richardson and Daniel Casados and Chris Garcia, there’s too many names. I’m not going to get everybody. But we got to work together those years.

[13:54] Chad Folkestad:

And the funny thing actually happened. And I haven’t told this story very many times. But you sort of deputized me to help out with stage directing for the concert in Houston. And so I was put in charge of wrangling talent. And it was a really big talent list, by the way. Usain Bolt, P. Diddy. And at the time, Kesha was big at the time. And you put me in charge back there. And the guy that was in charge of calling the show made a point. And on headset, I questioned it because I was concerned about the camera shot. And I kind of got barked at. Well, Rudy Cline, the creative director of the NBA, happened to be walking by. And he told me that he heard me question the camera shot and that he saw the final product. And he agreed with my assessment. And that led to him reaching out to me, asking if I could come work with him as a creative the next year. I didn’t know that. Isn’t that weird? Yeah, it’s so bizarre. And him and I grabbed a drink in Minneapolis. And he asked me to come sort of be his right hand. And I got to be a part of the whole process for the entire All-Star weekend, the writing. And got to dip my toe in the water with some music mixing for them and even a little bit of video. And the following year, they had me as sort of an associate producer at Madison Square Garden for the Sunday night show that Lauren Trusty directed.

[15:08] Chad Folkestad:

And then the following year, they asked Michelle Harris and I to produce and direct All-Star Saturday Night, which anybody that’s worked that show, there’s not a lot of shows like it. Because you’re running the commercial breaks and you’re running the actual show itself. Everything did not go perfectly in those two All-Star Saturday Night shows. And there’s shows I still can’t watch. But Danny Meiseles gave us a lot of freedom and Rudy gave us a lot of freedom to try and reinvent the show. And I guess what I learned the most in those situations is every year I felt a little more pressure as my role got to grow a little bit each year. But I found out that no matter what level you’re at, at All-Star, it’s the same game. My time at Jam Session, I may have had a little more downtime with some of the slower moments in the day, but the pressure was still the same. It was the same goal. We got to create something that people are interested in. And I enjoyed my years at Jam Session just as much as I enjoyed the crazy opportunity to sit at that table and have people screaming in your ear from TNT and from the NBA and all that. I think being surrounded by so many talented people, and I mentioned this from Jam Session, but I just glossed over all the years that I was involved on the production side.

[16:20] Chad Folkestad:

And all the people at the NBA, all those creatives, all those producers, some of them were part-time, some of them were full-time. All of my colleagues from around the NBA that got the chance to work with us on any of those shows, it’s just a constant inspiration to see when people are as passionate as they are and how none of them are afraid to stick their neck out to get the right shot or to get the right story told. Or to do the extra work that it takes to make something quite a bit better. There’s just something that’s so infectious about surrounding yourself with people that have those exact same drives. And Don, I’ll tell you, when I left the Wolves, I wrote a couple emails to some friends at the NBA telling them that one of the hardest things about leaving the Wolves was knowing that I probably worked my last NBA All-Star, at least for a while. And I went back last year as a creative producer and, you know, it’s just, there’s nothing like that. People that are just, you know what I’m talking about, even at our slower moments at Jam Session, just being surrounded with so much talent and so many people that all are just geared into the exact same mentality that you have. It makes you feel like you’re not crazy, if that makes sense.

[17:29] Don Costante:

No, it was incredible. You know, I can tell you, you certainly elevated the All-Star events. I know from watching it from a spectator point of view and seeing where they’ve come over the years. And when you took that over and got more involved and got into the directing and producing. Wow. I mean, it was significant and kudos to you and what you did. I thought it was spectacular.

[17:49] Chad Folkestad:

I mean, and I would be completely remiss if I didn’t mention that Michelle Harris built that show as much, if not more than I did. And being able to lean on her and bounce things off of her. I mean, it was truly an incredibly collaborative experience. And Rudy’s obviously a genius as well. But all of those shows, they only happened because of all the people that were involved. And I would say that just seeing how open you were to trying things in my early years at Jam Session, definitely, like I said, had a huge and profound impact on me. From the standpoint that I was like, wow, we don’t have to have complete 100% locked confidence in something to give it a go.

[18:28] Don Costante:

Yeah.

[18:28] Chad Folkestad:

Because I was still new to the NBA. I was still scared kind of to try new things. And seeing veterans like yourself and the others just basically say, that could be funny. Let’s go. That set such a table for me in all of my processes on the go forward. So I got to say, no, I can’t thank you enough for taking a chance on me at all those years that you did. Because my career would be drastically different, Don, if you didn’t give me a call. And if you didn’t keep bringing me back, I really do believe that those were some of the most important moments in my growth and my creative development started at those All-Star weekends. And again, all it took was a phone call from you to get me there. So I can’t thank you enough for that.

[19:05] Don Costante:

No, you know, it’s great to hear that. And certainly, I’m glad that was part of your process. Now, before we get into our discussion on storytelling and the creative process, can you share your philosophy on event presentation?

Event Presentation Philosophy

[19:19] Chad Folkestad:

Boy, you know, it’s interesting. That kind of has always evolved a little bit. And I’ll kick off by saying that I know that there have been some people that you’ve had the privilege of talking to that have a really, really finite and very structured way of communicating how they feel about these things. I’ve always been a bit ADD and I’ve always been a bit all over the board. But to me, it’s the obsession with details. And I know that sounds really simple. But the reason why our roles as event producers have grown so much, particularly in sports in the last 20 years, 15, 20 years, is that the proof is in the pudding. And the more focus that people have on these events, the more attention that’s paid to the details, the better the experience. And I think I saw a really interesting job description. It was last summer, I think. I don’t remember exactly where it was. But I always like to read job descriptions to see what people are looking for, how people articulate these types of positions. And the job description said something to the extent of being obsessed with every sight, every sound, even smells. And I was like, whoa, that’s something. But then you think about when you go into a nice hotel, Don, you go into like the W or something, and there’s a smell. And, you know, that’s a part of your experience.

[20:34] Chad Folkestad:

And so it’s the absolute obsession with the little details that our bizarre brains have been wired to notice, which honestly has ruined a lot of events for us forever. You walk in and they haven’t thought through the ingress and egress pieces of like a concert experience or theater experience. And, you know, if you haven’t had a cocktail or if you haven’t calmed down at all, you might be like, man, I can’t get it out of my head. I can’t believe they did that. Or Cirque du Soleil, someone’s LED suit is missing two bulbs on it. And you go, ah, I can’t believe someone didn’t check those bulbs. But I know it’s a pretty generic answer, but I really do think it’s the obsession with details. And because if you’re not obsessed with details, then you’re going to miss a lot of things. And if you’ve got a packed house and a crazy crowd, you might be able to get away with missing a lot of things. But at some point, you’re not going to have a packed house and a crazy crowd. And people are going to point out every little thing that you’re doing wrong. And so, yeah, I’m rambling a little bit. But to circle back to try and add some clarity to your question. Yes, it is details. But some details people will never notice. And I’ll never forget one of my bosses that I had when I was at the Timberwolves.

[21:47] Chad Folkestad:

Something he would say often is, are people going to notice this, though? And the answer is, consciously, no, they won’t. But subconsciously, you take a moment like this, combine it with a moment like that, combine it with a moment like this. Of 20 things that they may not outwardly be able to point out and notice, but subconsciously, it made them feel a certain way. All of those things add up to big moments. And so that’s why those of us that are mad when a timeout starts and we didn’t start the PA right away or the bed music took an extra second to start or whatever, you can miss a couple of those things. But if you miss a lot of those things, over time, people just don’t have that smooth experience. And so to me, it’s about details. Details people notice, details people don’t notice. Because if you focus on both of those things, you’re giving your audience the best chance to give them the experience that you hope to create for them, if that makes sense.

[22:37] Don Costante:

No, it does. And I love the fact that you’re talking about detail because I’ll tell you a quick story. When I was in San Antonio, when you’re talking about things that maybe people won’t notice, it was the Alamodome and we had a problem with cleanliness. And so I took it upon myself. I said, listen, we’re going to get a group of 30 cleaners and we are going to walk every section, every row of the entire Alamodome and we would do it. It would be a three hour process, but we were picking up pieces of gum, Coke spills, whatever. The reason for doing it was simply if somebody were to step on a piece of gum, their experience has been ruined at our game.

[23:15] Chad Folkestad:

Yep.

[23:15] Don Costante:

This place is cheap.

[23:17] Chad Folkestad:

Absolutely. So by cleaning it, maybe they don’t notice it, but they do in the fact that they walk away with a great experience and there wasn’t anything that caused a negative impact during that journey. And so when you were talking about details and things that people might not notice, but does have an effect on their experience, you’re right on. Yeah. We’re definitely speaking the same language. And funny enough, in my early years at Target Center, we were having to do a lot of that same stuff where the doors are about to open and there’s empty tables with the cardboard boxes on them and all. And it drills down to those details. But there have been times in my career where maybe I’m not the most fun person to work with because I’m actually the person that sometimes is unreasonable. Like you’re having this premium event supposed to be for all of our high rollers. And yet the top 40 radio mix is what’s playing through the speakers. And I’m just like, they’re walking in right now to Kesha. Right. They’re on the red carpet to Kesha. What are we doing? You know, but you’re absolutely right, though. One moment, one slip up. It’s why fan experience departments, and I know that’s not us, but the fan experience areas have exploded in the NBA. Absolutely. Particularly across sports. But, you know, what used to be not an area, I think if the Timberwolves has three or four full-time staff now, through Disney and their Elevate program and all of that, making sure that people have that experience.

