ISSUE 3 / 03.2012
Welcome to the third edition of Soccer Wise, a happy belated new year, I hope that the ‘12 is a great one for you all. Sorry for the delay in getting this issue out but I have been busy finishing off my MBA. Again what we have is a look around the world at interesting marketing, branding, sponsorship, communication, and social trends and ideas; and how these relate to the world of soccer. Remember these are just meant to be short articles that act as morsels of information to snack on, think about, and spit out. Just a quick reminder of where the inspiration for SoccerWise comes from: 1. Directly from the business of soccer 2. Related and interesting insight from the business of sport 3. Outside the category, but which represent a possible application in soccer This issue focuses on everything from building great brand experiences, to how to inspire fans in the digital space. I have also included some research that I have been doing around best practices in team branding that might offer some food for thought. Please reach out if you would like any further information here.
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CONTENTS
PAGE
It’s All About The Kids and the Ladies 3 Ajax Amsterdam and how violence turned into excitable kids, Turkish football and the women only stadia
Some Golden Rules for Building a Football Team Brand 4
(Two learning’s from an academic study)
Experience Experience Experience: The Ajax Way 5 Ajax Amsterdam’s new club museum
Creating Brand Champions Online 6 Inspiring brand advocates for your team in a digital world
Lessons from Outside of Sport: 7 Making the Boring Exciting A Norwegian Bank and the Orchestra
Video Games: An Under Utilized Link 8 in Global Sports Team Brand Development The future?
It’s All About The Kids and the Ladies
Ajax Amsterdam and how violence turned into excitable kids Recently Ajax Amsterdam were forced to play a Dutch cup reply behind closed doors, due to a fan encroaching the field and attacking the visiting goalkeeper. Ajax made a proposal plea to the KNVB (Dutch Football Federation) to ask whether they could allow children free access to the game, rather than have empty stands. The Dutch authorities agreed and allowed Ajax to offer children and one supervisor a free ticket to see the game. With the average fan age demographic going up across all the major leagues in Europe - the EPL has a season ticket average age of 42 - what can be done to attract the next generation of fans to games. Children are very much the future and what might have turned into a moment of shame for Ajax could inadvertently turn into a stroke of genius. So What? How can you appeal to the next generation of fans, rather than being forced into action (like Ajax above)? Can you create a game day experience where only kids are allowed. Could this incentive involve working closely with local schools and scheduling a game during the week when kids can come to the stadium, whilst also delivering an educational component? What if for one game you made half the stadium free for kids and a guardian? It is well known that children form memories that influence their behavior from a very early age, initiatives like this could help form some strong early opinions on these young minds. Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/jan/19/ajax-crowd-children-cup-replay
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Turkish football and the women only stadia A radical solution to the growing trend of violence in Turkey resulted in men being banned from certain games and only women and children being allowed entry. This was a first in international football and the first game with Turkish giants Fenerbahce attracted over 41,000 women and children. But deeper than simply being a result of a violent act from male fans it enabled Turkish football and its clubs to position themselves in a different light. So What? Like the Ajax example would this open up your product to a new audience? Maybe it is time to think how you can make games more attractive and fun for different audiences. You don’t have to be as extreme as the Turkish example but it does throw up some interesting thoughts about how you might package games (first team, reserve, youth) to fans. Check out the video at the link below. http://www.care2.com/causes/no-men-allowed-at-turkish-soccer-game-video.html
GO TO LINK
Some Golden Rules for Building a Football Team Brand I recently undertook a project looking at how soccer clubs can methodically think about building their brands, specifically by identifying the many internal and external factors that are available to help them define what makes their club unique. During the course of the project many interesting stories and mini case studies around sustaining a healthy football brand came up, I decided to share a couple of those short thought provoking issues and learnings:
1. Cashing in today at the expense of tomorrow Liverpool are a good example of a team that took advantage of their relative value today as an admired global sports brand without regard for building a long-term brand platform for the future. The club decided that a record kit deal with soccernew-comer Warrior Sports was worth more to the club than its existing agreement with adidas. Financially it was, to the tune of an extra £12 million per season. The deal has certainly created plenty of extra millions in the bank account, but Liverpool are now left with a kit and merchandise sponsor who has little or no distribution outside of the USA. Now compare Warrior sports to adidas, the same adidas who display the Liverpool shirt loudly and proudly in all of their worldwide stores. Immediately this throws up many potential strategic issues in what a partnership like this may forgo. As a fan who can’t get to Anfield (only 45,500 can attend the stadium, while 200 fan club branches exist in over 30 countries) the most tangible and accessible club asset at fans disposal is the team kit. So, if fans have problems accessing the most basic of club assets, and a brand like adidas with huge distribution is no longer promoting your club, how does this help the club in achieving a publicly stated objective of reaching out and growing a global fan base?
