1. Zac Logsdon, CEO of Old Hat Creative, Author
Farrell Sports Business Podcast
Interviews with unicorns from sports business and their unique stories, dreams, ideas, insights, innovations, flops and career paths. Get a unique perspective of the inner workings of jobs working in sports beyond just pro sports leagues. Hosted by 30-year sports business veteran Matt Farrell, President of Farrell Sports and CEO of Bat Around.
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Farrell Sports Business (00:00)
Welcome to the Farrell Sports Business podcast, where I talk to unique and interesting people around the world of sports business. I call them unicorns because they're all unique and have their own story. I'm host Matt Farrell, president of Farrell Sports based in Colorado Springs.
My guest today is Zac Logsdon. He's the CEO and founder of Old Hat Creative in Norman, Oklahoma. He's also the CMO of the Oklahoma City Spark softball team and just one of the most creative and prolific people I know. Creatively, he's an author and just all around fun person. I think you'll enjoy this one.
Farrell Sports (00:55)
Hey, Zac welcome. Glad you could make it.
Zac Logsdon (00:57)
Thanks for having me, Matt.
Farrell Sports (00:59)
So what's the elevator pitch of what Old Hat hat does?
Zac Logsdon (01:05)
Old Hat is a sports marketing creative agency. We do graphic design, video production, web development, consulting for primarily professional and college collegiate sports programs, all aimed at one of two things, either driving attendance to events or entertaining and engaging fans once they are at those events.
Farrell Sports (01:27)
if you're gonna name drop a few clients.
Zac Logsdon (01:29)
I'm happy to do so. When we started 20 years ago, University of Michigan was our first client. Florida State, Syracuse, North Carolina, Oklahoma were some of those early ones. And since that time, we've actually worked with more than 200 sports organizations. So it's really more, it'd probably be easier to list those we have not worked with than those that we have.
Farrell Sports (01:53)
So we're gonna get in today, I wanna talk about your own career and really dive into maybe where some ideas come from. But you're essentially in the idea business and I wanna learn a lot about that. Is that a rush, is that a stress of really being in the idea business?
Zac Logsdon (02:06)
Mm -hmm.
Yes, the answer to that. Both of those is yes. It creates some anxiety, a lot of imposter syndrome at times, thinking, why are these people asking me? But like I said, 20 years we've been doing this and when we continue to come up with good ideas, I guess, because the clients keep coming back, there are always new challenges for sure. Always new technologies, always new...
you know, shining new objects to utilize to try to engage fans and drive attendance. But ultimately it comes back to delivering a well thought out, well researched, well developed message. And I think that's where we've kind of excelled. We have a pretty strict process we take clients through to build a foundation upon which the ideas are formed.
once we have that foundation, the ideas kind of flow pretty quickly and easily. It's more that initial phase of, what if this is the time we don't come up with good ideas? And if I'm being honest, it has yet to happen. Yeah, yeah.
Farrell Sports (03:30)
That's a good problem to have. So you literally just this year celebrated 20 years for Old Hat. So go back to the early 2000s, 2004. You're sitting there working in the University of Oklahoma Athletic Department. What was going through your head? What made you make the jump? Why the leap then? And what was the thought process?
Zac Logsdon (03:38)
correct.
Yeah, you know, I when I was a kid and growing up through high school through college, you know, people say, what do you want to be when you grow up? I was never a doctor, all your baseball players. I wanted to own my own business. Both my parents were entrepreneurs. My father, almost serial entrepreneur, just was always had his hand in new things. And that's what I grew up knowing. That's what I grew up knowing I wanted to do.
I was just kind of biding my time in a couple jobs after college, figuring out what business I wanted to start. And so working at Oklahoma, I did that for three years, knew I didn't want to rise through the ranks to become an athletic director or any senior level administrator. And I reached the window or the ceiling of opportunity as a graphic designer pretty quickly. Knew I wasn't going to be deputy athletic director of graphic design, you know.