[24:35] Chad Folkestad:

I know I’m taking us on a tangent here, but it brings to point that the proof is in the pudding. The science has got to be there because more and more teams are jumping on board with this, and it does make a huge difference. You’ve got ownership walking through other arenas and going, wow, no one even said hi to me all night. And I don’t know that people would have said that 10 years ago. But the expectations have gone up. The attention to detail has gone up. Everyone’s got a video camera. They’ve had video cameras for 10-plus years, but it’s never been easier for someone to record something negative or to have a bad experience. And I can tell you, at the Coyotes, that was one of the biggest concerns we had. We were one of the only buildings this year that had fans in it for a stretch. We had fans right away at the start of the season. And one thing that I always said in all of our production meetings when we were leading up to things is, guys, you’ve got to have your masks on. All it takes, even if you pull it down for one second to have a conversation with someone, all it takes is one person to have that experience, take that photo, photo goes on social media. Then not only is that person’s experience ruined, but it makes the organization look bad. And can you imagine like the gum on the foot thing?

[25:40] Chad Folkestad:

Imagine that in an age of social media where people are just looking, oh, thanks a lot, at Spurs. Thank you so much for such a great experience with some sarcasm. I’d see that picture going out there and Barstool, picking it up and everyone having a little bit of fun with it. You know, that’s so true. I don’t know. It’s it’s great. And Don, you remember, too, right when I was getting in and I’m not going to date myself too much, but there wasn’t a lot of social media involvement when I was starting off with the league. And so there was this secretive nature to what happened at the shows. But now here, especially even in the pandemic, what people were doing during timeouts was jumping all over social media. Oh, yeah. And it’s now more than ever, you can’t get away with as much like something doesn’t go as well. You used to be able to just sort of shake it off and go, ah, whatever. Nobody noticed it. But, you know, if it’s out there, there’s a chance it gets picked up. There’s a chance. Yeah, right. And so it adds a layer of scrutiny. Yeah. But it’s all about those details, man. It’s all about the details.

[26:37] Don Costante:

Absolutely. So, Chad, it’s time to talk about the importance of storytelling.

The Importance of Storytelling

[26:42] Chad Folkestad:

Okay.

[26:42] Don Costante:

Sports are rooted in storytelling. Amazing stories that need to be delivered in comprehensive, integrated ways that are designed to provide fans with authentic experiences. So define what being a storyteller means to you.

[26:55] Chad Folkestad:

Yeah. To me, storytelling and, you know, I credit my friend John Greco for really bringing that term back into the mainframe of sports entertainment. It’s a term that he uses all the time, and it’s a term that I’m hearing more and more people use lately. And at the end of the day, it’s taking whatever the IDEA or their narrative is and trying to get that narrative and that IDEA out there in the most compelling way possible. And that doesn’t mean it’s like it’s story time. Here’s a story. We’re going to tell you there’s a beginning, middle, and end. There’s hundreds of stories that are told throughout the game, and those stories can be performances from a performance team. And those stories can be how a mascot skit plays out. Obviously, the intros are a big part of the story. The narrative that’s actually happening on the playing surface is a story that we enhance, that we have no control over, right? But it’s all about enhancement and just making sure that what you’re doing gets the message across in the cleanest way possible and in the most engaging way possible. And again, using those details that we just talked about, every single layer, script, lighting, pace, soundtrack, vocal tone, where you put it in your program, all of those things make a huge difference in how a story is received, in my opinion.

[28:13] Chad Folkestad:

Just like a film director would ask the question, are we sharing this in the most effective way? Are we going to get the most effective response, best emotional response from the audience? I’d even say like reading a group of kids a storybook. The words are just the basis. It’s the tone of voice. It’s the performance of the person reading the book. It’s how they keep people captivated. That’s the stuff I live for, is keeping people captivated because people will say, I think the storybook’s a great analogy. People say, oh, great book, right? But it is just words on a page. And if the person that’s reading that book to kids doesn’t perform it or doesn’t keep them captivated, then it’s just words, right?

[28:52] Don Costante:

It’s just words, yeah. Chad, where do you get story inspiration from?

Where Story Inspiration Comes From

[28:55] Chad Folkestad:

I would say that nowadays, a lot of the inspiration comes from the other talent that’s telling stories. It used to be you’d have to watch TV or you’d have to watch film or whatever to see a lot of that stuff. But with the ability for us to consume so much media, I would say particularly in this industry, it’s why to me IDEA Conference is such a great conference because you get to see so many things that are being done across the sports world. So many different types of stories approached from so many different angles and so many different creative decisions made. I think my answer would have been different probably 10 or 15 years ago because we just we get those DVDs or whatever sent around by the league. And if you had time to watch them, you would. But now you you can’t open your computer without seeing something incredible that one of your colleagues did. Right. And so I would say that in terms of my job, I get a lot of inspiration from seeing the work that other people do. A wise man once said we’re almost out of original ideas. Right. We’ve almost completely wrote the book on original ideas. So things become inspiration from other things and inspiration from others is even if you just take a little tiny thing from this IDEA and a little tiny thing from that IDEA. Or I like the way that they used a little bit more dour. I wouldn’t have done that.

[30:13] Chad Folkestad:

But that’s actually a really great IDEA. I’m going to file that one away for later. There’s so much that we can take from each other’s work that can light that spark for us. I alluded to my other biggest inspiration at films and TV still to this day have always been. I’ve always been a bit of a filmmaker nerd myself. I’ve tried to watch every movie I can, even bad movies I really love and appreciate. But I’d say like it sounds like a cliche, Don, but almost like any muscle. Our creative minds kind of need exercise.

[30:44] Don Costante:

Oh, no doubt.

[30:45] Chad Folkestad:

But at the same time, they also need vacation. And I think that a lot of narratives, a lot of film and TV narratives, you know, stuff that we can stream really gives us both kind of at the same time. You’re turning your brain off, but you’re paying attention to something that’s happening. And for a few minutes, you’re not having to come up with something. Your brain is not trying to churn out ideas. And it puts me in a different mindset. And I’ve always said if we aren’t consuming content, you know, if we’re not forcing ourselves to be surprised or to be taken in an unexpected direction, if we’re just working, working, working and trying to come up with stuff, it’d be very difficult for us to stay fresh and to provide experience to our audiences. Because all the moments that we look back on in our journeys, the moments we remember the most are the moments where we were surprised or taken for a turn. And to me, that’s watching something where you don’t know the outcome gives me sort of that refreshing vibe of being surprised. And sometimes that spawns some great story ideas for me. You think about all the times that you’ve seen film directors interviewed. You never hear them saying, I had this IDEA or I did this or I did that. Tarantino is a great example. You look up some of his videos on YouTube.

[31:58] Chad Folkestad:

The guy is an encyclopedia of where he gets his inspiration from. And he can’t do a 10-minute interview without name dropping Sergio Leone, Kurosawa, Brian De Palma, or even better, some abstract Danish horror director that you’ve never heard of that inspired this shot. And then that even maybe sends you down a rabbit hole to go check that guy out and see what’s going on with that guy. But I guess what I would say is if I’m not consuming other stories, other content, other people’s work, my brain kind of starts to go limp a little bit. It misses sort of that spark. It makes it harder for me to form my own narratives. When I’m at my most busy, this is an interesting point. This is some advice to those that are just getting into sports that are fearing that they’re getting burnt out. I have a trick to not getting completely burnt out that’s been with me for about 10 years, and I always tell my staff this. When I’m at my most busy and my most burned out, it’s a personal rule. I am not allowed to go to sleep until I’ve watched or streamed at least 30 minutes of something. Even if I’m exhausted, even if I’m killing myself to get to sleep, I just got to get some sleep. I need to give my brain a break while I’m still awake so that I’m resting that muscle so that when I go to bed, I feel like I’ve sort of turned my brain off.

[33:14] Chad Folkestad:

And when I wake up, I feel a little bit refreshed. I think we’ve all been to that point. All-Star is a great example. You get back to your hotel. You just got to get to bed. You get to bed. You wake up and you’re back to work. And so that rule has served me very well of always just trying to consume. And I know we were talking about storytelling and inspiration from storytelling, but it led me down the path of just making sure that you’re never not consuming because that’s to me where the ideas stop when I’m just locked in my own zone and I’m not challenging myself to learn more things, if that makes sense.

[33:44] Don Costante:

No, it does. I think that’s a great point. Now, we talked about what inspires story for you. Talk a little bit about your process for generating initial concepts for stories. Who’s involved?

Generating Initial Story Concepts

[33:55] Chad Folkestad:

Well, I think in our industry, you have to take a look at the obvious narratives, right? And then you also figure out how many sports stories do you want to tell versus impact stories you want to tell versus lifestyle stories that you want to tell. That’s something that’s always been a challenge for me is trying to keep that balance of those sort of three buckets that are really important to a lot of sports franchises. And I guess I would say that generating those concepts, again, comes from the inspiration. And a lot of it starts with things that you kind of get inspired from other teams. Now, if you’re fortunate enough to have great stories in front of you, and we see a lot of those at IDEA, we see a lot of those online where this player’s just got an incredible story. I mean, that’s low-hanging fruit, right?

[34:37] Don Costante:

Sure.

[34:37] Chad Folkestad:

If you can identify those things, and those stories are things that the fans would be interested in, obviously, you never want to avoid those types of narratives, those types of stories. Where I think it gets a little bit challenging is if you’re seeking out stories too much, you might not find them. If they’re like, well, we’ve got to come up with more stories to tell, and there’s not a reason for that story to be told, then you kind of end up chasing your tail a little bit. And I think the content and the ideas can get a little bit stale. I would say that one thing that I always try and do when it comes to the live show or to the video lineup of content that we’ve got planned is I’m constantly asking myself, what are we missing? What vibes are we not hitting right now? Sometimes it’s as simple as saying you’re going to have your intros. You’re going to have your hype up before tip. You’re going to have your mascot skit at the end of this. You’re going to resolve that at the end of this. This is slapstick. This is more of a dance performance number that hits the new music. Here’s the different dance group that hits sort of the older music. You want to just touch as many of those little moments as you possibly can. And I think for me, the searching for concepts and searching for stories often starts there where I’m like, what is the experience missing or what is our lineup missing?

