Sports Reception in London
Anyone going to be at the Australia Britain Sports Reception at Australia House next week? I'll be there. Come and say hello. You can also find me on Twitter @dmfreedomSocial Media and Sports Business. A Missed Opportunity?
This blog is exclusive to iStadia. It does contain an ad at the bottom, but hopefully the content is useful to those on this community...Sport seems to be the perfect product to promote using social media tools, yet many businesses that make a living from sport, especially in the UK, have not really seized the opportunities provided. I'm not talking about football, or the sports that are covered by the mass-media, I am talking about the sports that rarely make it into the back pages, despite having Olympic stars or legitimate world champions.
A quick look at Manchester United's (official) facebook page, there are several... shows that the club has over 930,000 fans... *Facebook still suffers from rubbish advertising targeting, the ad on the right is for Arsenal branded underwear. *
Type Triathlon UK into Facebook and you get 3 groups, the largest of which has 10 members. Triathlon does a little better on Twitter, but there are no brands... no engagement with those who are pursuing it.
So what's missing? Is it that sports administrators and professionals just don't get marketing? Or is there a lack of trust? A fear of technology? A feeling that it's all a fad? Or is it a distraction from running a business?I believe that it is probably a combination of all of those things.
It's time that social media stopped being presented as technology and started being presented as must have business tools. While the mass-market media try to save their own skin and sell papers by promoting celebrity banality or wheel out a tame academic to declare that twitter will be the death of communication as we know it, there are thousands of people doing business on social media.
Marketing people can't really use excuses like, we don't have the budget, because most social media is free. Some say that it will use up resources that they don't have, but how hard is it to write 140 characters every so often - especially if it engages customers.
So perhaps the reasons that social media is not being used more for business is that people just don't know where to start, or don't understand the benefits that may be gained.
Here's the pitch.. We're running a Social Media for Business Bootcamp Seminar in London. 3 hours of an introduction to some of the more popular tools including how to get started immediately and get some quick wins. The seminar will be held on the 14th of October. See the event site for more details.
New White Paper - Sponsorship, Sports Marketing and Sailing.
Pilote Media are proud to announce a new series of White Papers that use sailing and Yacht Racing to explore themes of Sports Marketing, Sponsorship, Social Media, Brand benefits and Return on Investment.
With the current economic climate in mind, David Fuller, CEO of Pilote Media and Contributing Editor of Yachtsponsorship.com, looks at the relative merits of sailing versus more traditional or well known sports.
The title; ‘Getting Onto the Plane‘ refers to the process of a boat lifting out of the water to skim across the surface of the water rather than pushing through it. The series aims to give potential sponsors, Marketing Directors, Event Organisers and competitors insights into the business of yacht racing and get them racing more quickly.
The First Paper ‘Getting Onto the Plane - Assessing the Benefits of Yacht Racing‘ is an overview of the topics and themes that will be covered by future papers. It touches on how sailing provides positive brand associations and how technology can provide new audiences. There are also messages for politicians and media who have sought to characterise sponsorship as a wasteful perk : Sponsorship of sport is a legitimate part of the marketing mix and can deliver real return on investment.
Get your copy of the White Paper here.
Does your Sports PR company 'Get it' ?
Technology was supposed to make things easier. ‘Work smarter not harder’ is the slogan for the information age. But just as you think you have understood it - how to make the most of email, how to measure click-throughs and page impressions, the geeks invent a new thing. Or they rename an old thing and make everyone else seem foolish. How many of these terms do you understand: Web 2.0, RSS, twitter, UGC, personal media…The latest buzzword is ‘Social Media’. Ask 10 people what social media is and you will probably get 10 different answers. The term ’social media’ is misunderstood by many. From nowhere, social media consultants have appeared selling their opinions on reputation management and sentiment engineering. Whatever you call it, the technologies that allow huge numbers of people to create, publish, share and comment upon content (images, text, video, audio, gps co-ordinates), are important for sports marketing and PR.
One of the services receiving a lot of interest at the moment is Twitter. While on the surface the functionality seems simple, almost banal, the power of millions of people saying what they are doing, feeling, thinking at any one point in time should not be underestimated.
Let’s compare two examples. Imagine a sports entity; a pro-sailor, a team, an event organiser with a large company as a sponsor. This entity also has a traditional PR company working to maximise the ‘coverage’ of news and activities and in turn help the sponsor achieve their goals of exposure or association or some other objective......
Excerpt... See the rest at http://www.pilotemedia.com
Sponsorship 101 - The Event
Yachtsponsorship.com are asking athletes if they would be interested in attending an event to get some tips about how to raise sponsorship and do a bit of networking.While the event is aimed at sailors and those in the sport of Yacht Racing, the event might be interesting for others who are looking to raise money to fund their sport.
