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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NEW RESEARCH: THE NEW RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FANS AND SOCIAL MEDIA...

Fans are coming together in bigger and more diverse communities than ever before.

They're creating and sharing content much more than you might think.

They're happy for brands to get involved, but right now brands aren't giving them what they want.

Click here to find out more about how fans use the social web, what they want from brands and the implications for Sponsorship & Social Media. 

To discuss the full report, give us a call.


Josh Robinson 
+44 (0)7771 903889
josh@robinsonpincus.com


Ben Pincus 
+44 (0)7785 227215 
ben@robinsonpincus.com

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SPONSORSHIP ACTIVATION: HOW TO INVOLVE FANS MORE IN SHAPING WHAT HAPPENS, WHERE AND WHEN

Traditional marketing agencies have a business model built around:

1. Selling the CREATIVITY that leads to 'the big idea'

2. Selling the MEDIA that broadcasts the big idea

The Social Web offers an alternative to brands that challenges the traditional agency model:

1. As a source of high quality INSIGHTS and IDEAS

2. As an active network where the best ideas (content) are SHARED for free 

Better insights ignite Better ideas.  

For sponsorship, this is a particularly exciting opportunity because so many of the communities across the social web are built around shared passions.  They're a hotbed of insight, waiting to be tapped.


Now we have the opportunity to listen more closely to what target audiences want and need from a brand.  Not through flawed focus groups or incentivised surveys, but through 'natural fan chatter'.

The wisdom of fans.

By listening more closely to what fans want and need we can create better activation ideas that give them what they want (often it's just help getting more of what they love).  

And by giving them what they want, we give them what they want to share: 

Content that their fellow fans will value.

Our 'Leverage Loop' model simply places listening and insight at the heart of a more effective sponsorship campaign.  By listening before giving, you involve fans more in shaping what happens, where and when.  Not just when you create a Platform, but throughout its activation.

This means your campaign works harder for longer.

  

Listen closer.  Connect better.  Reach further.

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FACEBOOK V TWITTER 2010: BRAND FOLLOWERS

Interesting to see how facebook and Twitter compare.  As pointed out by the originators of this infographic, twitter users are by and large older, a little richer and better educated.

Twitter users follow brands less but buy those that they do follow more.

Our upcoming research next week will dive deeply into how consumers are using the social web to access and feed their passions and the consequent opportunities for brands, through sponsorship.

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RESEARCH REVEALED JAN 2011: DEMONSTRATING HOW SPONSORSHIP & SOCIAL MEDIA WORK BETTER TOGETHER

Looking forward to seeing you all in what we're betting is going to be a positive and prosperous 2011.

Look out for our research which we'll publish mid-January. The first piece of research to explore how fans across sport, music, fashion, film, gaming and the arts use social media to access and share their passions.

We'll include some recommendations for how brands and rights holders can make the most of the insights and opportunities that are revealed.

Happy Holidays.

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SPONSORSHIP'S CHANCE TO BECOME THE MASS VALUE CHANNEL

Millions of fans are gathered in chattering communities across the social web.  They’re eager for content that adds value…and they’re happy to have it from brands. 

Is this sponsorship’s chance to become the mass value channel?

We have just completed the first ever piece of research to explore the connection between passions, fans and social media.  Results will be released in January 2011, but here’s a headline to keep you going through Christmas: 70% of people’s social media time is spent exploring their passions and sharing the best stuff with others that share their passions.  As with all the best stats, this makes perfect sense and draws a knowing nod.  Other than gossiping and tagging wedding photos, what else would they be doing?  

This is big news for our industry and the killer insight that supports why sponsorship and social media are perfect communication partners. 

Fan communities are big, connected and more actively contributing and sharing than advertising and media agencies would have you think.  Their various ‘social media ladders’ proffers that around 90% sit and watch while very few actually contribute and share.  (Active consumers are bad news for these guys.  Why won’t they just sit and watch!?).  These communities are crying out for content from brands that they can forward to their friends – but here’s the crunch - as long as it gives them something they really ‘need’ in their words, ‘value’ in ours.    

This valuable content isn’t always about entertainment – like another piece of shaky behind the scenes footage of a sponsored athlete doing something talented and ‘spontaneous’.  In fact, if you talk to the fans, or better still listen to their natural banter across blogs, groups and forums, you’ll find the value they’re after is something practical and helpful - something that gets them genuinely closer to what they love doing. This helpful content could be anything from priority ticket access to the chance to take part in an event rather than just watch it.  O2 Priority and Orange Wednesdays are two great examples.  It’s often the simplest stuff that works best.  (See ‘The New Value of Help’).