[35:47] Chad Folkestad:

I’m fortunate that like my brain is really weird. And when I’m not looking for ideas, ideas tend to come to me more. And I always have like a Google Drive document open. And it’s one that I will never show people because there’s a lot of dumb stuff in there. But when an IDEA comes up for something that we could add to the experience or add to the video lineup, I always jot it down. It might not be something that we could do right then, but I can come back to it later. But I guess I would say if you try too hard to generate the stories and there’s not a reason for those stories, like you’re just like, well, we need to do more and more. I find that I chase my tail a little bit. I think the gathering of stories, though, to kind of bring it all back, the gathering of stories is brainstorming, right? It’s getting people together and it’s trying to find the narratives that people might find interesting and engaging. I like that to be a departmental thing when we do seek those moments out. I think one of the challenges of gathering stories and concepts is the offseason is a great time to do that. Sometimes when you’re in the regular season, even keeping brainstorming sessions on the books, sometimes there’s so much going on that it’s really difficult to get the types of ideas that you’re seeking in those moments.

[37:00] Chad Folkestad:

So I’ve always been a firm believer that ideas are going to come to you at random times. And I always encourage the people that I’ve worked with, if an IDEA comes up, make sure you record it on your phone, make sure you write it down because you’re going to lose half of them because they come to you at weird times. And then we go back to that giant list of stuff that we’ve been adding to and there’s stuff already there for us to grab from. I think if you’re trying to come up with a concept for a specific event, let’s say it’s a Jersey retirement or let’s say that it’s a tribute night or let’s say that somebody passed and you have to pay tribute to them in that way. Obviously, in those situations, you have to get in and you can’t leave the room until you’ve got the narrative set. But I think in a lot of cases, some of the best ideas for stories, they just sort of come to you and they just sort of come to you at random times. I think everybody’s different in this way. There’s a lot of people that love the what’s what are those a frame white sheets where you flip the sheet over and you write down more stuff and then you’re supposed to rip it off and tape it up on the wall. And then they always say, we’re going to compile all these ideas and we’re going to get them to you guys. And it never happens. Right.

[38:07] Chad Folkestad:

But I guess I would say more than anything, in my experience, the best ideas come to me at really random times. And while we do brainstorm and we do try and come to some of those narratives on our own, especially when we’re building out a season and building out how we want those experiences to happen. Some of the best stuff to this day still happens when I’m on my way to the gym or when I’m in the car and something just hits me. Right. It’s weird.

The Biggest Obstacles to Storytelling

[38:30] Don Costante:

So, Chad, what’s the biggest obstacle challenge, if you will, to storytelling?

[38:36] Chad Folkestad:

Biggest obstacle challenge. I think it depends on what industry you’re in. In sports, I think it’s actually the timeline and sort of the rush of things that need to happen. I can’t speak for all sports or all teams, but I know that many teams operate with a production schedule that’s kind of behind before it even starts. I don’t recall many times in my career where we’ve been ahead on anything, really. We may be able to start a certain project early, but usually the workload is something that we’re always trying to catch up to. It’s pretty rare to be in season and feel like you’re just completely caught up and waiting for more work to do. Right. And so that’s why there’s times where and I would say specifically on the mascot side of things, where an incredible IDEA comes up at the last minute and it’s based upon the opponent we’re playing. And this is the only time we’re playing him this year. And it takes incredible patience to go. You know what? Let’s pocket that one. They’ll be back next year. Then we can really have time to build it correctly, get talent in here to rehearse and all of those other things. I’d say budget can also be an issue for a lot of teams. But I also find that if you have people in your crew that have the, we can do this attitude, you know, you’re always going to find reasons not to do a difficult IDEA.

[39:47] Chad Folkestad:

But if you surround yourself with creative and with people, you know, they’re not going to go, oh, that means we’re going to have to get up at four in the morning and we’re going to have to do that ourselves. If people have more of the attitude of, yeah, we got to get up at four in the morning, but it’s going to be dope. We got to do this. Then you can rise past some of those limitations when it comes to budget. But yeah, timeline and rush on the rush that we’re in, in sports. Sometimes ideas come over. You’re just like, we just don’t have time to execute it. And that’s when you have to make the decision of, do we wait and do it way better next year? Or do we have to kind of rush it out because it’s only going to fit in this season’s narrative?

The Key Ingredients of a Great Story

[40:22] Don Costante:

Now, I know I’m digging and I’m digging deep into storytelling, but what are the ingredients or key attributes for a great story? What are the absolute must haves?

[40:32] Chad Folkestad:

I would say that more often than not, if you can’t find smiles or laughs in a piece at all, in terms of your audience reaction, you have to ask yourself, is what we’re making, is it too informative? Is it too much of like a school type of thing? Are they learning too much or is it just too sad? Right? Because I think you’ll even see that when people get emotional watching a piece, there’s usually a little bit of a smirk that comes out of them where they’re like, wow, this is really having an impact on me. So I would say if you’re getting people to smile or getting people to laugh and you’re in the entertainment industry, more often than not, that’s a really good sign. It’s not infallible. There are definitely exceptions. In this day and age, I would say another key component is grabbing them right off the bat. And I know I’m dating myself using a term like in this day and age, that’s something my parents say. But I’ve alluded to it in other parts of the conversation. But the fact that people don’t need to pay attention anymore. It used to be you go to an event. You know, cell phones have been around forever. But the ability to grab any piece of content in the entire world that you want and have it at your fingertips hasn’t been around all that long. Right. But now the kids are used to that.

[41:45] Chad Folkestad:

And the next generation is going to be even more used to it. So you really have to grab people right away. People make their decision in the first five to ten seconds if they’re going to continue watching something. And I think that applies to things that you post on your social media, but also things in your in-game experience. Because if they’re not feeling what you’re showing in the first ten seconds, they’re going to that phone. Right. So you’ve got to be able to grab them off the bat. And we’ve just got to get them right away. Otherwise, you’re risking losing them. And then people are getting up to go get their beers or they’re going to leave and they’re not paying attention. And then you don’t get the response that you like whenever that piece that you’re doing, that story that you’re telling is over. If half the people are tuned out, then it doesn’t get the sort of recognition that it would deserve from a crowd when a piece ends. So I would definitely say grabbing them is key. And in that same vein, I guess I would say it’s got to be something that’s worthy of their attention and their engagement. Is the story on its face? Is the story actually engaging? And I know that sounds really simplistic, but I mean, sometimes because this is a job, sometimes we’re in situations we feel like we have to force a story.

[42:50] Chad Folkestad:

And the question I always ask, and it’s kind of like you hear a lot of creatives, really brilliant creatives, talk about their why. Like, why are we doing this? Why is this important? Why is this a story that needs to be told? And something that I’ve found that’s been really hard to sort of convey to certain leadership I’ve had way over the years is sometimes a story doesn’t have the engagement or excitement that it needs to be told. I know that we might think it’s important, but is the average person going to care? This isn’t like a Hollywood actor that’s going to do one for me, one for them, right? It should all be about them. It should all be about what the fans think and if they’re engaged. And so I’ve been fortunate to have bosses throughout my career that I’ve been able to be pretty honest with them and say, I think we’re doing this one for us in terms of the internal piece. I don’t think the fans really care all that much. And I know that there’s some people at some of these storytelling conferences that will say profound things like every story deserves to be told if it’s framed correctly and it’s approached from the right standpoint. I just kind of think that’s sort of jumbled thinking and it’s sort of self-important nonsense because the reality is I could come up with 10 stories for you right now that there’s no possible way that it would be engaging for you to watch.

[44:09] Chad Folkestad:

And so I guess to sort of recap all the points that I said, if I can remember them correctly here, key ingredients, you want people to either laugh or smile or feel some sort of that type of emotion. In some cases, they’re going to be sad, but more often than not, you want smiles or laughs. You want to grab their attention right at the beginning and you want to make sure that the story that you are telling is something that they do want to hear. They may not know it yet, but you’ve got to make sure that it’s a story that they do want to hear.

Knowing Your Audience

[44:37] Don Costante:

I agree. Chad, what are some of the techniques that help you to ensure success or likability with the fans?

[44:45] Chad Folkestad:

It’s really knowing your audience and it’s really tough to know your audience until you’ve worked with them for a long time. One of the challenges here in Arizona, and we’ve had some pretty small crowds because of the pandemic, but I don’t really know this crowd yet. I don’t know this market yet. All audiences are very different. You and I can both attest to all the different NBA shows we’ve seen and sports shows that we’ve seen where the way that they react to a certain type of content in one market, completely different in another market. And so you’ve got to know your audience really well. And sometimes if you don’t know your audience, well, you’ve got to ask people. One thing I will say that I’ve always had success with, well, for the most part, is I really like to bounce certain projects off of several different people in the office from outside of our area.

[45:34] Don Costante:

I love that.

[45:34] Chad Folkestad:

It’s one thing if our creative group all feels a great ownership of this piece. It’s something we all built together. It’s something we’re really proud of. But what does a person from outside of our area think?

[45:45] Don Costante:

Exactly.

[45:45] Chad Folkestad:

I would always try and get different age groups, different backgrounds, different styles. I try and pick four or five random people to show sort of these like larger scale stories to sort of early on to see if we’re tracking and see what they have to say about it. I would also try and bring people into the mix sometimes that I knew weren’t really big fans of the work that we did. You know, you kind of find out who doesn’t like what you do. Oh, yeah. But I like to get them involved because if we’re getting even a mediocre or positive reaction from someone that’s not necessarily a fan of all the work that our area is doing, then we’re definitely on the right track. But I would say that, again, it’s knowing the audience well, but also especially if it’s a larger project that you really need to make sure that if you’re taking risks in it, that those risks are warranted, it’s really important to get various different types of backgrounds to watch it. Because at the end of the day, that’s what an audience is. It’s a giant group of people with different tastes and backgrounds.

