SOCIAL MEDIA AS AN INSIGHTS TOOL FOR SPONSORS AND RIGHTS HOLDERS

The social web is home to thousands of communities of hundreds of thousands of active, passionate and vocal fans.  They are a hotbed of rich, genuine insight that will give your sponsorship assets and platforms a big shot in the arm. 


This is an overview of how social media can be used as a 'listening tool' to give sponsors and rights holders powerful and inspirational insight into what their audiences want, need and value.  As presented at Think! Sponsorship Conference, London, April, 2011.

View more presentations from Robinson Pincus | Sponsorship & Social Media.

For a deeper understanding of how you could benefit from listening more closely to your audience, give us a call.

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SPONSORSHIP’S EMOTIONAL, LONG-LASTING ‘STORIES’ ARE THE PERFECT FUEL FOR SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE IDEAL HOOK FOR LOYALTY.

Just flying home from a workshop where we’ve been speaking to the football industry about sponsorship, social media and growing fan loyalty.

Here’s a quick overview of why the three work so well together with less of an emphasis on football and more on sponsorship in general.

Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Disney, MTV, Red Bull, Converse.  All brands that have achieved an impressive following across the pages of facebook, twitter and their own socially-supercharged sites by mastering the art of ‘storytelling’.

Just take a look at facebook’s fanship charts as a good indication.

These brands work tirelessly to keep the story flowing and their audiences alive.  It’s the modern day Arabian Nights, where Queen Scheherazade avoided execution by telling an endless story to King Shahryar!

Today, brands need to feed consumers to keep consumers. 

And consumers are hungry.

Social media has a different dynamic to other channels.  Social loves stories that keep the content coming.   Why?  Because that’s what consumers want.

We hear a lot about brand managers becoming more like publishers.  In fact, it’s more like programming schedulers.  Brands now have big, open, 24 hour communication channels that are aching to be filled.  

But, brands can’t just rapid-fire any content to ‘fill the facebook gap’.   Quality counts or you'll turn people away. 

Sponsorship offers brands a river of great content for high quality, compelling storytelling...

...an emotional theme that gives the story immediate appeal, connection and traction with an audience.

...longevity, across a tournament, a tour or a season. 

...great characters, through talent.

And, sponsorship provides the foundations for a creative narrative that ensures the story is ultimately about bringing value to the brand.

Social media encourages sponsorship to be more creative and to work harder to understand what audience’s really want in order to build richer, more valued, more enduring stories. 

Stories that keep audiences coming back for more.

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THE RAPID RISE OF UNOFFICIAL SOCIAL MEDIA FANBASES...AND WHAT THIS MEANS FOR SPONSORSHIP.

The above trend is by no means restricted to Premiership football in the UK.  Take a look across the sports spectrum and you'll see that unofficial social media fanbases eclipse their official counterparts in size.

By official, we mean facebook and twitter accounts created and managed by the rights holder.  By unofficial, we're talking about forums, facebook and twitter accounts run by passionate fans.

The sheer number of unofficial 'hosts' is partly responsible for the big difference in size of total fanbase.  Just google 'Manchester United Forum' and you'll quickly find yourself on a journey across numerous fan communities, both big and small, from Manchester to Mumbai.

Do fans want official content or authentic content?

The difference in content between official and unofficial fanbases has a role to play too.  Official fanbases have the federal integrity that comes with, well being official.  However, the unofficial fanbases' have a secret weapon: authenticity.  These communities are run by fans, for fans.  Sports fans, just like people, like to be amongst likeminded others who think like them, act like them and care about the same things as them.   Being a member of an unofficial fan community is more like a trip to the pub than an hour in the boardroom.  

Two take outs for sponsorship players:

1. For rights holders, there's an increasing and pressing need to gather, nurture and grow an official fanbase that is fed with official content.  This requires rights holders to better understand what their fanbase wants and when they want it.  This is the solid base for a more active social media strategy that will stimulate fanbase growth and retention.

2. For sponsors, unofficial fanbases are rich territory.  Depending on your brand strategy, which may or may not require the 'official' stamp of the rights holder, they're an attractive proposition: big, active and authentic communities of passionate fans.  However, unofficial fanbases are sacred turf.  When dealing with these communities of arguably more 'real fans', sponsors must really add value to earn the right to join the family.  Badging and PR stunts will get you nowhere.

In each case, quality of content and commitment to the community counts.

Keep listening and keep helping if you want to grow a bigger, more engaged fanbase. 

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A SMORGASBORD OF SOCIAL MEDIA STATS FOR PROGRESSIVE SPONSORSHIP PROFESSIONALS

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SPONSORSHIP-DRIVEN SOCIAL GAMING: FANS EARN ACCESS WHILE DRIVING WORD OF MOUTH.

Social gaming is big.  It's also very rich territory for brands involved in sponsorship.  

We're currently developing a number of sponsorship-driven social gaming platforms for brands with audiences as diverse as kids, families and 50+ females.