The perfect partnership of sponsorship and social media is founded in a potent combination of value and volume.  

Together sponsorship and social media offer the opportunity to give fans what they really want on a massive scale.  And if they value it, they’ll share it.  Why has social media caught on?  Because folks, it makes all of this so damn cheap and easy. 

Social media is sponsorship’s big chance to move on from being an expensive brand awareness, experiential and PR channel to the cost-effective ‘mass-value’ channel.  Too often, too few feel the value of a sponsorship.  Too often, insufficient insight leads to associations and activity that are more about ‘the story’ than building value-based bridges between brands and consumers.  Too often, sponsorship defaults to the measurement criteria of other channels - channels that are fast becoming outdated and insufficiently effective.

Now sponsorship has the chance to build it’s own value proposition.  To demonstrate that there is no better way to millions of consumer’s hearts (and pockets) than through socially sourced, shaped and shared passion platforms.

 

The concept of ‘mass value’ is quite possibly the Holy Grail for the marketing industry.  Can you think of another comms channel that leaves millions of consumers with something that enhances their lives in the long term? 

Sponsorship and social media have a very real future together. 

Embrace insight.  Give mass value.  Get involved. 

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SOCIAL MEDIA MAKES FANS INTO BIGGER FANS

Some of our research into how fans feed their passions through social media is starting to come through.  

It's interesting stuff.

As is always the case with the best stats, we're finding ourselves nodding and smiling as it all makes so much sense.

We really liked this one: 

Across fans of sport, music, fashion, film, arts and gaming an average of 60% of those questioned (501 respondents) said they were 'more engaged in their passions because of social media'.

Football fans are loving their teams more.  Live music lovers are following their bands further.  Goggle-eyed gamers are playing harder and more.  Culture vultures are going deeper. 

So folks, this reinforces how social media isn't just a new place to put stuff.  

It's a place where you will find the most direct connections to the biggest numbers of the most active fans of the passions your brands are involved with. 

We're pulling the research together now and will have it ready for you in the New Year...fresh facts and figures for 2011.

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SOCIAL MEDIA UNLOCKS THE 'FORGOTTEN FAN BASE'

Millions of consumers are already engaging in their passions through Social Media. The opportunity to unlock these huge, untapped audiences is big, real and cost-effective..

Social Media gives brands the unprecedented to opportunity to drive the reach and engagement of their Sponsorship platform across often ‘forgotten’ consumer communities.  

These audiences are not only engaging with their passions, but are sharing content and consequently, growing in scale.  Their hunger for more access, information, knowledge, experience and discussion is insatiable, and to date very few organisations are finding, feeding or even leading them.  The opportunity for brands is staggering.

Fig. 1: Five Premiership football clubs and their unofficial / untapped fan base vs. official groups engaged through common social media platforms. 

Just take a look at the audience numbers surrounding five of the Premiership’s top clubs.  The official, ‘managed’ channels account for less than 25% of the total social media audience.  The vast majority are those engaged by other ‘unofficial’ fan pages, groups, forums and blogs.  

These unofficial fans are of massive value to brands.  Indeed, many of them would argue they are the truer fan – keeping clear of managed communities, choosing instead a more pure and democratic dialogue.

Unofficial does not mean inaccessible.  Through strong insights gleaned directly from these audiences, brands can easily deliver desired content that will turn forgotten fans into potential customers.

Brands should consider whether they need to create their own branded communities when dropping branded content into existing communities may well be a more effective option.

Read our post 'Where to start with Social Media'. 

josh@robinsonpincus.com

  

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SOCIAL MEDIA GETS YOUR SPONSORSHIP ASSETS WORKING MUCH HARDER

Brands often find themselves in the position where their Sponsorship assets no longer deliver for their business. Whether your business has grown tired of a particular Sponsorship, your objectives have changed, or the contract of rights you signed for X years no longer appears to be relevant, Social Media offers a compelling opportunity to strengthen your Sponsorship strategy.  

Over 70% of Social Media usage is driven by people’s interests (Source: November 2010 Robinson Pincus with 2CV - 501 respondents) with likeminded individuals coming together in tribes for shared experiences around shared passions. These tribes are not elusive clouds of faceless followers but physical networks of content-hungry consumers that are of huge value to brands: a hotbed of raw data, inspirational insight and creative energy.