Getting Players to Buy Into Creative Projects

[46:41] Don Costante:

So I’m curious about this. What is your secret to getting players to participate, cooperate, and more importantly, deliver results that you desire for a project during filming?

[46:50] Chad Folkestad:

I’ve been pretty fortunate in my career to have worked with some pretty low-key PR departments. And not low-key from a standpoint that I need them to do all the communicating, but I have found something that’s really effective is the relationship with the players. And it doesn’t have to be, you know, you always hear the term no fraternizing with the players and all that. I’m not talking to that extent, but I’m talking to the extent of trying to make sure that they understand that you’re not there to try and get something from them. And at the end of the day, if that’s the mentality they think that you’re coming at them with, they’re never going to be cooperative or they’re never going to be all in on something. You really want them to see that what you’re trying to do for them is for their enhancement. It’s to make their brand stronger. It’s to make the fans understand them more. And that’s not something that happens overnight. I will say, and I know this is not an insider secret to some that have been around for a long time, but for those that might be listening that are sort of newer to the world, if you have an opportunity to hang out by the garage or whatever after practice, picking one player a day to sort of just walk with and go, hey, how you doing? What have you been up to?

[48:03] Chad Folkestad:

Are you good? Yeah, I’m good. What have you been listening to? Do you hear that new Drake? I hate that new Drake. Oh, yeah, I don’t like it either. What have you been listening to lately? Player says, ah, I really like this track. You go, well, you know, we can play that tonight when you guys come out. Should we do that? Yeah, man. I don’t know if there’s a clean version. Ah, we’ll clean it up. Don’t worry. But doing those little favors, letting them see that you want them to have a good experience. The best example I have of this, and I hope this is as interesting as I think it is, but Kevin Love, I got to give Kevin Love tons of credit. Of all the players I’ve worked with over the years, he was easily the guy that totally just understood the most. And he really, in developing sort of a relationship with him over the course of several shoots, he put a lot of trust in our area. And if you really want to see some bizarre early game ops video activations, go back, you know, look up Kevin Love’s coat drive. Over the course of three years, we made some really bizarre, very bizarre videos because Kevin was doing a coat drive and it was not moving at all. They were doing these videos for CR where he was like, hey, fans, this is Kevin Love. Come bring your coats out to my coat drive and let’s keep people warm.

[49:13] Chad Folkestad:

We did this art house, black and white, film noir, bizarre, just experimental student film looking garbage with like European techno music. And it’s all the players turning and going, coats, coats. And then at the end, Kevin goes, I’m Kevin Love. Give me your coat. And then it would say Kevin Love’s coat drive. They tripled the amount of coats they got in that first year. Oh, no, we made a bunch of them. And Don, some of them are the most nonsensical crap I’ve ever been a part of. But it worked. He saw that it worked. Every time there was sort of a punch at the end, you hear the crowd laughing. We put a camera on him. He’d shake his head with a smile. I asked so stupid. And the stuff that we were able to get away with his cologne campaign, which Dime magazine at the time said it was one of the best All-Star campaigns ever. We actually made a cologne for Kevin Love. And there’s no way he would have trusted us to do that. All of that. We did a magazine photo shoot that made him look like it turns out he turned into a male model. But at the time, he wasn’t. Right. And we did. We brought in models. And the PR department made an actual cologne. We shot a pretentious European cologne ad. And he gave up his personal time, like an hour of his personal time to do that. And I truly believe is because over the course of those previous years, he could tell that when I was asking him for something or asking him about something, it wasn’t because I was trying to use him.

[50:36] Chad Folkestad:

It was because I was trying to make him look great or I was trying to improve whatever thing that he was going on to do. And I would just to bring it back around, I would say relationships with the players. If you have the ability to make those relationships and they can be as simple as just saying hi and them knowing that you’re not someone that’s there to ask him for something. And if you can’t have access to the players, which I know a good half of teams will have no access to the players, making sure that you really can get inside of the heads of your PR area or your player development areas. And let them see that you have a genuine interest in making the players look better, telling their stories, enhancing their brand, enhancing their fan base, getting more people interested in them. Because at the end of the day, if you don’t look like you’re just trying to do your job really good, you look like you really are coming to it from a place of enhancing the players, which is the best content, by the way. If you’re enhancing them, if you’re building their brand, then everybody wins. The player, the team, the department. So the scary thing about that, Don, as you know, if you ask a player to trust you, you get one screw up. You get one chance. You screw up one time, you’re done. One screw up means that you are done.

[51:48] Chad Folkestad:

And that word might get around to the rest of the team that that didn’t work out well. I will say also another thing that was very helpful is when you’re pushing for a strange IDEA, make sure you’ve got a small tablet. And then when the piece is done, walk down the hall with them as they’re leaving practice and say, I told you I’d show it to you before we aired it. Go ahead and take a look and let me know what you think. It’s only burned me once, Don. I would say 30 times I’ve given players that option. And there was only one time where a player went, nah, I don’t like it. And I had to eat that one. There is something amazing about when you tell them, I know this sounds weird. I will show it to you before we air it. And if you don’t like it, I will throw it in the trash. I promise you. That takes a huge burden off. Right. And more often than not, if you have faith in your IDEA and you know how it’s going to turn out, you’re like, there’s no way he’s not going to like this or she’s not going to like this. Right. Just genuine interest in them, genuine interest in making sure that they look good. I know that’s not rocket science, but that has been the key to some of the best stuff we’ve been able to do with players is developing that trust. And if you’ve got a PR department that lets you talk to players after practice, whatever, definitely make sure you’re not doing it too much because you don’t want to look like you’re abusing that trust.

[53:01] Don Costante:

Sure.

[53:02] Chad Folkestad:

But I would say that that’s absolutely key.

[53:04] Don Costante:

And would you say that that’s been a key for you over the years? No question. No question. I mean, I know when I got to the Royals, there was a little bit of concern with the players. Just some of the features that had been done with them made them look kind of quote unquote silly, I guess, in some regards. But yeah. You know, we had to earn their trust.

[53:23] Chad Folkestad:

Yeah.

[53:24] Don Costante:

Exactly what you’re talking about. We had to let them know that this is for their best interest. It’s going to build their brand and we’re not going to put anything up there that’s going to make them look silly or stupid or put them in a bad light. Those first couple, you have to make sure in baseball language, it’s a home run because you’re being evaluated. And like you said, one thing goes wrong, especially after they might not have had good experiences in the past. You’re done.

[53:48] Chad Folkestad:

Yeah.

[53:48] Don Costante:

So we had to go above and beyond to make sure that it was a great outcome for them as well as for the fan base. So absolutely. What you just laid down, so many people struggle with participation from players and trying to get them to participate. But what you just provided is really a blueprint for successful results. So really good.

[54:06] Chad Folkestad:

Well, hearing you talk about it and similar experiences. And I know that there’s a lot of people in the industry that would say exactly the same thing, right? It’s like I said at the beginning. It’s not rocket science. But I will say, too, a really important piece is when you’re pitching an IDEA to a player, especially if the IDEA is not just a super easy, oh, yeah, I get that. Especially if it’s a little bit out there, really make sure that you’re tailoring the IDEA to the player specifically. And that means you really kind of have to know them. If they’re new, you kind of want to dig a little bit into some of their old interviews. See how well-spoken they are. We have to do that a lot before media day if we figure out we want someone to do something a little bit more animated. But I’ll give you an example. Nikola Peković. He looks like the bad guy from Superman 2 with the beard. You know what I’m talking about?

Tailoring Ideas to Individual Players

[54:53] Don Costante:

Oh, yeah.

[54:54] Chad Folkestad:

A huge Serbian guy. Looked like an enforcer for the mafia. Just a huge guy. Hates game ops. Absolutely hates videos. Hates game ops. Hated intros. Hated absolutely everything about what we did. And for a year, I asked him to do some things, and he was really annoyed. And what I figured out, Don, is that I could make a character out of him hating the stuff that we do.

[55:18] Don Costante:

Oh, brilliant.

[55:18] Chad Folkestad:

So what I would tell him is, we’re going to have you do this. He goes, I hate that stuff. I go, if you react the way that you just did right now, everyone’s going to know how much you hate this. And they’re going to love it. So with Peković, we did, it’s time for the hot gossip with Nikola Peković. I don’t remember exactly what we called it. But we would ask him a question, and we would ask the fan in the arena, how is he going to answer this? We’re going to ask him, who’s your favorite Kardashian? And it was A, Kim. B, Khloe. C, whatever, Kourtney. D, none of the above. And what do you think? Crowd, it’s going to be Kim. Okay, let’s find out. And then off camera, you hear me go, Pek, who’s your favorite Kardashian? He immediately looks at the camera and goes, nobody. And so none of the above was the correct answer. And we built this hilarious animation on the front with a ton of production. Hilarious animation on the back, ton of production. And on media day, Don, it took three seconds to get that clip. We built an entire contest around it. We built all this stuff about him reacting to pop music. And he goes, I do not like this. And that’s the whole feature. And so really knowing your players and knowing what might make them stand out. He became a fan favorite at our games just for them watching how he reacted to things that other people had fun with.