Here's why...

Passions last a lifetime.

The sponsorship platforms that are truly valued by fans are the ones that get them closer to their passions again and again over time - not just as part of a PR spike that sits alongside a gig, game or gallery opening.

People's passions often last a lifetime.  They're a long-lasting red thread that runs through their lives.  Yes, interest peaks around big events (where sponsors usually focus their investment), but the 'gaps' between these highs are a real opportunity for brands to deliver just-as-valued-value, with less need to fight against competitive clutter and noise.

Social Gaming amplifies advocacy.

Social Gaming is a great platform through which fans can 'earn' value from brands, ongoing.  

Sponsors can reward participation, contribution and sharing with 'credits' that can be redeemed for anything from more content to greater access to live events or online experiences.

Think Air Miles + Vodafone VIP.

Think FourSquare + Groupon.

Play more.  Get more.

Social gaming enables a sponsor to 'amplify advocacy' - to encourage and enable positive word of mouth through the promise of more value to the consumer.

You can't add value if you haven't listened.

The first critical step is to listen to and understand what your target audience really want as it relates to their passion.

Music fans might want cheaper access to big live events.

Comedy fans might want help learning who's hot.

Sport fans might want faster access to richer stats.

Arts fans might want privileged access to behind-the-scenes stories.

Find out what your audience value.  This becomes the value they can earn through you, through social gaming, as they spread your word.

josh@robinsonpincus.com

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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN COMEDY SPONSORSHIP GETS SOCIAL? HERE'S AN IDEA...

Comedy has huge potential for brands, not least because of its power as social currency.  The question is, are brands making the most of this potential through sponsorship and if not what could a more socially-supercharged comedy platform look like and deliver?

Historically, brands have looked down upon comedy like it’s the dark arts.  The black sheep of the sponsorship flock.  Underground, unpredictable and grungy, not polished, planned and professional like sport or even music.  Interesting then, that over the last 18 months we’ve seen big brands including mobile phone operator 3, Innocent Drinks and Fosters shift sponsorship budget out of sport and music and into comedy.  Here they find loyal audiences, cost-effective access to talent and the opportunity to show they don’t take life too seriously.  And that’s not all.  Comedy isn’t just good entertainment.  It’s great social currency.   In a world where the right kind of content is shared more quickly and easily than ever before, comedy has massive ‘share value’.   Here lies the opportunity to get so much more from comedy sponsorship than awareness that lacks value, PR that lacks relevance and live experiences that lack reach.   

When you embrace the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of comedy fans out there, active across the social web, you open up a new dimension to sponsorship activation.  Online communities give you great insight into what fans want and the cost-effective channel through which to give it to them, thanks to the social web’s built in advocacy-button.  To get the true potential out of comedy, the first question has got to be, what do comedy fans really want? 

By tapping into live forums and social networks we can listen to the natural banter that runs through communities of everyone from comedy connoisseurs to everyday people who love to laugh (aren’t we all fans of comedy in some form or other?).  One thing rings loud and true.  People love live comedy and they want more of it.  How often have you heard someone say, ‘We went to a comedy gig last night.  Never heard of most of them but it was bloody brilliant.  Don’t know why we don’t do it more’? 

Where there’s desire, there’s opportunity to add value.  And it’s the stuff that’s valued that gets shared and remembered.  If we were a brand engaged in comedy sponsorship or thinking about it, we would set out to become the hosts and facilitators of the most active comedy community.  Nike boast the world’s largest running community.  It works because the fan base is there and the opportunity to add value is broad, varied and long term, from soundtracks to crowd sourced runs to product purchase.  This is not a dip in and out activation.  It’s a longterm relationship.  Running fans will love running til their knees give out, just like comedy fans will always want to laugh.

So, what would our Comedy Club look like and how would Brand X benefit?   Comedy Club would host the best of the best in live comedy content and give members access to an ongoing and ever-evolving calendar of live gigs, from up-and-coming talent at your local pub to Alan Partridge at the MENA.  Members would earn ‘Smile Miles’ when they shared their favorite content.  Smile Miles would act as live event credits, a kind of Comedy Currency.  On average, people share content with 66 others, so Comedy Club would grow and grow.  Brand X would support grass roots by rewarding the most shared talent with their own gigs.  Comedy Club would always lead with the best content as voted by the people, so quality of content would always be high. 

This is a platform built on audience insight first, not sponsorship opportunity.  Comedy Club would be fed by a number of sponsorship deals and associations with Brand X’s pick of new talent, big talent, venues and ticket sellers.  It’s hard not to point how incredibly appropriate Comedy Club would be as a footfall driver to pubs and bars, the natural home of easy-access live gigs.

Comedy Club is an example of what a more ‘social approach’ to sponsorship can look like.  It shows how a layer of real value that is often missing from traditional sponsorship activation can be created and how choice of assets should be driven by concept, not vice versa.

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5 CRUCIAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR SOCIALLY-SUPERCHARGED SPONSORSHIP

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