17 years, 400 spots: “This is Sportcenter”

February 14, 2012 Leave a comment

Integrated marketing communications has at it’s corethe requirement that all representations of a brand are consistent and, uh, integrated.  AdWeek recently published an edition devoted entirely to sports marketing. Their feature, “ESPN’s Perfect Game”,  explored the 17 years of consistency in ESPN’s branding phenom, ; the “This is SportsCenter” ad campaign.

The entire campaign was built around a brand positioning that connected fans to their super celeb athletes in very down to earth scenarios.  The article notes that;  “ While Nike and every other sports marketer portrayed athletes as superhuman, ESPN presented them as absurdly yet relatably human—doing menial tasks, chatting with co-workers, enduring office life’s endless small humiliations.”

The results of W+K’s campaign is an unparalleled consistency of the same tone of irreverent and office humor undimmed by the over 400 spots.  Consistency goes beyond the tone- the dictate includes the athletes always being in uniform (mascots included), the humor is self deprecating, and the setting is always the office building.   See for yourself:

:15 Georges St-Pierre in the Octagon

:15 Arnold Palmer prepares his famous drink

:30 Landon Donovan copy machine

:30 Alexander Overchkin The Spy

Great proof that consistency can still be creative and successful!

Room for discussion

What other campaigns can you think of that have the same consistency?  What type of brands are connected to those campaigns?

Filed under Branding, Marketing, Sports Tagged with , , ,

Making Losers Winners

December 13, 2011 Leave a comment

Capturing fan emotion is critical for sports entertainment advertising campaignsAt the core of entertainment marketing is passion.  Passion that connects pride and communities and supersedes the machine of business at the core of all entertainment.  It’s this passionate emotion that marketers connect to make losers winners.   The Effie award winning campaigns by the  Minnesota Wild and Atlanta Falcons are textbook examples of successful results in marketing fandom.

Minnesota Wild’s multiyear campaign is a celebration of the fan – a true homage to the 18 thousand ticket buyers at each game.  The Effies Minnesota Wilds showcase includes a video and case study that underscores the numbers that prove effectiveness;  90% season ticket renewal, record attendance and merchandise sales. A visit to the current Wild’s website Fan Zone shows continued use of their integrated “State of Hockey” campaign.

The Falcons were awarded a bronze Effie in 2011 for their “Rise Up” campaign.  The three-minute Effie video includes radio and TV spots that rock with the inspiration that combined with a good season record to record a 200% increase in ticket sales. The Falcon’s Facebook page continues to reinforce the “Rise Up” tagline.

It’s always assumed by sports entertainment marketing newcomers that the best place to be is on the winning sports teams.  That’s a tough assumption when you consider that 99% of all teams are losers!   And there is no better rush than riding a losing team to success. The Effie awards celebrate and feature proven successful marketing campaigns that capture this ride up; the Minnesota Wilds NHL campaign and the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons.  Great inspiration!

Filed under Advertising, Branding, Marketing, Sports Tagged with , ,

Your hardest working marketing dollar is the warm body closest to the consumer

October 24, 2011 Leave a comment

Customer service isn’t the sexiest, shiniest or most techno edgy option in today’s entertainment marketing toolbox.  But it is the hardest working most impactful marketing spend.  Customer satisfaction is correlated with profitability

Customer Service Is:

  • Personal – and best served with real live human being
  • An opportunity to put a face to and create a strong connection to a brand
  • Profitable and sustainable

To the entertainment business customer service is an opportunity to reduce churn and build loyal return customers.  And guess what? It actually correlates with profitability! According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI); “Customer satisfaction is a leading indicator of company financial performance.  Stocks of companies with high ACSI scores tend to do better than those of companies with low scores.”

It’s not likely a big surprise to learn that subscription television services (66) and newspapers (65) rank among the lowest (heck, even government services ranked higher!) in the latest ACSI surveys.  Ever tried contacting either?  Plan on several minutes of classic number pushing, sickening cheerful automated voices and overall unhelpfulness.

So it is an ongoing mystery to me why entertainment companies ignore the research, ignore their glaring customer service issues, and barricade themselves behind technology while calling it customer service.  I love technology.  But it doesn’t take the place of a warm body.

Claes Fornell, author of  “The Satisfied Customer” asserts per the ACSI review of his work that; “ global market forces are all pointing towards one inevitable truth: the cost of poor service will soon be borne by the companies that serve it—not the customers that receive it”.