[56:41] Chad Folkestad:

And he just hated. I had an awesome relationship with him because we did a where in the world is anyone Nikola Peković. And people started yelling that at him in public on the planes and whatever. And he was annoyed at first, but then he realized he was kind of like a little miniature celebrity for hating this stuff. And so I would just say if a guy tends to not be into this stuff, either try and cater it directly to that player or to that athlete. Because we had Lynx players, too, that hated being on the scoreboard. So we try and find ways to exploit that where they would know that we’re not going to make them look stupid. I think that’s the most important thing of all of it, Don. You need to let them know that you’re not going to let them look stupid. At the end of the day, if you know your players, you know how they will probably react to your IDEA. You just got to make sure that they know that you’re not going to let them look stupid, that everything that you’re trying to do is going to make them look better. And hopefully you succeed at that. I’ve had a few where I didn’t. And again, you have to eat crow there and you’re kind of done with that player for a while.

[57:50] Don Costante:

I love that. I love how you’re looking at each individual player and their personalities because you were creative and you came up with a solution on how to make it something special within your arena. So speaking of creative, let’s talk about the creative process.

Chad’s Creative Process

[58:03] Chad Folkestad:

Okay.

[58:03] Don Costante:

I’m interested, Chad, what comes to mind when you hear the words creative process?

[58:09] Chad Folkestad:

It’s changed over time. I think it kind of depends. In my experience, I’ve said this a few times, my brain operates a little bit weird. I think that’s to my advantage sometimes. I think sometimes it’s to a huge disadvantage. But some of these creative workshops, storytelling workshops and things like that, that we all kind of get exposed to. I’m not negative on those, but they just, a lot of those processes don’t really work for me. I found that the more I try and compartmentalize the creative process for the people that I work with, the less we’re being spontaneous. I found it’s almost stifled our processes a little bit. I think we’ve all had those brainstorming sessions where you’re trying to come up with the solve. It’s silent. Everyone is kind of staring at a different part of the room. And then suddenly someone yells, I’ve got it. And wow, there’s the IDEA. Wow, that’s amazing. We didn’t have anything and now we have it. But that doesn’t happen very often. In my experience, it’s like I alluded to this earlier, but a lot of the best ideas happen outside of the brainstorming room. They’re brought into the room. They’re brought in as sort of seeds of an IDEA and they’re expanded on by all the creative talent in the room. I think if I would add something to the creative process that I don’t think is unique to me, but because you hear people say there are no bad ideas.

[59:29] Chad Folkestad:

We all know that’s not true, right? Like there are bad ideas. But here’s the way I say that, though, Don. I love telling people to be unhinged and to throw out everything because some of the greatest content that I’ve been a part of, particularly like skits and funny stuff, has started from an IDEA that was horrible on its face. You know, we would push the line and someone would try and say something to make somebody in the room laugh. And it’s way over the line. We’re never doing this skit. That’s so inappropriate. That’s a terrible IDEA. But that terrible IDEA, someone goes, well, wait, what if it’s this? Well, wait, what if it’s this? And then before you know it, like 10 minutes later, we’ve got this concept that never would have ever scratched the surface had someone not said that sort of over the line. And I’ll say a terrible IDEA. Had they not had the comfort level with the room of just throwing it out there, then that awesome skit never would have happened because we didn’t go through that process of picking it apart and saying, well, is there something there? And, you know, sometimes there isn’t, right? But I’d say my version of the whole there are no bad ideas thing is more so, yeah, there’s bad ideas, but we should hear all of them. Because you’re also going to have people in the room, very, very talented people, particularly like the animators and designers that I’ve worked with over the years tend to be a little bit quieter for whatever reason.

[1:00:48] Chad Folkestad:

I don’t know if it’s because they spend a lot of time exploring software and effects. They’ve tended to be a bit on the quieter side, but I always tell them we got to hear everything because otherwise people sit there and they go, no, that’s not good enough. No, that’s not a good IDEA. No, I’ll wait till I have something really good. And at the end of the day, that pressure is, well, my IDEA better be good if I’m going to bring it up. And then where do you end up? You end up with people only throwing out stuff that they think is a really great IDEA. And that adds pressure, too, because then what if no one else likes it? So if everyone’s just throwing stuff out there, if everyone’s just freewheeling, trying to make each other laugh, trying to get the process rolling, then there’s not this pressure of, I hope people like this IDEA. One of the things I do more often than not, when I throw out an IDEA that I don’t have a lot of confidence in, I immediately dump on it. I finish the IDEA and I go, that’s a terrible IDEA. And sometimes I was right. But sometimes people go, no, no, no, hold on. There might be something there. So I guess I like the expression, there is no such thing as a bad IDEA because it encourages people to be completely open. But I think some of the best ideas come from bad ideas.

[1:01:59] Don Costante:

I agree.

[1:01:59] Chad Folkestad:

I guess it’s the way that I would phrase it.

[1:02:01] Don Costante:

I agree with you. So I got a good sense for your overall creative process.

[1:02:06] Chad Folkestad:

Yeah.

Resources for Sparking Ideas

[1:02:06] Don Costante:

Personally, for yourself, in terms of generating ideas, are you utilizing any resources to spark ideas? I mean, I know you talked about watching movies and looking at what other people are doing. But are there other resources that you’re using to help spark ideas?

[1:02:20] Chad Folkestad:

I guess another thing that I think is a good thought starter is to just make sure to go down every rabbit hole completely. If somebody is talking about something that makes you think of something that you’ve seen, like a skit or something, you know, all this. Have you guys seen this? And they go, no. You pull out that laptop and you watch it and you follow that rabbit hole to the very end. Because if people are excited to see something that was spawned from an IDEA that’s being discussed, you go, hold on, hold on. We have to stay focused. We have to stay focused. Then you lose that fun and that spontaneity. And I will say, looking back at the crew that I was so privileged to work with at the Timberwolves, and a lot of them are still there, when we would do our media day brainstorms and our production day brainstorms, we’d start months and months out knowing that it’s going to be a slow burn and a slow process. But we would have so much fun on a lot of those. And we’d go down so many crazy rabbit holes. And I would really make sure that we always followed those. And if it made someone think of another video, we’d pull that video up and we’d watch that. And more often than not, we would start rattling stuff up and stuff would start going off on the board, like boom, boom, boom. And we would get to the end of it.

[1:03:27] Chad Folkestad:

How did we get here? Oh, it was somebody was talking about that jackass skit where Johnny Knoxville was putting the baby carrier on top of the van and driving away. And that took us to this thing. And that took us to this thing. And before you know it, we’ve got five ideas on the board. So I think touching back to one of the first things I said, and I know it’s kind of anti what a lot of people would say, but I can’t control the way that my brain works and the way that I try and motivate a group as well as I can. The big thing for me is whenever I’ve tried to do sort of the acronym thing, you know, it’s the energy method. E is for excitement. N is for, you know, whenever I try and do that, Don, I just feel like it kind of slows my process down. Now, I’m not saying that people shouldn’t do that. I know a lot of people have a lot of success with those types of methods. But for me, it’s a lot more spontaneous and it always has been. It’s a lot more freewheeling. We had this great seating arrangement at the Timberwolves the last few years where it was an open seating area where we would all face our desks. But when we would turn around, we’d all be facing each other and someone would be sitting at their desk and they would go like, is there a way we can make fun of carpool karaoke? And then everyone would kind of turn around and look to the middle and someone would go, that would be really funny.

[1:04:39] Chad Folkestad:

People love that. And then someone would go, I hate carpool karaoke. What can we do? And then we’d talk about an IDEA. We’d go down a little bit of a rabbit hole and then someone would put it on the list or put it on the whiteboard. Then we’d go back to work. That’s where a lot of our stuff came from, was from those little moments where people were just comfortable turning around, barking back at the group. We ever thought about this? And somebody might go, no, we did that last year. Ah, you’re right. Goes back to work. That’s where some of our best ideas came from in Minnesota was just the open dialogue, all being close to each other. As random things pop into our heads, we throw them out. We did have established brainstorm time for sure, Don.

Structuring Brainstorming Sessions

[1:05:17] Don Costante:

Well, let’s talk about that.

[1:05:18] Chad Folkestad:

Yeah.

[1:05:19] Don Costante:

I’m interested on how that was structured. When you’re having these scheduled brainstorming sessions, talk a little bit about what that format looks like. What’s your format for a brainstorming session?

[1:05:31] Chad Folkestad:

Boy, we tried not to put too many boundaries and barriers on it. And sometimes that led us to a big waste of time. And if any of my former colleagues are listening, they’re smiling and nodding their heads. Yeah, we had a lot of brainstorms that didn’t go anywhere. But often what I would try and do is I would try and start us off with something that we hadn’t really talked about yet. So last time we talked about getting to know the players better. And we talked about we did some research on this guy and he sang Call Me Maybe when he’s with the Pacers and they played on the board. And then they played it back and it became a fan favorite and it got a million views. We talked about getting to know the players, but we haven’t really done anything that’s like mocking pop culture. What’s something that’s on pop culture right now that we hate? And we kind of just sit there. Someone would say the Masked Singer. I go, oh, I hate the Masked Singer. Write that down. Someone writes down the Masked Singer. It’s like, OK, well, how can we have some fun with that? And then we just start throwing out ideas. Again, it’s important to explore every rabbit hole, no matter how ridiculous it is. But again, I wish that I had a method for these meetings that was super, super buttoned up. But I think the reason why we were able to do some really bizarre stuff that sometimes did well, sometimes it fell on its face, was because we really just had sort of an open forum.

