Paras Shah (left) and Andrew Anson of The Spark Plug Tournament. Photo courtesy of The Spark Plug Tournament.
Andrew Anson quickly involved himself in Long Beach’s business community after living here on and off for the past fifteen years. He helped start Beers & Politics, a nonpartisan event designed to generate active discussion over pints; he sits on multiple boards throughout the city; he even tried to start a “40 Under 40” event, only to eventually be recognized as one of the Post‘s own 40 Under 40.
“I got married, bought a house, made my roots here in Long Beach,” Anson says. “I simply love Long Beach.”
Anson, however, noticed an overwhelming amount of news that was focused on the failure of businesses—particularly small one—and decided to create The Spark Plug Tournament, an event that empowers ideas in a uniquely social competitive setting.
“I wanted to remind people that through ingenuity, we can get out of this,” he says. “This model of the Spark Plug is an amalgam of a number of models: your mixer model, your speed networking model, your elevator pitch model… So we created a live event where you get the chance to meet with nine other people to mold and sell your pitch.”
The aim is simple—to give someone the chance to score a month-long advertising campaign. And its accompanying path to such an end (the poly-model Anson speaks of) is a bit more set around amusement, specifically a game revolving around all these professional-development concepts.
The basic principle of connecting with new people remains, except you meet and compete instead of being relegated to chit-chat alone. As Paras Shah, the other creative half behind the event, puts it: “It’s more entertaining than a mixer and more efficient than a networking event.”
The Spark Plug Tournament starts with a Speed Round in groups of ten. From this group, a finalist is chosen to make their pitch to the entire audience. Anson and Shah are limiting this Tournament to 100 competitors which produces 10 videos. The crowd favorite earns an ad campaign based on their winning pitch. The campaign prize includes broadcasting the winning pitch via online advertising 35,000 times, news releases, social media marketing and traditional media marketing.
Tournaments are on the last Friday of the month with this month featuring Dirk Sampselle of B Revolution and Rob Bikel of Pepperdine University offering a 5 minute presentation and 10 minute Q&A on B Corporations.
For more information, visit www.sparkplugtournament.com. 40 Under 40ers will receive a 15% discount when registering.