Filed under Branding, Marketing, TV Tagged with , , ,

That’s not what Steve Jobs meant

October 10, 2011 2 Comments

“The consumer doesn’t know what they want” is a paraphrase of a Steve Jobs quote heard often lately with the sad news of his death.   What a terrible legacy this quote leaves a man who lived by usability design.   Unfortunately it has been translated to imply that Jobs ignored the consumer and just forged ahead with design unconnected to market research. Not true.  Dangerously not true.

As with so much these days, you need to go deeper than the sound bite to get to the truth.  Jobs focused on consumer need.  It was an unrealized need, but a need nonetheless.  His relentless connection to the product usability is marketing research.

Malcom Gladwell in a TED feature does a fabulous job of getting to the core of what Steve Jobs was really saying.  Check it out… Gladwell is talking spaghetti sauce, but it’s the same marketing research perspective voiced by Steve Jobs: In essence; consumers don’t understand needs that they can’t conceive.  His brilliance was in really understanding what consumer’s couldn’t voice, because they had never experienced it.

Consider Jobs saying that  “… handwriting was probably the slowest input method ever invented…”(WSJ).  It is a clear articulation of intuition that would not even occur to a consumer in any kind of market research because they wouldn’t be able to conceive of an all touch screen environment (think before iPhone).  It is in the doing that the clarity and brilliance of this thought occurs.   Consider the design usability evident in Apple lack of instructions. In Fast Company’s Cliff Kuangs’ words;  “The assumption is that you’ll be able to tear open the box and immediately start playing with your new toy.”

That’s usability.  The kind that comes from skillful research of your consumers’ unrealized needs.  Let’s honor the memory of Steve Jobs by understanding the core of his statement and keep the focus on the consumer; unrealized need or not!

Filed under Branding, Digital, Marketing Tagged with , , , ,

Love the One You’re With

September 19, 2011 Leave a comment

The constant quest for new customers is a false holy grail.Show Your Current Customers the Love!

Look at your partner.  Ask yourself, what would happen to your assumed wonderful relationship if instead of caring and loving them, you spent all your time looking at other new people as potential partners?  The answer is obvious; you would lose your partner.

Entertainment marketers need to understand the value of their most loyal partners/consumers and focus at least part of their efforts on rewarding them.  And reward them appropriately – with caring thoughtful connections.

 A recent WARC story about Vail ski resort’s EpicMix web and smart phone app underscored the opportunities created by tapping into a current user’s passion with experiential interactivity.  Vail offers EpicMix, an interactive tool that allows skiers to connect their experience with friends via Facebook, create and share their own photos and accomplishments.  EpicMix also offers pin recognition (akin to foursquare check-ins) to log use of the various slopes, time on the mountain and so forth.  All designed to support and reinforce the Vail experience.

“In all, 100,000 people have utilised this app, and 45% made their data visible on Facebook, yielding 35m impressions. “It turns these 100,000 people into brand activists,” Robert Urwiler, Vail’s CIO, said. “You have to earn brand activists.”

Brand activists, evangelists, influencers and heavy users.  All the same behaviorally – all extremely important as they often are the largest segment that profoundly impacts profit.  They are easily reached and will come back time and time again if you show them the love.   Show them you care and bask in the rewards of a strong relationship, a two-way commitment.

Filed under Branding, Marketing, Ticketed Events Tagged with , , ,

9/11 – NFL Opening Day or Thoughtful Remembrance?

September 12, 2011 Leave a comment

9/11 Recognition by Sports Marketers?9/11/11 was an odd mix of somber circumspect of the 2001 horror and the excitement and anticipation of the NFL season openers and other sporting fare including US Open and regular MLB schedule.  How did sports marketing connect with the nations’ mood?  It was a mixed bag with the emphasis on brevity.  Another missed opportunity to really make a thoughtful impact.  The Huffington Post did a great job of compiling most of the sporting event recognition in an article/video roundup.

Kudos to the opening session of many of the games – traditional taps from Shanksville, integration of the logos, unfurling of the flag the size of the field, moments of silence and patriotic aura of the first ten minutes or so.

But seriously – is that it?  I am not talking about wallowing in it for four hours.  I am talking about applying some creativity and thought on how to connect to the national day of remembrance.  Thoughtfulness that would include the most basic level of teaching the players respectful body language and how to mouth the national anthem.  To make them look connected to the recognition rather than just anxious to get it over.

The MLB really should be chastised for refusing the Mets request to don the caps of the NYPD and FDNY. What kind of stupid move was that?  The notoriety received by refusing the request was sure to create a PR negative.

Major league sports continue to ignore the opportunity to take energize their fan base in a way that elevates the emotion beyond the owner’s pocketbook to giving back to the community.  9/11 offered that opportunity and the league disappointed.