We access these tribes and draw out their insights.  We pinpoint passionate, vocal leaders and new potential audiences that watch from the outskirts of passion-powered communities.  We explore their behaviour and answer valuable questions that inform better Sponsorship platforms: how do they like to consume content? What do they like to share?  Where would they appreciate help in getting more of their passions? etc.

Combine this insight with a brand’s desire to engage and grow a bigger consumer base (through content that is shared) and you have a very powerful new approach to Sponsorship.  An approach that reconnects your brand with your assets and opens up a richer brand-consumer relationship with a big, targeted audience.

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IT'S NOT 'HOW MANY YOU KNOW'. IT'S 'WHO YOU KNOW'. NEW QUALITY IN SOCIAL NETWORKING IS GOOD NEWS FOR BRANDS.

Soon after rumours surfaced of facebook reaching saturation at 500m members, the company introduced a new dimension to 'groups'.  

Now users can create very specific groups of friends within their total network.  

This is about driving QUALITY back into a social experience that up until now has been more about QUANTITY.

It makes perfect sense that within your network you would want sub-groups who are together for different reasons.  Family, workmates and old school friends are obvious choices, but take a closer look and you'll see something unsurprising and intriguing.

COMMON PASSIONS ARE A BIG PART OF HOW THESE GROUPS ARE BONDING.

They're the glue that draws and keeps a big percentage of sub-groups together.

Inevitably, groups will join with other groups and people will find themselves part of bigger networks of more likeminded others.  Just like in 'the real world' where groups of friends come together as one bigger group around a shared passion. 

This is Social Networking 'catching up' with what happens in the real world, by enabling a more natural experience (or in geek speak, more intuitive and elegant).

This rise of quality has 3 hugely valuable implications for brands looking to engage with consumers and customers through Social Media:

1. The more consumers are grouped by common bonds, the more easily and COST-EFFECTIVELY they can be engaged.  

2. This then has massive value for the QUALITY OF INSIGHT that can be drawn from these 'expert groups' and used to build comms platforms that really connect.

3. Ultimately, good branded content will be shared by members with a HIGHER QUALITY OF CONNECTION - exceptionally likeminded others who are more actively interested.

We're shifting from, 'HOW MANY I'VE GOT' to 'WHO I KNOW' as a better articulation of 'WHO I AM'.

Personality and Identity are being driven into Social Networking.  This opens up great space for brands to do what they do best: feed people's desire for ways to express who they are.

How long before all brands create their own version of Nike Run, 'the world's biggest running club'?  

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WHERE TO START WITH SOCIAL MEDIA?

Building a Social Media destination, like a Facebook page, LinkedIn group or new website with added social functionality is rarely the way to embark on a Social Media campaign.  

Whilst an overall Sponsorship & Social Media strategy might ultimately feature these tools, unless you've got bags of new, on-brand content sitting in your media library, they're unlikely to be the best first step.  

Social Media is nothing without Social Content, in the same way that a billboard is nothing without an ad and a Radio Show nothing without a DJ.  Social Content comes first.  What you need to put out there comes before where you put it.  This means asking yourself the same question you normally would before embarking on any marketing activity, 'what do I want to achieve and who am I targeting?'

Your passionate target audience are already out there, using Social Media, consuming and sharing content, across many digital destinations and platforms, from blog posts to Twitter accounts to Facebook pages to specialist interest communities to good old fashioned one-way web sites.   

The key is to create something that is of value to your consumer (read our POV on entertainment vs. enablement as Social Content) and put it where they can most easily find and appreciate it.  If your Social Content offers real value, it will naturally be shared across existing destinations.  Your own destination can come when your consumers have developed a taste for the value you offer and it comes frequently enough to warrant it's own 'outlet'.   

But as a first step, create Social Content that gets your message across and is of value to your community.  This will travel and transcend boundaries.

Long before running fans flocked to Nike's Running Community (the world's largest running club), they consumed and shared news of 'NikeRun 10K' events (Social Content).

Long before live music fans embraced o2's Blueroom as a conduit to premium music experiences, they signed up and poked their friends about PRIORITY (Social Content). 

Long before football fans checked in at McDonalds Football, mums signed up and encouraged other mums to join the brand's grass roots coaching scheme, 'Mums on the Ball' (Social Content).

Content creates Connections create Community.

What do you want to say?

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