• by Karl Greenberg , October 6, 2011

Tony Wells, CMO of 24 Hour Fitness, the largest privately owned chain of athletic clubs, understands that it no longer makes sense for a company -- especially one with a relatively small budget like his -- to roll out a big marketing campaign. Campaigns that involve 20-page plans and big rollouts will happen less and less," he said, during a discussion at the IMG Sports Marketing Symposium in New York this week.

Also on the panel was Ralph Santana, CMO of Samsung's U.S. marketing arm. Santana says things are generally a lot different even from a couple of years ago. "Companies looked at the bottom line. Since then, you have seen companies stockpile cash and now, the emphasis is on the top line and anything you can do to improve that is good. Companies are willing to spend on proven winners that can move the top line."

He added that his two big concerns are how to keep Samsung relevant to consumers, particularly its target audience, and how to stay ahead of the digital curve. "A lot of times we are doing social for the sake of social, and now that social media is big, everyone's doing that. But the key is, how do you use that strategically?"

For 24 Hour Fitness, it means launching a Facebook page for every one of its clubs this year. "We see it as their local newspaper," said Wells. "There's a trend to go local and make communication individual."

Wells said it is also a tool to keep members informed and staff informed about conditions in their clubs. "We use it as a listening device. People love to tweet that they are at the gym. So if someone gives us a compliment, we use our [social media] team to call the club to tell them thanks. If there's a problem -- the locker room isn't clean -- we jump on that. It's more blocking and tackling for us."

At the other end of the spectrum, Samsung is doing a large-scale social media program around the London 2012 Olympics. Santana said the Genome project on Facebook lets consumers build a "family tree" that shows how they are connected to Olympic athletes. "It looks at things like your hometown, school, etc., and creates points of connection," he said. "We think it's transformational because it changes how people interact and connect."

The idea, according to Santana, is that since people don't have the same relationship to Olympic athletes that they do to their favorite pro or college sports team, a social media platform could create that connection by finding out what a consumer has in common with an athlete.

"It's grounded on the fact people want to be connected to the Olympic movement but don't know how," he said. "In other sports, people like a team because there's a connection point. The beauty is by figuring this out, we can weave together a community of like-minded individuals passionate about the games. We can take them on a journey leading up to the Olympics. This will be the most digitally enabled Olympics ever, but the ones who stand out will be the ones bringing utility to the social media idea."

For 24 Hour Fitness, marketing around next year's Olympics involves its first "truly endemic sponsorship" of the games, per Wells, who said there are 500 or so Olympians and hopefuls working out in 24 Hour Fitness clubs. They are blogging about their workouts and the clubs, using their own social networks to talk about how they are preparing for the Games. "For us, it's about telling that story on how they work out: if we can help someone get to the Olympics we can help you lose ten pounds. It's similar to what a company like GM does with NASCAR: how developing a racing vehicle translates to a consumer car."