2. Ignoring your values for the sake of a deal Many examples exist of teams that have blatantly gone against the values of the clubs brand to sign a lucrative commercial deal that offers little or no compatibility with how they have defined their own brand. This creates many challenges for the team as they try to maintain and build consistency in messaging and outreach programs to audiences thorough their brand. For example a UK based soccer team that had built its brand and culture around being a family club, (born from a belief instilled in the club from a previous iconic manager) decided to sign with a well-known online betting firm. This resulted in an undue problem for the club as it conflicted pretty strongly with its various marketing programs, one of which involved reaching out to all local school children once they became 7 years old and inviting them free of charge to a game – theoretically a great demonstration and understanding of the social importance the team plays in the city, while anchored around the family club idea. Signing with a gambling business, however socially conscious they might be relative to the category, makes it very difficult to create a believable brand strategy over time. Another international example here is FC Barcelona who have put into jeopardy the philosophy of ‘More than a club’ for the sake of a mega millions deal from the Qatari Foundation. Based on the two findings above it is fair to say that football club brands are defined as much by things they choose not to do as the things they choose to do. So next time you are considering that perfect partnership, the community outreach scheme, fan relationship management initiative, or even who your next manager is, have a think whether this ‘fits’ with how you have defined your brand and what the business is trying to achieve both in the short and most importantly long term. If you would like to know more about this body of research please reach out to me at the contact details included at the back of SoccerWise
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Experience Experience Experience: The Ajax Way Think about all the places that your fans can really experience your brand? How representative of the club are they, how easy is it for you to control, and how powerful and compelling is the platform to tell your team story? Creating truly memorable customer experiences are proving more challenging, and only feel possible in the ubiquitous digital world that fans live away from the arenas and stadiums. Yet creating great experiences are what define truly great brands. Outside of the sports category, think apple with its products and ecosystem of stores and apps, think Disney with family fun and the memories it creates. Physical club assets seem overlooked in todays world but a museum or travelling capsule exhibition can be a very powerful connector to fans and potential fans alike. You might think that only the biggest of teams can afford to do something like this but small micro collections of stories or artifacts can be equally effective and very cost efficient. Think about the role your team has played in a given area or during a specific time – the nature of its ties to a city, role it plays with local industries etc. – do these spark stories that an engaging experience can be created from?
