Commentary

Sports And Valentines: It's About Heart

I write this column week in and week out and have been doing so for seven years now. While I was deciding on a topic for this week's column I was reminded that it was also Valentine's Day tomorrow -- and since this day is all about the heart, I decided I should write about a topic that was also about the heart: sports.

Sports marketing is big business and one that doesn't regularly get discussed when we refer to online marketing. The topic came up this week while I was at the iMedia Brand Summit because we were working with a client's model of speaking to online users in its network of sports enthusiast sites. Sports is truly a unifying topic because people from all walks of life can come to agreement on their favorite teams or their favorite activities or they can agree to disagree wholeheartedly for the same reasons.

The Super Bowl shows us, by being the only true mass media event remaining in popular culture and the one that continually drives the largest aggregate audience in media today, that sports are of interest to everyone in America. Baseball is America's pastime, but football and Nascar are the most loyal and most exuberant of sporting audiences (especially football if you ask my fiancé, who loves her Denver Broncos). Of course, these events are nothing compared to the global allure of soccer or the upcoming Olympics, which aggregate together a global audience far exceeding that of the U.S. alone.

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All that being said, sports marketing in a digital environment seems to be lagging behind. Sports marketing in the real world consists of event sponsorships, experiential outdoor and brand endorsements with numerous cross-promotional tie-ins that I haven't yet seen expressed as strongly in the digital environment (and if they are, they're rarely talked about).

If you're an official sponsor of the Olympics in traditional media, you enjoy consistent brand exposure across many, many touch-points. But in the online world, sports marketing seems to consist of a few special packages offered by the portals and the endemic sites a few times each year.

If I visit ESPN, I see beverages and financial services advertising on a regular basis and I see unique sponsorship opportunities offered at special times of the year -- but what about in other environments where sports may not be contextually relevant, but still offers the opportunity to speak to an audience? What about in mobile, search and social media? It might be that sports marketers have not seen the audience necessity in previous years, but I would think the upcoming Olympics and the upcoming NCAA tournament offer unique opportunities for marketers to enter these emerging platforms in a unique and compelling manner this year.

I was read a case study two years ago where a well-known beverage company sponsored the NBA but forgot to buy NBA-related keywords in search -- and therefore missed an opportunity to reach its audience. In the past Olympics I've seen many examples of brand advertisers, from credit cards to auto companies, miss out on extending their brand sponsorships into new media -- but social media would seem to be a no-brainer this time around, since sports is such a social environment in the first place!

And to the message conveyed to me at iMedia: What about the enthusiast environment, where the context may not be clear but the overlap with the audience clearly makes sense? A premium financial services brand might want to reach its audience in an environment where the audience is certain to be affluent and many of the Olympic sports are affluent due to the cost of participation. To play lacrosse or go kite surfing or participate in many other popular sports these days, you have to buy lots of equipment; the barrier to entry can be high!

Sports are all about heart; it's about overcoming limitations and finding new ways to succeed. It's about finding the best in yourself and bringing it into a competitive environment, whether it be competition with another person or competition with the environment itself.

Marketing can be viewed in a similar fashion: finding the limitations of existing opportunities and exploring new ways to succeed in speaking to your audience. It is about seeking new ways of conveying a message and competing in a cluttered environment.

So in prep for this Valentine's Day, and in the interests of heart, I say two things. First, I look forward to finding new ways to speak to passionate people in an environment they enjoy and respond well to. Second, I want to wish my fiancé a Happy Valentine's Day!

Thanks for reading, everyone!

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