That doesn't exist. So, it's fine. So anyway, I saw over my three years at OU, I saw, back then, nobody had in -house creative resources on the college level. I mean, nobody. There was no such thing as a sports design community, whereas now there are hundreds of people in the sports design community. But back then there wasn't. And so all of these colleges were going to their local print shop or some local freelance designer to get their stuff done. And I thought, well,
I think I can create a company that specializes in this niche. And so we launched February 2004, and hung a Shingle put some marketing materials out there, and those universities that I just listed were our first five. And growth, there are many, many problems that come along with owning a business. Growth was not our problem, at least initially, for sure. We grew very rapidly.
Farrell Sports (05:51)
So as you step back and look at those 20 years, anything stand out as the bust down the locker room doors excited phase or the scared shitless phase of in those 20 years?
Zac Logsdon (06:06)
Again, yes. Daily, both of those things almost. Because you add clients and immediately your workload, you have your list of clients and you add one more and your workload increases, but you don't have the staff necessarily to facilitate that. What we sell is time. In order to create a poster,
We're not actually selling the poster or the video or the animation. We're selling the time it takes to put that together. So lots of stresses come along with that. I will tell you, early days it was really exciting. We just kept adding clients and we'd get some new contract from Mobile City Thunder or Georgetown or these organizations that you're like, you never think you'd have...
the possibility of working with and now they're calling you asking for the opportunity to work with you. And it was really exciting in those early days from, really for the first decade, we were just having a great time. And then without fail, as businesses do, you kind of encountered some tough times in the mid teens, 2000, what do you call those, the 2000 teens? Okay. And...
Farrell Sports (07:26)
What the?
Zac Logsdon (07:30)
Definitely you had some times where the stress was overwhelming and I've told this story many times there there was there was a handful of times where I was literally literally hovering over a trash can Almost a vomit because I didn't know how I was gonna make payroll you know I it was you have this staff of people all that rely on you to to make sure they have food on the table and Sometimes the money's not there or you know clients slow paying or
Farrell Sports (07:47)
Wow.
Zac Logsdon (07:58)
You just any number of reasons, you know, and going to the bank and saying, hey, can I borrow money to make payroll? And, you know, it's so it's been there have been periods of time that were just, you know, almost like we won the frickin lottery, man. This is this we were just, you know, up and to the right. And everything was great and golden. Everything we touched was gold. And then times where we just couldn't seem to get anything right. And business was not.
not so great. So, but as you mentioned, 20 years, we made it. We made it.
Farrell Sports (08:34)
Well, you're obviously still killing it. And just getting to know you over the last few years, I would say your personal brand is one of humor and fun and don't take yourself too seriously professionally. What are some of the more off the wall things that you've done in those 20 years?
Zac Logsdon (08:56)
my god. I would hardly even know where to start, Matt. We established as our official, because we work in sports, we have kind of our alter ego, the Old Hat University. And Old Hat University, the mascot is the fighting gnomes. And there's a whole story behind that that I won't bore you with, but that's something we've...
we've really leaned into is that we're the fighting gnomes of Old Hat University and we sell gnomes, t -shirts and all that kind of stuff or send them for free to our clients is a fun thing to do. We used to do something called humiliation as a fundraiser for a local philanthropy where we would take donations and list the humiliating things we would do for those donations.
and my mind was running down Main Street of Norman, Oklahoma in a speedo, swim fins and floaties screaming, where's the pool? And so here I was back in, what, 2010 -ish, running down Main Street of Norman, pretty much naked, you know, in a tight little speedo, humiliating myself for the sake of donations. The list is, I mean, I'm the...
Farrell Sports (09:56)
I didn't know that.
Well, the internet doesn't forget, so I know there's Robert Palmer videos out there. There's something I've heard about a world record attempt.
Zac Logsdon (10:25)
No.
We.
Yep. We, we, we, for a period of time, we would remake classic music videos frame by frame using us instead of the other. And people are like, why'd you do that? I don't know. Just seemed like a fun thing to do. And, and you're, I am the world record holder for the most divisional in college campuses upon which someone has been photographed drinking and diet Dr. Pepper. So it's, it's, it's, it's at 111, 111 college campuses.
Farrell Sports (10:56)
Look it up. Yeah.
Zac Logsdon (11:01)
I've been photographed drinking and Diet Dr. Pepper.