Included below is a video and short write up from Ajax Amsterdam of a museum experience that is very much ‘on brand’. Based around ‘The Ajax Way’ and how champions are created, the architects and curators talk about taking the experience from the stadium, filtered through the lens of the city of Amsterdam, and capturing that passion for the museum goer in the experience. Some of the things that museum visitors can savor: • • • • • • •
Discover how young players are trained in the Ajax philosophy Feel what it is like to sit in the dressing room before entering the field Receive pre-match team talk from manager Frank De Boer Learn, discover, uncover the history and traditions of Ajax in an interactive manner Understand the connection between Ajax and the city and how the two are integral to the culture of the club Stories from legends through the various eras A celebration of the great fans of Ajax
The video below gives a walk though of what they have captured (highly recommended viewing). Certainly food for thought when it comes to creating a fan experience based on a very well defined brand philosophy like the ‘Ajax way’ and all the elements that extend from it. Source: Sid Lee Architecture (details of the creation process) http://www.arthitectural.com/sid-lee-architecture-ajax-experience/
GO TO LINK
PLAY VIDEO
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Creating Brand Champions Online How do you inspire brand advocates for your team in a digital world. Who are brand advocates or champions anyway? Normally they are defined as individuals who demonstrate an unwavering love and passion for a particular brand and aren’t afraid to showcase and spread the message of that brand to anyone and everyone who will listen. Ok, but why should sports properties think about creating brand champions or passionate advocates, aren’t sports full of these types of consumers anyway? Understandably other categories (with less associated passion and natural emotion than sports) will try and encourage this type of consumer, seeding product, inviting their opinion and helping them to become true champions of the brand. In sports, naturally many of these brand champions rise to the surface; the leader of the supporters group, the orchestrator of the singing, and the originator of the clubs unofficial fanzine are just three obvious examples. But how do sports teams make champions in a digital sphere given that most have multiple official and non official channels and no way of consolidating all of this in a coherent environment? A growing area of thinking is emerging around just how to do that. How do we identify, help facilitate and reward fans for becoming true champions of a team on their mobile phones, computers and tablets? A great case example came out of Baylor University who found a way to reward fans of the university who spread news and seeded content amongst friends across various social channels in a program called Baylor Bold Rewards. Fans were awarded points measured by how much chatter they created around the Baylor brand, based in part on where content ended up and how many people viewed, liked and in turn continued to spread the message. On offer for would be brand champions were a range of points which then converted into Baylor related prizes with the ultimate ‘cash can’t buy opportunity’ being the chance to lead the football team out in an up and coming game. They also worked on merging the physical with digital world by encouraging fans to check in at Baylor sports events and spread content from within the arena. This enabled Baylor to identify very quickly who the digital brand ambassadors where by creating a virtual leaderboard of those who chatted and spread content the most, while it encouraged others to take part as the prize incentive to fans of engaging in the activity was fairly significant. So, while it is much easier to find your brand champions in the flesh, Baylor found a way of identifying them behind a digital screen whilst encouraging them to chatter more and more often. I think this area of study is really interesting and very powerful given the trust people 6 SOCCERWISE ISSUE 3 / 03.2012
place in receiving news from fellow fans and friends over big corporations. It also allows you to consolidate across the various news and social sites that comment on your brand everyday. How can your property take advantage of the channels you are in (official and un- official) and the passion that fans of your brand clearly demonstrate, while giving them encouragement to spread your message? Ultimately you can benefit from increased frequency, reach and exposure of your brand while you gain an understanding of who your digital brand champions are and how to reward them. See http://fourthand140.com for further thoughts and writing on Social Media Baylor Bold Program: http://www.baylorboldrewards.com GO TO LINK
Lessons from Outside of Sport: Making the Boring Exciting Norwegian Bank and the Orchestra Here is an example from outside sports, but one that still sparks enough creative thoughts to be applied directly back to the category. One of the most boring tasks man can engage in is calling his bank, worse still, an automated banking teller. Norwegian Bank DNB, which had previously used George Clooney in clever real life situational ads to sell banking products, decided to engage the Norwegian Broadcasting Boy’s Choir in order to record a more exciting phone message. What they set out to do was to surprise and challenge the convention of what calling your bank meant. The promotion also reinforced their sponsorship of the Boys Choir, by bringing charm to one of the more charmless “touch points” of banking. This campaign ran during the month of December, instead of the usual robot reciting the telebanking menu, callers heard their options and balances sung in the boys’ sweet, pre-pubescent tones.
