News Release

By JOHN KUKA
School of Journalism and Mass Communication

CHAPEL HILL -- How do sponsorships affect sports communication? Where do sports sponsorships belong in a marketing plan?

Former Bank of America executive M. Dockery Clark will address these questions during a free, public lecture March 29 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Her talk, "Rocket Fuel" -- sponsorship’s ability to boost marketing -- will be at 5:15 p.m. in Carroll Hall auditorium. The speech will be the latest in the Reed Sarratt Distinguished Lecture Series presented by the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Clark, who earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from UNC, joined Bank of America in 1993. As senior vice president and sports marketing and sponsorship executive, she was responsible for developing a strategic direction in sports and event marketing, and for leveraging those activities to build the Bank of America brand.

Clark oversaw contract negotiations and sponsorship activation between the bank and its professional sports league-franchise partners, including the Olympics, the PGA Tour, the NFL, Major League Baseball, the NBA and the NHL. She is known as a win-win deal maker, having negotiated multiyear, multimillion-dollar contracts with virtually every sports and media entity involved in sponsorship.

In 2003, Clark was responsible for securing Annika Sorenstam’s participation in the Bank of America Colonial Golf Tournament. Sorenstam was the first woman in more than 48 years to play in a men’s PGA Tour event. The event generated significant public relations exposure for the bank, resulting in more than 1.2 billion impressions for the brand and more than $21 million in measured media exposure. As a result, Sports Illustrated recently named Clark the No. 5 most powerful woman in the sport of golf.

Before joining Bank of America, she served as sales/marketing manager for World Championship Tennis in New York City; as an event hospitality manager for ICI Americas in Wilmington, Del.; and as an account supervisor for Lintas: Marketing Communications and for Trone Advertising.

In 2003, the Charlotte Business Journal named Clark one of its Top 10 Newsmakers and recognized her with a Top 25 Women in Business Achievement Award. Women in Sports and Events (WISE) named her one of its three 2003 Women of the Year. Other accolades for Clark include being named to the Sports Business Journal’s Top 40 Under 40 list and its Top 25 Women in Sports list.

Clark is on the boards of the Charlotte Sports Commission, the Charlotte chapter of the American Red Cross and SponsorDirect, an on-line sponsorship technology company. She also serves on the executive leadership council for the 2007 Women’s U.S. Open golf tournament, to be played in Pinehurst. She is an active member of the U.S. Tennis Association and an avid golfer.

Begun in 1987, the Reed Sarratt Distinguished Lecture Series brings some of the best and brightest minds in mass communication to the university each year to discuss matters of importance and concern, philosophy and principle.

Reed Sarratt was for many years executive director of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association Foundation and then of SNPA itself. A native of Charlotte and a 1937 graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, he was inducted into the N.C. Journalism Hall of Fame in 1985. He died in 1986 at age 68.

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School contact: Dr. John Sweeney, sports communication professor, 962-4074.

News Services contacts: Print, L.J. Toler, 962-8589; broadcast, Karen Moon, 962-9585