Farrell Sports (11:03)
my gosh, so good. Well, I'm fascinated by ideas and where they come from and the origin. And I know it's a fairly broad topic, but are there, looking at those 20 years, are there any instances you look at of like, that's one of the ideas professionally I'm just the most proud of?
Zac Logsdon (11:34)
So a lot of the idea.
the ideas, you know, we're generating ideas both for ourselves to increase revenue and increase business for ourselves. We're also generating ideas to do so for our clients, sell more tickets and things like that. So as you asked that question, I was in my mind, I was bouncing between ideas that we came up with for ourselves, which, you know, we would generate, we would come up with new, you know, web functionalities or apps or things that people, that our clients could use to help engage fans.
and then also being contracted by those clients to say, hey, how do we get more fans in the seats? I think as you asked the question, the instance that comes to mind is two -part because we failed.
And then we used that failure to come up with some really great stuff. And that comes back to a contract we had with SMU, Southern Methodist, down in Dallas. And they engaged us initially. They just said, we need some creative, come up with an idea. And we didn't go through the process of really learning who their fan base was, what their community was like. It was just a, they just wanted some posters. And so we came up with an idea that was based around
you know, an upper echelon, Abercrombie and Fitch, you know, high society look, because that's a lot of what their fan base was, and it was fine, but it didn't move the needle. We then went back and convinced them to let us really do a lot of research, and as I mentioned earlier, build that foundation upon which the ideas could be built.
We did that, we learned their community, we learned their fan base, we learned a lot about SMU and the most likely attendees to SMU football and basketball games and learned that we were way off with the first campaign we came up with. Developed something new, really focused on engaging the community through just a different approach and it was extraordinarily successful. It moved the revenue needle quite a bit and it was, you know, it's hard in
sports as you know Matt to gauge too much off your marketing if the team's bad or good. Because you might have a huge spike in ticket sales, but it might coincide with your team being better than they've been in 10 years. You wouldn't know anything about that being an Arkansas guy, but the, no just pointing out that.
Farrell Sports (14:12)
Here we go, here we go. Took 13 minutes, but we got there.
Zac Logsdon (14:17)
I'm just pointing out that Arkansas hasn't had that issue of having really good teams or really hasn't had the issue of having good teams. So, but back to my point, SMU did not have a stellar season yet still.
Farrell Sports (14:26)
Perennial powerhouse, we can move on. I got it. I get what you're trying to say.
Zac Logsdon (14:37)
In fact, they had a worse season that year than the previous and attendance still increased. So that was one of those times where we could say, okay, we got it right. The marketing was good. The ideas were good. Otherwise, it would really, there was no other correlation, no other line to draw to kind of point toward an increase in revenue considering all the other factors that usually play into it.
Farrell Sports (15:00)
You know, I sometimes think about the idea process and it's hard. You're always trying to come up with something and I always have this vision of, you know, eleven in Stranger Things where you use all of your energy to move things and then after you, a little blood comes out of your nose after you... But what about the hard times when the idea isn't coming so quickly, so easily? Do you...
Zac Logsdon (15:14)
And then mostly, sure, sure.
Farrell Sports (15:29)
How do you address ruts? Do you have any type of a process that you try to go back to to kind of keep at the grind?
Zac Logsdon (15:37)
No, Matt, I'm just really good all the time. Of course. No, of course, it happens all the time. But back in the early days when I was designing on eight hours a day or more, and I don't do as much design these days, but back when I was kind of our only designer.
Farrell Sports (15:41)
That's...
Zac Logsdon (15:57)
It would happen all the time. You're trying to come up with a new poster design. You've done 100 already that year. You have another one to do. And it's an 18 inch by 24 inch space with athletes and logos. And it's kind of hard to continue to come up with a different way to present that. Back then, I found that inevitably if I just...
paused, went home and slept, I would frequently dream. I would have dreams about a way to craft that. And I'd wake up and it would be there. And I'd go and I'd try it and it would work. These days, aside from the design, it's really the same process. You face an issue, you're stuck, you can't come up with a solution.
Farrell Sports (16:30)
Yeah.
