Sports: Taking the interaction off the field with fans

There’s an interesting discussion taking place over on Sports Marketing 2.0. Pat Coyle has highlighted the problems the industry is facing. At the top of the list of problems facing marketers (those in sports and in general), is the challenge to find consumers in today's media marketplace. Given the title of this blog, that’s a topic that is of great personal interest.

The posting then moves on to discuss three trends that will emerge in sports marketing over the next five years. Pat’s last two points caught my eye and are points I hope to incorporate into my next career move, specifically making a consumer/fan’s experience with the product a two-way interaction.

The MyCokeFest coming up in Atlanta plays to the point of using a brand to enhance a fan’s experience at an event. But I really like Mission: SEC. It has new media elements, like the blogs and videos and works from a fan and a marketer’s perspective: pertinent information is delivered to an interested audience thanks to relevant sponsors that nicely tie their brand to the content.

I foresee more such marketing tactics to address the problem at the top of Pat’s list.

Here are the comments from Pat’s visitors. Feel free to leave your own below.

Crashed Ice: A Sport With One Message

After reading about Red Bull’s creation of a brand new sport through which to market the energy drink in last weekend’s New York Times, I have to say… this is pretty interesting. Why be one of many advertisers in an arena or add your brand name to a single event? Red Bull has sidestepped the clutter in the traditional sports marketplace by creating an entirely new competition and owning the concept. The sport has drawn a large amount of attention, with 35,000 people watching a recent outdoor event in Quebec and 14 events being held throughout the U.S. The risk is a sports landscape littered with invented, branded competitions. But no one’s confusing this with ESPN’s X Games. And that problem is a long time coming, I think.

Finding Meebo

At the bottom of the right rail I’ve added a Meebo widget for anyone who stops by to IM me while they’re visiting my blog. I’m trying this as an experiment to see how it works and if anyone will send me a message. Messages can be sent to me whether I’m logged-in to Meebo or not. I'll receive your message either way and would love to hear from visitors. If you're so inclined, there's a way to change the standard-issue/nondescript nickname to something more revealing by clicking on the "edit nickname" text. Don’t be a stranger!

New Orleans to Chicago: We're Windier

Thanks to Adrants for this photo. It’s hard to differentiate one travel ad for a beach locale from another, but this billboard for a non-sandy destination is eye-catching. As Adrants said, humor directed inward works. This time of year sunny ads may work in colder climates, but I bet this board generates some buzz in Chicago.

SoCon07: I came, I saw, I participated

I attended SoCon07 yesterday, not quite knowing what to expect when I registered. It was billed as an un-conference, which meant nothing to me. I was just hoping to learn more about using blogs and other forms of social media as marketing tools. I didn’t care what format the program took to do that. Early on I didn’t see how it wasn’t just like any other symposium, other than the laptops in use by many of the attendees. (In a way it reminded me of grad school, except these people were blogging the speakers. Professor lectures were never shared with the world as they were being given, thus the need to attend class. Natch.)

But the two-way dialogue between the speakers and the audience members was interesting. Leonard Witt kicked off the fun with a great exchange of ideas before turning the program over to Christopher Klaus, who spoke at length about his newest venture, Kaneva. There are plenty of pro and con sentiments about each of these speakers in the blog roll on the SoCon07 site, so I won’t regurgitate those opinions here. “Transparency” was mentioned during the kickoff session and continued to resonate with me personally, as so much of social media involves creating a meaningful and honest dialogue.

At lunch I enjoyed talking with Leonard before heading back for the afternoon sessions. Of the two I attended (Marketing & PR first and online communities second), Josh’s session was a little more interesting in that it was more of a group discussion. I appreciate the passion of the communities session leader, and he made some great points, it would have been more enjoyable if we had been able to spend more time if the participants had been able to share some of their intellect into developing various types of communities/programs.

All in all, it was nice to see some familiar faces such as Josh, Mark and Toby and meet the author of the Spacey Gracey Review, whom I’ve enjoyed reading. (Where were you Earthling?) And it was nice to meet so many new (to me) people too. But next time, I’d like it better if the size of the SoCon graphic and the participant’s names were inverted on the nametags. We knew where we are, but I’d like to know who you are when you’re too far away to read your name subtly.

All in all it was a good experience and I left more knowledgeable than when I got there and with a few ideas I’d like to try in the future.

Now that I have set a new personal record for hyperlinks in a single post, I’m off to look up the dozen or so sites I learned of yesterday. Happy blogging!