[1:06:47] Chad Folkestad:

There’s two different types of brainstorms, and I think you’ll agree with me here, Don. There’s the ones where, all right, let’s get together. Let’s keep those muscles flexed. Let’s talk about some stuff. Let’s have a little bit of fun here. Let’s fill up that whiteboard. Let’s put it in the document. All right, great. Great brainstorm, everyone. And then there’s the ones where you have to come up with something, where you’ve got a goal. And I alluded to this earlier, but something happened and we have to acknowledge it. Or something came from our owner and we have to figure out a way to do this. So we can’t leave this room until we figure out what we’re going to do. To me, those are two completely different styles of creative energies. Because in one, you know that you’ve got to get it done. And in the other one, it’s like, well, who cares? If we have a little bit of fun and we come out with an IDEA or two and we end up with 15 ideas that are stupid, at least we have those one or two ideas that we add to the list. And every week when we come back, that list gets longer and longer. And then before you know it, we’re at media day and we’re having to cut stuff because we have so many ideas that we like. So I would just say that open forum is super important. Often I would also say, does anybody have anything funny that they’ve watched this week?

[1:07:49] Chad Folkestad:

If we were completely dead in the water, somebody would say, have you guys seen this? And we’d start watching videos. And then that would just sort of take us into an area where we could talk more. But you’ve not worked in pro sports if you’ve not had some dog brainstorm sessions where you come out of it going, oh, we didn’t get anything out of that today. What a waste of time. But you keep bringing the right group of creatives and talented people together. Those ideas will come, especially if you’re trying to make each other laugh. You’re trying to have fun with each other. You’re trying to keep that excitement and fun of pro sports always alive. Because to me, as soon as it feels like you’re checking boxes of some method, I just lose it personally. It just doesn’t work as well for me, if that makes sense.

[1:08:33] Don Costante:

No, it does. Now you mentioned when you’re stuck and people aren’t saying anything, maybe you’re asking somebody, what have you watched lately that you liked and you’re showing that video and you’re trying to spark ideas that way. Are there other specific tools or strategies that you found useful in your brainstorming process that has really helped to facilitate creative and innovative thinking with those who are participating?

Tools and Strategies for Better Brainstorming

[1:08:56] Chad Folkestad:

You know, there’s not a specific tool or resource that I would point to directly. I think YouTube is something that we all live in quite a bit.

[1:09:04] Don Costante:

Yeah.

[1:09:04] Chad Folkestad:

We all try and jump on trends, right? Especially in the mascot. In the mascot world. Oh, this is huge. And TikTok has been, you know, before they started cracking down on music, TikTok for mascots was the greatest thing ever, right? And there’s still some mascots absolutely crushing it. I guess what I would say is I wish I had something that was a little bit more buttoned up because it definitely would make me sound smarter. But again, to me, it’s frequency. So if we’re going to do – and we didn’t always succeed at this because we actually had year-round seasons. We do the Timberwolves in the winter and then we do the four-time world champion Minnesota Lynx.

[1:09:39] Don Costante:

You threw your trophy brag in there.

[1:09:41] Chad Folkestad:

I got to throw mine in. We do Minnesota Lynx in the summer. But I think most of the last several years we were successful in starting our weekly brainstorms eight weeks out from media day, six to eight weeks out. And the first few weeks we would go once a week. And then two, three weeks out from media day, we would do twice a week. And then that last week leading up to media day, we would meet almost every day. And what that allowed us to do was to fill up that whiteboard, start crossing things off. I just think frequency is really important in terms of having an open forum and having people feel comfortable because that’s the other thing. We talk about the rush and the timelines and trying to come up with narratives and trying to come up with things. If you feel pressured, you’re not really feeling excited about a lot of the stuff. You’re just putting stuff up because, you know, well, we got to get something up there. If you don’t feel the pressure of needing to come out of the room with something, it’s a really liberating thing because when you’re stressed to come up with an IDEA, in my experience, it’s not when the best ideas come out. It’s when you know you got time. It’s when you know that you don’t need to have it done for a bit. And that’s why I and the Timberwolves people will laugh a little because we didn’t always succeed at starting as early as we would have liked.

[1:10:56] Chad Folkestad:

But there was just a loose vibe around the brainstorm. We didn’t feel like if we came out with nothing that we really liked, it wasn’t a failure because we had some fun with it. We never felt that failure of, well, we didn’t come out with what we needed because we didn’t have a real goal going in. We just wanted to try and come up with some things, throw them on the board because you get into that situation where everyone’s sitting there silently. And like I said, Don, sometimes that results in the brainstorm, Eureka, we got it. And sometimes you have to do that silent sitting there. But I know some people go like the Brave New Workshop method of getting a group of people together and trying to play word games with each other, get the improv muscles flowing and stuff. And I think that can work really well for some groups. But for us, it really was just about making each other laugh and getting each other’s juices going, I think was the most important piece to getting good ideas and good content and not being afraid to share what you have. That’s the most important thing because otherwise the quiet people will stay quiet, you know?

[1:11:53] Don Costante:

No, I love that. And, you know, the playful behaviors, what enables you to tap into the subconscious where all those experiences that you’ve had that you can tap into in that ideation session to bring out those ideas. I think that’s cool.

Don’s Approach to Ideation Sessions

[1:12:05] Chad Folkestad:

Well, and I don’t want to turn the tables on you, Don, but what have you found? I know you’ve talked to a lot of people, but in your most recent experiences, what’s your favorite method to getting ideas generated, to getting things going when you get into a cold room with people?

[1:12:17] Don Costante:

The first thing is I like to do an energizer. I like to get people laughing, having a good time.

[1:12:22] Chad Folkestad:

Yep.

[1:12:23] Don Costante:

We take the table away. We put the chairs facing each other.

[1:12:26] Chad Folkestad:

Oh, I love that.

[1:12:27] Don Costante:

We just have a game. We get people being silly, having fun for 10 minutes. Then we’ll sit down and we’ll go to it. Everything that we talk about, we’re going to build upon. We’re going to have an expansive session, not a reductive one.

[1:12:37] Chad Folkestad:

Yes.

[1:12:38] Don Costante:

That’s kind of how we get the juices flowing.

[1:12:40] Chad Folkestad:

And I love that. And I had never really put too much thought into the table, but I do like that concept of just getting it out of there. Right. And I’ve seen that. And I know Pixar has done a lot of that too, where they try and get, they try and remove obstacles and furniture. And another thing that I always try and let people know though, too, when we’re in this process and we’re not necessarily excited about everything that’s coming out is I think Saturday Night Live. And we won’t talk about Saturday Night Live now because those of us that have been around know that the show used to be a lot better.

[1:13:08] Don Costante:

Oh, yeah.

[1:13:09] Chad Folkestad:

But even when the show was better, how many times did you watch an episode of Saturday Night Live and every single skit was great? You know what I mean?

[1:13:16] Don Costante:

Oh, yeah.

[1:13:17] Chad Folkestad:

It’s like it’s a sure thing that you’re going to get a couple mediocre skits and probably at least one that’s really bad that doesn’t hit the mark at all. And we have to wear many hats in our industry. We are not professional writers, right? We can do professional writing work, but it’s not our trade to just be professional writers. These people that do this for a living, they don’t bat a thousand, right? There’s been legendary stories about I think it’s Tuesday or Wednesday nights at SNL where people stay until 4 a.m. and they’re in the offices and they’re all trying to make each other laugh and they’re all just singing songs and throwing tennis ball against the wall and catching it. It’s that whole thing that you don’t imagine that the quote unquote professionals deal with. But it reminds me of something you were just saying and you said it a little bit differently, but it’s breaking through that wall.

[1:14:06] Don Costante:

Yep.

[1:14:06] Chad Folkestad:

And you can call it writer’s block. You can call it stiffness. You can call it being cold in the room, whatever you want to call it, but everybody goes through it. And so whatever activities that a team can do, and sometimes it’s based upon the group of people that you have in front of you too, because we all work with different types of people. But whatever you can do to loosen that room up, whatever you can do to get them not thinking about the fact that you really need to come out of there with some good work. But we work in sports. It’s got to be fun. It’s got to be exciting. It’s got to be something that when you leave, you almost have stories to tell other people about how much fun you had in that session. But just that reminder to everybody that if you’re not trying to break the ice, if you’re not trying to break the coldness in the room from the get go, then it’s just a meeting. Then it’s just another meeting. You’re just using another meeting space. Your time is no different than corporate talking about their numbers and things like that. We got to be in a different world for everything that we do, because at the end of the day, we have more fun than anybody in sports. I’m still convinced of that.

[1:15:09] Don Costante:

No question. No question.

What Makes an Idea Successful

[1:15:10] Chad Folkestad:

Yeah.

[1:15:10] Don Costante:

Now, you talked about getting in a room and coming up with that big IDEA. Well, what are the ingredients to a successful IDEA? What stands out to you to identify that that is the IDEA to go forward with?

[1:15:21] Chad Folkestad:

So I think I learned a lot about this from my time at IDEA Conference. And for those listening that haven’t been to IDEA, if you work in sports, it’s something you should really consider. They’ve been a virtual conference the last couple of years because of the pandemic. But just the networking opportunity of being around the most creative people in the world for a week is something really special. But at IDEA, there’s moments where you watch the finalists and you vote and you vote as a big group. And what I’ve noticed is there’s two very specific types of responses you get. And this is from all the peers. This is the feedback that you won’t get from just the standard audience. You’re getting it from people that see this stuff nonstop and do it for a living. And Don, you kind of touched on it earlier. But there’s kind of that emotion where you go, that was really well done. That’s just the quality piece. That’s the execution. That’s all the decisions that went into bringing that IDEA to life. Then there’s this thing that we all kind of have. It’s that, ah, I should have thought of that. You know what I’m talking about? When you see something and you’re like, it’s that you see it and it’s that whole, ah, that was clever. You know, you kind of want to give the person a hug that did it.