You can register your interest at http://www.yachtsponsorship.com/2009/03/sailing-sponsorship-101-the-event-interested/
Who's Who of Yacht Racing 2009 Announced
Pilote Media Release Details About the Dark Blue Book. Pilote Media, publishers of yacht racing business website yachtsponsorship.com, have announced a new directory of professional sailing. The Dark Blue Book - the who’s who of yacht racing will be published in early 2009, containing information about key people and organisations from around the world. “Although competitive sailing has been around for a long time, yacht racing as a professional endeavour is relatively new,” says David Fuller of Pilote Media. “Having launched yachtsponsorship.com earlier this year we have seen a growing number of people who are interested in the business of yacht racing. Other sports like Motor Racing have similar directories and the market for competitive sailing has reached a point where it can support a product like this.” The directory will feature people and companies who are involved in the business of yacht racing including teams, rights holders, event organisers, sponsors, press and photographers and suppliers. Individuals or companies who wish to be considered for inclusion in the directory can register their submission at http://wwww.darkbluebook.com. The Dark Blue Book will be available for pre-order from the website in the coming months.Interview with Mark Turner - How to run a Yacht Race
Administrators and Event organisers take note - sport is not the same anymore. Some sports like sailing are learning that the old ways might work for amateur competition but will not attract money, sponsors or the public interest unless they adapt.OC Events, the owners of the iShares Cup for Extreme 40 catamarans are showing how it can be done.
In this interview with www.yachtsponsorship.com - Mark Turner, the CEO of OC Group talks about how the rules need to be thrown out the window.
http://www.yachtsponsorship.com/2008/10/mark-turner-on-the-ishares-cup/
Measurement becomes Mainstream?
Originally posted at Pilote SportOne of the promises of an integrated digital media offer, powered by the Internet, has been tons and tons of useful measurement that can be used to make content relevant and advertising efficient.
Most companies don't actually use this data. They make users fill out registration forms, collecting information about gender and age and postal code, with an implicit undertaking to provide a more customised experience, but in reality this data is rarely used.
There have been notable exceptions. You probably don't want to know the level of detail about your habits resides in the Google databases. Bolt.com, one of the early Social Networks employed a team of statisticians to analyse teenage behaviour that was then sold to blue chip marketing brands.
Now the big-boys are waking up, perhaps. NBC have announced that they will use next month's broadcast of the Olympics to research how their audience consume media across several platforms including mobile (cell phones).
The 'billion dollar research lab' may go towards producing what NBC calls a "TAMI" -- Total Audience Measurement Index, which takes into account TV, online, video on demand and mobile phone usage. It may eventually be used to negotiate deals with advertisers across several platforms at once.
2008. The technology is available. The knowledge is available. And yet, words like 'eventually' and 'may be' are still used. Perhaps content providers don't want to know that nobody is watching or that the advertising is not relevant.
Sailing through Sponsorship Noise.
First posted at the Pilote Sport Blog (Monday 30th June)
Yesterday,
more than 1850 boats competed in the JP Morgan Round the Island Race.
So, that's 1850 possible news stories multiplied by the number of crew
plus a few sponsor press releases and a myriad of results. There was
only one story that mattered to the UK media though, Lewis Hamilton,
the 'British' F1 driver was aboard Hugo Boss.On these pages, we try to show that, even if you don't have the budgets of these big companies, you can still learn how to make the most of your sports marketing money by watching the best. Hugo Boss is a fantastic case study.
If you read our story last week about David Beckham's shirt, you will know that not all sponsorships manage to generate awareness with a wider audience. Until now, you may not have known that Hugo Boss is a partner of the McClaren F1 team, but this was a win-win opportunity for everybody that ensured maximum marketing exposure.
By putting Lewis Hamilton, alongside Britain's top Olympic sailor; Ben Ainslie, on a 60 foot, carbon fibre, racing yacht, the marketing gurus managed to promote Hugo Boss, McLaren and sailing all in one go. Even though Hugo Boss collided with another boat at the start and compromised the 'podium' finish, the headlines were guaranteed.
When Hugo Boss started working with Alex Thompson on his Open 60 campaign, they showed how, with a bit of thought, a racing yacht could become a huge floating billboard. The current boat's hull and sails are aligned to highlight the brand from every possible angle and of course the value of naming rights are apparent.
So what can smaller companies with more modest budgets take away from this example? Spreading sponsorship budget across multiple, complimentary sports allows you to take advantage of cross-promotional opportunities that benefit all.
Do Coaches need to know the Game?
Originally Posted on the Pilote Sport Blog (Friday 27th June, 2008)A controversial post for Monday Morning to stimulate some debate.
I've got a problem with coaches. Not all coaches mind you, just the ones that set themselves up as motivators, but have no technical knowledge about the subject at hand. This is especially true of the trendy new job of 'life coach.'
Now a newly published study by Amanda Goodall, Lawrence Kahn, and Andrew Oswald (Opens in PDF) finds that having expert knowledge of the thing you are coaching definitely matters. The Abstract of the report says "We show that a strong predictor of a leader's success... is that person s own level of attainment, in the underlying activity... Our data come from 15,000 professional basketball games and reveal that former star players make the best coaches. This expert knowledge effect is large."
How Large? The report finds substantial evidence that the difference between having a coach who never played NBA basketball and one who played many years of NBA all star basketball is, on average, approximately 6 extra places up the NBA league table. In a league where there are 29 teams, this is significant.
The report also tries to draw some conclusions as to why this is the case. One possibility is that the same quality that drove the individual to the top of the game still exists, an 'x-factor' that determines success. Other explanations include an ability to impart expert knowledge that can only be acquired by playing the game. A third hypothesis offered is that players who are recognised as 'greats' command more respect from those who are at the top of their game in the present, whereas lesser players, or those who have never played the game would find it harder to convince current players of their credentials.
There may be exceptions, but at last there are some hard facts that show that a coach with expert knowledge will provide better results than a coach who is 'motivating' only.