Zac Logsdon (16:48)
and then it comes to you when you're in your sleep or in the shower when you least expect it as something to do. You know, on the topic of increasing business for us, in the early days we did a ton of...
direct mail, postcards, things like that, getting actual physical things in the hands of people, and then the advent of email marketing and social media marketing, and we transitioned fully over to that. And then this year, we thought, you know what, what if we did a magazine? It was an educational piece that also showed off our work, and I feel like we're almost getting back into the nostalgia of people wanting to hold something in their hands.
Farrell Sports (17:35)
That's interesting. The pendulum almost went too far.
Zac Logsdon (17:35)
Because, I mean, how many email solicitations do you get every day? Yeah, and you read none of them.
Farrell Sports (17:43)
dozens. Minimum.
Zac Logsdon (17:47)
So, you know, we're sending out emails and the readership is not great and we put stuff on social and it's just a whole lot of digital noise. All this content that's being thrown at you constantly and you tune it out. Well, okay, so the idea was let's approach them a different way and see if a hard copy of a magazine in your hands resonates with our audience. So we
received those actually just yesterday and mailing them out next week. So they'll be in the hands of every Division I athletic director, men's basketball coach, and football coach in the nation. So we'll see what happens there.
Farrell Sports (18:28)
Well, I hope it goes well. I'm looking forward to mine. You know, I mean, one last one on that topic and then I want to move to maybe just some quick hits. But I would say that sometimes when you're grinding for that idea, the moment you get it is like there's a rush like nothing else. And what some people actually might perceive that to be impulsive. I've got this idea. Let's go. But you might have been...
Zac Logsdon (18:31)
Yeah, thank you.
Farrell Sports (18:58)
spend days or weeks on it and then it all just crystallizes and you're like boom I've got it let's go.
Zac Logsdon (19:06)
Yeah, and that was how the magazine was. When we actually committed to doing it, it took about two weeks to put together, but it took about six months or eight months to convince ourselves to do it. And so it was last fall that I kind of hatched the idea and you kick around, I don't know, and then you start, you talk to your staff and say, I don't know. And then finally like, hey, we need to shit or get off the pot. And...
Farrell Sports (19:20)
It's a good example.
Zac Logsdon (19:36)
we decided to shit. And we built it, I mean literally less than a month ago that we commit to this and now they're in hand and ready to mail.
Farrell Sports (19:38)
You
I love it. I love it. Okay, so getting toward the end, I want to do just like some quick hits. So maybe just to put it in maybe terms you understand.
Zac Logsdon (19:57)
Mm -hmm.
Farrell Sports (20:03)
Think the Dr. Pepper halftime challenge. You're trying to, whether you throw it over your, you know, overhand or chest pass, I don't really care, but like get the ball out as fast as you can on just a few quick hits. Some of them are easy. We're just gonna warm you up a little bit because I think a lot of...
Zac Logsdon (20:13)
Okay.
Okay, understood. Understood. Got it. Okay.
Farrell Sports (20:24)
Students and young people are fascinated by how people got their careers working in sports. And so the basics, what was your school and major?
Zac Logsdon (20:38)
University of Oklahoma, my degree is in journalism slash marketing. Or no, sorry. That's how much I value my degree. It's advertising, not marketing. Journalism slash advertising.
Farrell Sports (20:48)
What was your GPA? wow, you remember that. All right. What was, we talked a little bit about OU, first job in sports. And how did you get it maybe?
Zac Logsdon (20:53)
3 .8. Yeah, it do.
First, so this isn't, I can't do this as a quick hit, Matt. You need this story, okay? You need this story.
Farrell Sports (21:08)
Hahaha.
Zac Logsdon (21:10)
I was walking by my boss's desk, working at an ad agency, and my boss said, Zac, call down to OU and get the logo for this presentation we're doing. This is before you could just get on Google and download a logo. So I called down to OU, just the main line, get transferred around 100 different places, and finally end up with the graphic designer at OU Athletics, who was a part -time employee. He emails me the logo. I say, hey, I would love to have a job like that if you have an opening or if you ever leave.
Farrell Sports (21:11)
I'll allow it.