[1:16:28] Chad Folkestad:

But at the same time, you kind of want to shake their hand really hard and be like, I could have thought of that. That was really smart. That was clever. Yeah, that sort of, it’s not real animosity. But those two emotions are what I see the most in that room at IDEA Conference. When people are watching the finalists of the best content in all pro sports, you see that, wow, that was really well done. That was really good. And then you’ve got that other piece where it’s like, oh, those guys, that was clever. I think the best IDEA is emote one of those two responses, right? And I know we talked a little bit about smiles and laughs and all those things. But like, yes, there’s great content where you look at it and you go, that was so well done. Wow. They really buttoned that thing up. They really did a good job there. But then there’s that other piece, especially in a brainstorming session where you said, how do you know that you’re onto the good IDEA? I think it’s what I just mentioned. It’s that whole, oh, there it is. If there’s something, it tickles a part of your brain where you’re like, oh, that’s really clever. I think cleverness is the thing that’s easiest to identify when you’re in a brainstorming setting. Because you can kind of check it against all of your experiences and all of the things that you’ve seen.

[1:17:29] Chad Folkestad:

You’re like, oh, I haven’t seen that. Or, oh, that’s an interesting take. I think that that emotion is one of my favorite emotions to experience in the brainstorming session. Because it feels like you’re onto something that you don’t think anyone else has gotten onto. And that sometimes is where some of the best ideas come from.

[1:17:46] Don Costante:

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Now, you’re somebody who comes up with big ideas all the time. You’ve done some outside the box things when you were with the Timberwolves. Coming up with the big ideas is one thing, but getting them approved is another. What is your strategy for pitching those conceptual ideas to leadership that has proven so successful in letting you do these things?

Getting Big Ideas Approved by Leadership

[1:18:06] Chad Folkestad:

Well, I think a lot of it has to do with your leadership, obviously. I’ve known people over the years that have been in organizations where they can’t get anything done. And it has nothing to do with their efforts. It has everything to do with some sort of stopgap in the executive level or even with ownership, right? Sometimes it’s with the operations department. You know, we don’t want our players having fun. I know the Spurs had a little bit of that going on for some time.

[1:18:32] Don Costante:

Oh, we had a lot of that.

[1:18:34] Chad Folkestad:

Yeah. And I’ve heard they’ve lightened up on it a little bit, but everyone’s got their challenges. I wouldn’t say that there is a secret sauce to getting things approved by executives or by the leadership that let sort of the interesting things go out the door. I will say, just like anything else, though, you definitely have to succeed a lot more than you fail. And especially with the weird ideas. There’s a story in terms of like approval and getting trust. There’s a story I’ll never forget. I was reporting to our team president, Chris Wright. Congratulations, Chris. Chris just announced his retirement. Our mascot was pushing for an IDEA for several years, and it was an IDEA involving April Fools with the dancers, but they weren’t going to know about it. So our mascot was going to start messing with their music while they were dancing. And they weren’t going to know about it. And we were going to font on the board. They have no IDEA. And they can’t see the scoreboard. So we’re cutting to the mascot and the mascot’s hitting keys on a keyboard and messing with the track. And I mean, we’re talking cow moves. We’re talking burps. I think there was a fart in there.

[1:19:35] Don Costante:

Oh, my God.

[1:19:35] Chad Folkestad:

And then the music changed again to a different song. And it was the Rick Roll. Never going to give you up. Belch. Belch. I mean, it was vulgar. It was stupid. It was ill-advised. Now, granted, at the table, I could hear bros dying laughing behind me, like just absolutely dying laughing. But in general, it was a pretty cold room. I went into my boss’s office, and he said, don’t ever, ever do anything like that again. And I knew in that moment that I was not going to be able to try anything bizarre for the rest of the season. Like I had just burned that line. So I would say there are situations you can’t control. You can’t control if you’ve got a leader that’s literally not going to let anything weird go out the door. But just really make sure that if you are putting yourself on the line for an IDEA, that it’s one that you have some level of confidence that’s going to work correctly. Something I’ve been very honest with all my bosses about is, and I think you hear our mutual friend John Greco say this all the time. You have to be willing to fail. You have to take things from an approach of being willing to fall on your face a little bit. And I know you have to have leadership for that, but if you’re not coming from that place, all you’re doing is just kind of regurgitating all the things that already happened.

[1:20:47] Chad Folkestad:

And I always try and be honest with my boss. The percent chance, I think, of something succeeding. And like mascots gets, I’ve always said, if you’re doing a good job with your mascot, two out of ten mascots gets their home runs. The next four are solid and get a decent reaction, right? Now we’re at six. Then you get two or three that go lukewarm, not great. And then you got to have one or two out of those ten that absolutely fail. That’s, to me, the secret to like a great mascot program. Because if you’re doing things so safe that you’re not taking that risk of falling on your face, then it’s just stale. You’re not going to have anything new or adventurous or innovative coming out. So for those that are stuck beneath stopgaps that they can’t get through, try and raise that bar just a little bit more with each month or with each season where you try and get away with just a little bit more. I will say, though, Don, I can’t take credit for most of what happened in Minnesota. First of all, half the ideas were not mine. They were with the department and with the staff. But I’ll also say that when your team is not doing very well, which, unfortunately, at my time at the Timberwolves, there was a lot of years, unfortunately, where the team was pretty bad. You really can get away with a lot more because you kind of got to distract people almost.

[1:22:07] Chad Folkestad:

If you’re losing more games than you’re winning at home, especially, you come at the game from a completely different perspective. You almost don’t want your show to be too buttoned up because you got to kind of throw people off a little bit. So I know I kind of just went all over the board there, but I guess I would just say that for us, it was always about making sure that we didn’t do anything that we thought would get us into a ton of trouble. But, you know, if you’ve had a few hits in a row, that’s when you take the bigger risk because you can point back and say, hey, those last three went good, even though this one went bad. So just keep your own personal score as to how you’ve been doing so that if you do fall, you can point back to those successes and say, hey, this is going to happen sometimes.

A Difficult Idea That Became a Major Success

[1:22:47] Don Costante:

Talk about an IDEA that was hard to get approved that ended up being extremely successful.

[1:22:54] Chad Folkestad:

Yeah. One that really jumps out to me actually was when the team was going to be changing its logo for the first time in, I think it was 18 years. The team was completely rebranding and they had been working on this logo adoption behind the scenes for, you know, how it is in sports. It takes like two years to get your logo changed. So this had been kept a secret. And so the unveiling of the logo was a really, really important thing to the organization. We were not having a good season and there was not a lot of interest in the team. And the decision was made that we’re going to unveil it at halftime of fan appreciation night. And that’ll be the first time people can see it. It was a good marketing plan, but how are we going to unveil it? And I had wanted to work with some of our local hip hop talent for a long time on a project, but I couldn’t find the right one. And I worked with one of my friends, Mike Amundsen in marketing. He’s at Stanford now. Him and I really combined forces to try and come up with a really great narrative that maybe we could tell the story of the franchise through these hip hop artists. At the time, I had not seen this done very much. I’d seen something similar on a lot of Nike commercials. You know, Common would rap something about like the history of Michael Jordan or whatever, but I’d never seen it done in sort of this way.

[1:24:04] Chad Folkestad:

And so we wrote a script. We pitched it to the artists. The artists were in, but the executive team was a little bit concerned about tying this huge moment so much to hip hop and to maybe people that the crowd didn’t know all that well. And I shouldn’t say it definitely wasn’t the entire executive team. My bosses were actually very supportive of the IDEA from the get go. But there were some people in the room that were really concerned and asking a lot of questions. And, you know, I even heard somebody say, shouldn’t we just bring it out on an A stand and just have somebody pull back the drape? And there’s the logo. So what I had to do, Don, and this is one of the most sort of high and low points of my entire career. My boss at the time said, can you give us a proof of it? And I said, OK. So I went in all weekend and I recorded the parts of myself doing an impression of these guys. And I used nothing but stock footage and stock images. And I put the whole four and a half minute piece together. And I mean, those of us that edit, I mean, four and a half minutes is really long. And so I had to do the music cut with the music that we were to purchase. I had to pretend to be these guys so that these execs wouldn’t hear this and think it was me. Right. So I had to do like sort of impressions.

[1:25:17] Chad Folkestad:

And I worked so hard on that. And I will tell you, there is a cut that exists that I’ve hidden somewhere. But I showed it to the entire executive team. And this was sort of my moment to either drop the mic and go work on it or have to pivot to something that we were not very excited about. And at this point, Don, we had less than two weeks until the unveil and we hadn’t shot anything.

[1:25:38] Don Costante:

Wow.

[1:25:39] Chad Folkestad:

And I showed it to the execs and the music was the same. The script was basically the same. And when that got done, the exec said, that’s going to work. And I literally left the room and I called my producers and I said, we’re shooting tomorrow morning. Let’s do the sunrise. And we jumped into production for two straight weeks. And to this day, it’s called the new era. The logo unveiled. I think it’s still on YouTube, but it’s a piece that really went through a lot of adversity. And there was not a lot of faith behind it until we at least made that cut. But we really didn’t feel like we nailed it perfectly until we were done with it. And it’s one of those we’ve all been through, Don, where you’re in the editing suite and you’re rendering as the doors are open for the event. You’re skipping soundcheck. It was one of those. But I just think the most important thing, circling back to what I was saying about getting approval with these types of things, is to make sure that you really truly believe in that vision. And if you can explain the whole concept in less than 20 seconds, then it’s probably a pretty good IDEA if you can get someone’s head wrapped around it. It’s important to recognize that sometimes the resistance to an IDEA is not because you work with a bunch of stuffed shirts that don’t like to try anything new.

[1:26:51] Chad Folkestad:

But sometimes it’s the magnitude of the moment. And the moment is so big that we should all be willing to be picked apart and prodded a little bit on some of these things. Because while we want to shoot from the hip all the time, there are those moments where it’s like, hey, this is a really big deal. And I got confidence I can do it, but I got to show them exactly what we’re doing. And that’s why animatics are huge. It’s why storyboarding is huge. Because everyone, especially the decision makers who you are responsible to represent, they need to have an understanding of exactly what they’re buying into because it represents them just as much as the franchise and the fans. You know what I mean?