PLAY VIDEO
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So What? Think of the amount of times consumers/ fans might ring your business and not get through to a real human. Think of little surprises: consumers love little surprises where they least expect it, think Four Seasons as a good example of a brand that constantly delights customers. If it’s the start of the season why not have your new striker record something for fans to hear when they ring the club, or around the festive period the manager could soothingly tell callers to press ‘2’ if they want tickets for the upcoming holiday fixtures. Source: http://www.fastcocreate.com/1679495/how-one-bank-rethought-automated-customer-service
Video Games: An Under Utilized Link in Global Sports Team Brand Development Guest Writer, Evan Baechler: Evan is an undergraduate senior in the University of Oregon’s Warsaw Sports Marketing program. After graduation in June, 2012, he will work for Nike in the global digital brand marketing department. Initiatives to grow global brand affinity aren’t uncommon for the world biggest sports team brands. Sports marketers have added a whole arsenal of global branding tactics to their repertoires including offseason exhibition tours, international media distribution, and robust digital branding. And with Manchester United’s success in Asia (complete with IPO plans and Official Chinese website) as testament, going global can be incredibly lucrative. But for teams without lavish budgets to invest millions in foreign-market brand development, how do you grow your brand abroad? One commonly overlooked opportunity: Video games. I’m not advocating for product placement or digital signage - the traditional approach to video game marketing. Sports teams have higher potential that this. The nature of games like Electronic Art’s (EA) FIFA gives players the reins to manipulate clubs’ core brand experience: their competitive bouts with rivals on the field. Additionally, success is built into the gaming engines of games like FIFA because constant losing depreciates players’ experience with the game. Therefore, games like FIFA provide gamers ample selfesteem satisfaction opportunities. With satisfaction being a fundamental antecedent to brand loyalty, and intimate brand contact inevitable when gamers take control of teams, the potential for players to develop affinity for the teams they manipulate in video games is obvious.
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Then there is the simple fact that FIFA and other sports team video games are extremely popular. Since its inception in 1993, the FIFA franchise has sold over 100 million copies. Madden is a close second with 90 million. In 2011, FIFA accounted for 11% of Electronic Arts’ total revenue, more than ANY other game, sports or otherwise. EA has also expanded FIFA’s relevancy by making available on iOS devices at a low price. When measuring the opportunities available in Video Games, sports marketers should also consider the context of different markets. For example, FIFA could be a great entry point into the US and Canada for soccer clubs, because FIFA eliminates many of the sour traits Americans associate with soccer such as its slow pace, exaggerated fouls, and lack of scoring. Similarly basketball games might offer NBA teams an entry point into Europe and China because both territories understand the rules of the game, know
teams and players, but have limited access to live NBA content because of time differences and lack of media distribution. If video games have so much potential, why aren’t clubs acting? They are. Manchester City partnered with EA to achieve powerful brand opportunities in the latest FIFA release, FIFA12. EA developers spent extra time rendering Manchester City’s in-game brand elements (players, coach, stadium, and jersey), and City leveraged FIFA12 to launch its 2011-2012 EPL jersey. Despite Manchester City’s movement in the video game space, there is plenty of room for other teams to take advantage. But marketers should act fast before others claim the space and reap the spoils. Twitter: @ebaechler
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Who is ‘Soccer Wise’? Soccer Wise is an ex Brand & Marketing Consultant of 6 years and former MBA student at the Warsaw Sports Business Center at the University of Oregon. Lived and worked in Dubai, London and New York. Love understanding new cultures and people; past clients within sports have included the London 2012 Olympics, adidas, Umbro and two soccer specific start-ups. Passionate about soccer, passionate about making the business side of the game a success. Please reach out if you have any questions, comments or otherwise. Some recent articles from the world of sports business: Nike’s New Marketing Mojo http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/02/13/nike-digital-marketing/
The World’s Most Popular Teams on Facebook (courtesy of FC Business) https://twitter.com/#!/FCKev/status/166492048881496065/photo/1/large
Rugby League Naming Rights Sponsorship Involving Zero Cash http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jan/25/super-league-new-sponsors-stobart
10 Questions Brand McIlroy Should Ask Tiger Woods http://www.unofficialpartner.co.uk/?p=348#.Tx_pw9Tl2e8.twitter
Man City Hosting Post Match Interviews on Twitter and Facebook http://www.thedrum.co.uk/news/2012/02/23/man-citys-vincent-kompany-host-post-match-interview-fans-twitter-and-facebook
How to get in touch Twitter: @dbruce80 FOLLOW ME Email : dbruce80@gmail.com Phone: +718 200 7189
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