Zac Logsdon (21:40)
let me know. He, six months later, he emailed me and said, hey, today's my last day, here's the link to apply for my job if you're interested. And they had made it a full -time job and I applied and I got the job and 23 years later I'm sitting here having spent my entire career in sports creative. The reason I like to tell that story, I always tell that story to students because I said you never know that moment that is going to change the...
trajectory of your life, your career, and if I hadn't been walking by my boss's desk at that moment, she could have asked anybody. I mean, it was a hundred plus person agency. She could have asked anybody to do that. I was walking by, she asked me, and that moment is why I'm talking to you.
Farrell Sports (22:27)
So networking, got it.
Zac Logsdon (22:28)
Networking. Yeah.
Farrell Sports (22:31)
professionally speaking, biggest flop.
Zac Logsdon (22:36)
You're looking at it. I came up with an idea to create an apparel company.
that sold t -shirts for universities that don't exist. We have the the West Eastern A&M Aggies, we have East Popcorn State, Directional School, Public State University, I mean the most generic names for schools, Diploma Mills, Gerrymander College, Partizans, and I thought this will really take off. People will think this is funny and they
I think we've maybe sold 20 shirts and 19 of them were to me. So not my best idea, not my best idea.
Farrell Sports (23:20)
so we've all had them. Not to make light of it, but I think it's an example that you take your shots.
Zac Logsdon (23:29)
Listen, I've failed way more than I've succeeded, but I've had fun doing it.
Farrell Sports (23:35)
So in closing a couple quick ones, shameless plug for something else that you might be working on that you just want to mention.
Zac Logsdon (23:47)
I think maybe this magazine if you go to if you go to old hat creative comm slash the playbook the name of the magazine is the playbook You can you can subscribe to either receive a digital or hard copy of the magazine That's something we're pretty proud of Or and and then maybe maybe this is my opportunity to finally make some money off these t -shirts if you go it's it's called
the big faux conference, F -A -U -X as in fake, the big fake conference. So if you go to bigfaux .com, you too can have yourself an East Popcorn State t -shirt.
Farrell Sports (24:27)
I love it. I love it. All right, you get the last shot. Just anything else you wanted to add that excites you, scares you that you're working on, you get the last shot.
Zac Logsdon (24:38)
You know what scares me right now? You ask that question, the first thing that comes to mind is the state of collegiate athletics. You know, we've seen more changes in college sports in the past couple years than ever in the history of the industry. And now they're looking at, they're paying athletes not just NIL money, but actually paying them the way a pro team would. And just the landscape of college sports is changing.
just so drastically, and we all keep saying it's going to look totally different in five years, but it's going to look totally different in five months. And it has looked totally different, you know, with Transfer Portal and NIL. Don't love the direction things are headed, but they're not asking me, so I guess, you know, I don't, my opinion doesn't really matter on it. It just...
When athletic departments are going to start having to pay their athletes, they're going to be paying the athletes that play for teams that generate revenue. And you're going to have, my fear is that massive cuts to staffing and sports. We may be entering a world where gymnastics programs and lacrosse programs and field hockey programs just don't exist anymore, maybe exist on a club level. I don't know. And I can be totally wrong. It just, that's -
my fear. Like all these track programs, can they support that if they're having to pay their football athletes? So that's a fear. That's where I'm at right now.
Farrell Sports (26:09)
No, it's, I mean, just one personal story. I mean, obviously I went to Arkansas, they hired John Calipari as basketball coach, had a roster of zero people. And now you're following Twitter X every day of just buying players, transfer portal or whatever. And the fan avidity for the Razorbacks is still there, but.
I don't even know who I'm cheering for. It's just a bizarre feeling. So.
Zac Logsdon (26:36)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, exact same with OU basketball. We had a decent team this year. All of them are gone. And we'll have a new roster next year. And it's really hard to get behind a team. Seinfeld makes the comment, the joke many, many years ago. You're cheering for laundry. And it's even worse than it's ever been, because every year it's a different lineup of people. You can't count on anybody.
Farrell Sports (27:08)
Well, I appreciate you. Yes, we have occasion to work together, consider you a friend and one of the most creative people I know. And so thanks for joining this and greatly appreciate you, Zac.
Zac Logsdon (27:15)
Thank you.
Well, I appreciate you, Matt. I appreciate the invitation
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