[1:27:26] Don Costante:

I do.

[1:27:26] Chad Folkestad:

That’s awesome. Yeah.

[1:27:27] Don Costante:

What an incredible amount of work to end with something that ended up being so successful. That’s awesome.

[1:27:33] Chad Folkestad:

Yeah.

New Challenges with the Arizona Coyotes

[1:27:33] Don Costante:

Is there something that you’ve never done before or maybe new technology that you’ve been wanting to try that you’re planning on incorporating into the Coyotes presentation either in pregame or in game? And if so, what is it?

[1:27:45] Chad Folkestad:

Yeah. I don’t know if I would say anything technology-wise that I’m necessarily excited to incorporate this year. I think what I’m most excited about is kind of the reason why I felt like this was a great opportunity for me is the unknown. We did have a 24-game season last year. I think it was 24. But it was extremely limiting, even though we had a crowd, our host, our mascot, our DJ, everyone had to stay inside of this suite because we didn’t really have the concourse space to social distance. So I really got sort of a nice test run at how hockey works. I realized when I got there at my first rehearsal that I was the person that has to hit the goal horn. And I posted it on social media and all my hockey friends, they piled on and they said, oh, you’ll be fine. And Erin from Vegas, she said, as long as you don’t hit it early, you’re fine. You can always be late. But I think I’m just really excited to just mix it up a little bit now that I know a little bit more than I did. I’m excited to hopefully bring some different perspectives. There’s some really talented people that are already here and we’re bringing in some more people. I’m just excited for a new challenge. And I know that that’s not as exciting as, oh, we got this great state of the art technology coming in. But I think there’s a lot of things that I’m kind of obsessed with that I didn’t really get to play with last year just due to like pandemic type stuff.

[1:29:02] Chad Folkestad:

And I’m really, really excited to start getting more creative again because the creativity we had to use in the pandemic was less about the types of creativity that we all like. It was more about how do we get this done? How do we execute this sponsorship as opposed to how do we make the most engaging experience? There were so many limitations that we had to sort of think about things differently the last couple of years. And I think we’re all looking forward to just sort of turning that key, starting the engine up and going back in full bore without those restrictions.

Final Thoughts for Sports Creatives

[1:29:34] Don Costante:

So we’ve talked storytelling. We’ve talked about the creative process. That leads me to my final question of the day. For those that are listening to today’s discussion, what are your final thoughts?

[1:29:44] Chad Folkestad:

Wow. I mean, it’s a really exciting time to be in professional sports. And I hope that I’m not repeating any of my sort of ramblings earlier, but we just live in such an unbelievable time where you can access things so quickly. You can collaborate with people so quickly. I feel like people are more connected now than ever. There was a time where, yeah, you’d exchange some emails or whatever, but you really felt like when you got to league meetings that you didn’t talk to those people at all for like the last year. And because everyone is so connected now, there’s just this exciting pool of creatives. The sports creative community that Matt Desmond was one of the people that started that up. Thousands of people involved in that group. And they’re on Clubhouse all the time. There’s a lot of young talent there. People that are just hungry to get into sports. And what I would say to people that are listening that are maybe still on their early parts of their journey is take advantage of that. Take advantage of the ability to connect with people so easily. Some of my most valuable conversations that I’ve had with people that are trying to figure some things out for themselves have been people just reaching out to me randomly on LinkedIn to ask me a question. And I won’t out the person, but I ended up hiring one of those people down the line.

[1:30:58] Don Costante:

That’s awesome.

[1:30:58] Chad Folkestad:

And so the fact that we can be so connected and that we can access each other’s stuff so much, if you’re getting into the industry and you’re really excited about being a part of all of these amazing things, everyone’s obviously got to pay their dues. But you have such a wealth of information available. No matter what your age is, no matter what your experience level is, it’s a really awesome time to be a content creator and to be somebody that gets to put on live experiences. I’d also say that all the sports have really caught on now. I feel like the NBA was ahead of the curve a little bit.

[1:31:30] Don Costante:

Would you agree, Don? I would.

[1:31:31] Chad Folkestad:

In terms of like, yeah. And that’s not because the other teams were ignorant of it, but I think as crowds have gotten a little bit older, a little bit wiser, and the young crowd is coming up, some of the legacy, majesty, mystique of these sports isn’t holding as much water with the young people. And I think you’re seeing teams reacting to that in huge fashion across all pro sports. And you’d be hard-pressed to find a game ops department with more than one or two, three people in it in the early 2000s. Now you’re finding departments that have eight people dedicated to the game experience, 10 people dedicated to the game experience. And it’s what I touched on at the very beginning, and I think it’s appropriate that I end with it. Our craft has never been taken more seriously. The storytelling that we do, the attention to detail that we put into things has never been more valued if you average it across all pro sports teams and all sports. And with that said, there’s more opportunities than ever. There’s more jobs than ever. It used to be one or two people, and if you don’t have one of those two jobs, you’re not getting into that organization. So I would just say that I’m just excited to be a part of it at this point. I don’t think I would have done things any differently. I don’t think I would have wanted to necessarily come up in a different time.

[1:32:45] Chad Folkestad:

But I’ve just never seen a group of creatives, and that group is gigantic. It’s thousands of people. I’ve never seen a group so connected on a daily basis because of all of the great technological advances that we have. And I’ll even point to on the NBA side a couple years ago, they started airing the timeouts on League Pass. And you think about that, Don, if in the earlier days for both of us, we would have had access to every time out live.

[1:33:15] Don Costante:

Yeah.

[1:33:15] Chad Folkestad:

I mean, what that would do to our brains and what that would do to our processes. I mean, it’s a bit cliche what I’m saying, but it’s a really great time to be a sports creative and to be in this entertainment industry. And I honestly, regardless of where I’m at, regardless of what franchise I’m working for, every single day, I just feel so privileged to be a part of this industry and to have been inspired and pushed and pulled by some of the most talented people I’ve ever met and that I consider so many of them to be such close friends. I just feel really, really blessed to be a part of it. And if you get to work in entertainment, if you get to work in pro sports, it does get tough at times. But, man, we got a pretty great life. We get to make people smile and make people have experiences for a living. And as a creative, there’s nothing better.

[1:34:03] Don Costante:

Right. Well said. You know what, Chad? I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to share your thoughts and experience. I know I’ve enjoyed learning more about your thought process for storytelling and creativity. Thanks, Chad. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.

[1:34:17] Chad Folkestad:

Don, it’s really been a pleasure. And as I said at the start, the people that you’ve had on your podcast are all people that I have such tremendous respect for. I’m lucky to call some of them really good friends. I’m talking to a legend right now. You’re just one of the most experienced and talented people that I’ve ever worked with. The fact that you’re giving people this outlet in this industry and this ability to tune in and hear from all of these people is such an invaluable thing. And I can’t thank you enough for having me be a part of it. I’m completely honored. I got to say one more time, man. You had such a huge impact on my early career, taking me under your wing and teaching me the ropes and wanting me to be a part of your productions and your shows. I’ll never be able to thank you enough for that. I would not be where I am today had it not been for you having such a giving heart and being someone that wants others to succeed. And I’ll never forget that, dude. We’re always going to have that no matter how many more times we’ve talked.

Don Costante’s Key Takeaways

[1:35:15] Don Costante:

What can I say? Chad’s approach to storytelling, along with the creative process he utilizes to develop content, has proven to be very successful. If there are only two things you take away from the information that Chad provided, first is that you must bring fun into the equation during the creative process. And secondly, you need to take risk. You can’t be risk-averse and afraid to fail. If you’re only doing things that are safe and you’re not willing to risk, your content potentially could come across as stale to those consuming it. Let’s face it. Creativity has inherent risk built into it. So don’t be afraid to fail. Now, we covered a lot of material in our conversation today. Here are some additional points that stood out to me. First, Chad’s event presentation philosophy illustrates just why he’s considered one of the best. His obsession with details, paying attention to sights, sounds, and even smells is truly what separates him from others. That’s the difference between being mediocre and great. Next, when I asked Chad about the ingredients for a great story, he mentioned three important points. First, you want people to feel emotion. And in most cases, that’s either laugh or smile. Second, it’s important to grab your audience’s attention at the beginning. If they’re not feeling what you’re showing in the first 10 seconds, they’re going to go to their phones.

[1:36:40] Don Costante:

And third, the story that you’re telling needs to be something worthy of their attention and engagement. It needs to be something they want to hear. Another point that stood out to me was during our discussion on the techniques he utilizes to help ensure success and likability with the fans. I loved his advice. He said, ask people outside your area for their opinions, especially on large projects. This means getting different age groups, backgrounds, and styles of people involved. That’s great advice. Getting different perspectives from others outside your traditional circle can certainly open your eyes to potential downfalls and ultimately improve the success of your content being consumed. And finally, as we discussed his IDEA of the creative process, Chad made a couple of great points. First, people participating must be allowed to be unhinged and free to throw out anything. This is so important. And second, there are going to be bad ideas. But the ideas that start off terrible can be massaged into something great with collaboration with others. After all, what did Chad say? Some of the best ideas come from bad ideas. Now, I could go on, but those are just some of the highlights from our discussion that resonated with me. As always, I hope you found the information covered beneficial.

[1:37:58] Don Costante:

I want to thank Chad again for being on the podcast and for sharing his thoughts and best practices with all of us. Well, that wraps up this episode of The Rundown. As always, I encourage you to reach out to me and share your thoughts and or questions and send them to [email protected]Email The Rundown. That’s [email protected]Email The Rundown. Also, I would really appreciate it if you would subscribe and share this podcast and follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram. And until the next time, I’m Don Costante.