Original Article: Sports Business Journal, February 10th, 2022

Former Subway CMO Tony Pace dies in snowmobile accident

Former Subway CMO TONY PACE died on Tuesday in a snowmobile accident near Big Sky, Mont., after he "struck a tree and went into cardiac arrest," according to Jack Neff of AD AGE. He left Subway in '15 after "nearly a decade" with the restaurant chain. While there, he "built the brand’s value," as tracked by Millward Brown’s annual Brand Z assessment, from unranked to No. 40, with a brand value of $22B, according to MASB. Previously, as an exec at Young & Rubicam and McCann-Erickson, he worked on such brands as Kentucky Fried Chicken, Coca-Cola and Capital One. Pace concluded a two-year term as Chair of the ANA in '16, among "other things overseeing the group’s probe into media transparency issues." Pace in '17 became CEO of MASB, a group "working toward developing standards for objectively evaluating brand value and the contribution of advertising to them" (ADAGE.com, 2/9). Pace's handprints were all over the sports space, including negotiating Super Bowl ad deals, CARL EDWARDS' NASCAR deal and Subway's pact with CLAYTON KERSHAW, among others. Subway in '11 won the Sports Business Award for Sponsor of the Year, with Pace accepting the award (SBJ). Former ESPN exec John Kosner tweeted that Pace was a "quiet MVP" in the growth of ESPN Digital because he was always "aggressively supporting" their programs and platforms, including the pursuit of BILL SIMMONS (TWITTER.com, 2/9).