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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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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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.

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