Filed under Branding, Marketing, Sports, Ticketed Events, TV Tagged with , , , ,

Google and Apple: Poster Brands for Consumer Focus

September 6, 2011 Leave a comment

Google and Apple Focus on Customer Needs“Apple proves that if you organize around the consumer, the rest of it will follow…” said Google’s Eric Schmidt in a recent interview.

Hallelujah!  It’s the perfect reinforcement of marketing’s Holy Grail – the absolute critical need to focus on the consumer.   To hear it from the mouth of Google’s founder and in the context of Apple gives a uniquely  relevant reinforcement of the importance of the consumer for today’s student.

In my teaching and professional experience consumer centricity is by far the most difficult concept to drill into newbie marketers. When students get it, they get it.  But when there is a struggle it invariably goes back to one of the following;

  • Understanding you are not your target market

We experience life through our own filters.  They are not indicative of other people’s experiences and perceptions.  Get out of your own head. Get into the head of your target.

  • Starting the solution – before you understand the target

This is like prescription without diagnosis.  It presents itself commonly with a student excitedly talking about building an app or developing a tactic without even beginning to understand the consumer.

Schmidt goes on to say; “…Google sort of runs in a similar way (to Apple) . . . try to figure out how to solve a consumer problem and then the revenue will show up.”

Thanks to this article, the reinforcement of understanding the consumer will become a little easier… as it speaks a language that is more relevant to an educator’s target market: students!

Filed under Branding, Marketing Tagged with , , ,

Little Monsters = Target Market?

June 20, 2011 1 Comment

What is a Little Monster?  Hard to describe in traditional target speak. Yet Lady GaGa’s little monsters have turned into a juggernaut with undeniable force. Lady GaGa's Target Market Little Monsters “In the past year, Lady Gaga was the first artist to reach 1 billion views on YouTube; she beat President Barack Obama to 10 million Facebook fans (she’s now closing in on 35 million); and most recently, she was first Twitter user to acquire 10 million followers.,”  touts a Mashable case study.

Again, what’s a Little Monster?  Is it a particular age?  Sex? Income level?  Does it fall in a VALS  category or a Prizm or Mosaic cluster?  Yes, all of the above. And yet none of the above by itself captures the little monster.

Marketers continue to be challenged with understanding and defining their target consumer.  Lady Gaga is a great case for seeing how this is done today, with the social media consumer.  Social media marketing is less about who you are targeting than who chooses to connect with you.  Marketing looks a little more like self selection.  And in order to be successful you need to be definable.  You need to mean something.  And you need to be genuine. Lady GaGa clearly is a champion for everyone who feels like they live outside the mainstream.  A little different:  A little monster.  Brilliant!  Who can’t identify with that?!  Lady GaGa’s success can easily be seen through the traditional lens of the 4ps as each is uniquely crafted to the Little Monster.

Is social media the right viewpoint for target market definition?  Given it’s enormity, growth and , transparent nature the answer “Yes!”.  Social media is a requirement for target market definition.  Pay attention to who self selects and hone your positioning to that Little Monster!

Filed under Branding, Music, SocialMedia Tagged with , , , , ,

Your Audience is NOT Monogamous

June 3, 2011 Leave a comment

Fill your seats with committed relationships

Building audience relationships fills seats

Consumers for the most part date around.  Sure, you probably have a core audience that is in a committed relationship with you.  But this is usually less than 50% of your audience.  The other 50% of your audience is seeing other people.  How much emphasis should you put on these different levels of audience relationships?

Marriage is your priority.  In market segmentation speak a marriage is your relationship with your rabid fan base.  It’s your heavy users, season ticket holders, your evangelists, and your best friends.  Like any other marriage it takes work to keep it together.  Both your audience and you will likely undergo change throughout the relationship.  Just like a real marriage it takes lots of love and lots of work to sustain this commitment.

Most of your audience is dating you.   Medium or light users are how these segments are characterized.    They are trying you on… seeing if you are a fit.  In order to woo this audience you need to also show the love.  But be careful not to do so at the expense of your committed relationships.  For instance, offering discounts only to folks you are dating sends a really bad message to your married partners!

Quite often organizations put too much emphasis on dating or even non dating relationships.  Constant reinforcement for developing new audiences can result in churning and a vicious cycle of new recruitment to replace audience.

Point is; it’s all about relationships. Everybody is important.  Everything is important. Show the love, do the work and build audience relationships.

Filed under Branding, Ticketed Events Tagged with , ,

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