Today we’d like to introduce you to Bryan Delgado
Hi Bryan, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Rally Department was founded in July 2022 by two cousins, Bryan Delgado and Owen Lindsey, who had an extensive career in the sports marketing industry before deciding to go out on our own. We both realized that in our previous stops, conventual marketing agencies were filled with creative people but just didn’t have the experience to provide the most valuable to the niche market that is sports. Sports has its own cadence, vocabulary and nuances, and our combined experiences at the collegiate, PGA TOUR, NBA, MLB and agency level made us uniquely qualified to create a new business in this space.
Rally Department is a creative focused marketing agency. We specialize in creative concepts and ideas, and translate those for our clients through video production, graphic design, traditional marketing campaigns and experiential activations. In 2.5 years we have grown quickly to 8 full time employees and worked with large brands including H-E-B (official sports activation agency), the San Antonio Spurs, TCU athletics, OU athletics, The American Athletic Conference, the NCAA and more. Our difference is that every person on our team has a deep background working in and around the sports industry, serving our clients with best in class insight and creativity.
Recently we won an RFP to serve as the official sports marketing partner of the Arlington Sports Commission, providing strategic communication and marketing services.
Bryan Delgado grew up in Richardson, attended the University of Oklahoma in undergrad, then went to graduate school at Ohio University. Before Rally Department he worked around DFW at the Byron Nelson Championship, the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic and at ESPN Events producing the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl and the First Responders Bowl. He jumped to the Agency side of the business in 2017 at The Marketing Arm managing the collegiate sponsorship portfolio and the College Football Playoff account.
Owen Lindsey grew up in San Antonio, attended SMU for undergrad where he walked onto the football team, then worked for The Marketing Arm in Dallas on the Anheuser-Busch and Frito Lay accounts. He then returned to San Antonio and worked for the San Antonio Spurs where he concepted and designed three Nike City Edition jerseys and a complementary thematic home court layout, developed secondary and alternate logos for the official San Antonio Spurs branding toolkit and was recognized in AdWeek for the 2019-2020 schedule release campaign. Most recently he was an Art Director with the Baltimore Orioles managing their creative campaigns including City Connect campaign and all in-venue art direction and development.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
We’ve hit many of the challenges that every start up has to deal with. When we first launched, the first hurdle was to sell ourselves to clients and prove we could do the job. It took a few months until we had steady work, but our connections in the industry led to a number of opportunities.
We decided to start up without seeking any funding or investors, so our growth has been completely organic. That has meant challenging period managing cash flow, but we’ve been fortunate at having a number of really smart people around us to help guide as through those periods.
We have team members in Fort Worth, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, Houston and Kansas City. Being remote as we started allowed us to bring on creative talent across the country. We spend a lot of time on Google Meet so we have a good bond and culture on the team, but we also try and find key moments throughout the year to bring everyone together for the bonding you can only get by being in person.
Moving forward we are going to invest in an office space for those who want to come in, but with our client work being all over the country the flexibility for us to be able to move quickly is key.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
We are unique among creative agencies in that we specialize in the sports industry. Our clients span the industry, from professional teams to collegiate athletic departments, and brands that use sports as a vehicle for marketing. Everyone on our team has previous experience working in sports on the team or event side, so we have an intimate knowledge of our client worlds. We are able to immediately jump into any project with a base knowledge of the issue and the true goals of each campaign.
Our team is most proud of our creativity. Owen Lindsey is the best in the business in his creative ideas and design. He and the creative team work tirelessly to make sure every project has been thoroughly researched and thought through to where it is the absolute best and most impactful it can be. We believe that the big idea sets the stage for everything, and without it no design or experience can truly accomplish our clients goals. We put a lot of weight on the “why” we are doing something.
The creative team is exceptionally skilled at video production, including concepting, scriptwriting and production. In August, we won our first Lone Star Sports Emmy Award and have a number of other projects that have been nominated for awards. This upcoming year we will be working with H-E-B across their stores to bring our activation ideas to life, at Rodeo’s across the state to bring their brand message to customers, then at a full schedule of all the sports teams that H-E-B serves as a sponsor. It’s been incredible to have them be our first flagship brand, one that every Texan knows and loves. Especially as they are expanding into the DFW area.
We are also going to be producing and managing a number of Championship experiential events, including the American Conference Football Championship Village (Fan Zone) and their Basketball Championship Hoops Village in March.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
The biggest advice we would give to people starting out is to have a very clear understanding of who you are and who your serve. Being able to communicate that value proposition, then executing, allowed us to quickly show our value and generate new opportunities.
Too many fall into the trap of trying to be everything to everyone, and as a small business you’ll quickly get lost and bogged down in projects you either aren’t the best at or aren’t passionate about. There’s more than enough room for talented people to flourish in what they do best, you can’t have a scarcity mindset and say yes to everything on the first day.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.rallydept.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rallydept/
Image Credits
Courtesy of Rally Department, The San Antonio Spurs and Vail Resorts.
