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How The NFL Offers Scores Through Conversation Marketing

Tuesday, April 24th, 2012

Kyle Farnham, Managing Director, MSL Atlanta

With the 2012 NFL Draft taking place in New York City this week, I can’t help but marvel at the countless hours of coverage and conversation there is leading up to this event. With its new primetime weeknight kickoff, the annual draft has become even more of a must-watch event for NFL fans.

The NFL Draft is Thursday, April 26 through Saturday, April 28.

From heated debates about who should be the number one pick to speculation about this year’s sixth-round sleeper, the NFL draft generates hours of conversation before the commissioner even takes the stage. Last year’s event drew a record 42 million viewers for the three days of coverage, and there’s no reason to think this year’s audience won’t be the biggest in draft history. 

It seems that the interest in and anticipation for the NFL season starts earlier each year. It’s the sports world’s equivalent to the holiday shopping season. What does the NFL do to stimulate so much conversation about the league? Why do so many people start talking about professional football six months before the opening kickoff?  And, more importantly, what lessons can marketers learn from the NFL’s conversation-creating marketing efforts?

The NFL inspires intense conversation, even during the off season.

In addition to the NFL Draft, the NFL leverages eight events, activities and assets to spark and sustain conversation about the league leading up to and throughout the season. Here’s an outline of these activities along with a key insight – or extra point – to help companies score big points in the age of conversation marketing:

1. NFL Scouting Combine: It all starts with the NFL Scouting Combine in March.  The league has turned the once private workouts of the top college players into a showcase that allows fans to salivate over their strength, scrutinize every inch of their vertical jump and speculate about their future in the league. 

Extra Point:  Offering audiences a behind-the-scenes look at the making of your next product builds anticipation and strengthens their connection to the product before it ever hits the shelves.

2. Training Camp: HBO’s popular football reality show Hard Knocks invites fans to travel to training camp and offers an all-access look at how players and coaches prepare for the upcoming season.  Now in its seventh season, the program is a reminder to marketers that consumers are fascinated with seeing things they don’t normally get to see.  

Extra Point: Making the invisible visible by giving your consumers an inside-the-huddle, first person look at what makes your company tick creates curiosity and builds trust.

3. The Pro Football Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony: This annual event has become a pre-season milestone at the end of summer.  Perfectly timed a few weeks before the season starts, the event drives conversation about the greatest players and teams in league history and serves as the stage for the pre-season kick-off game.  

Extra Point: In an age when marketers are obsessed with coming up with something new, brand heritage is often overlooked and under leveraged. Unleashing powerful marketing programs that creatively link your past to your present strengthens bonds with consumers and gives them a way to celebrate and validate their passion for the brand.

4. Fantasy Football: Fantasy Football lets any fan be a general manager and coach. The explosive growth and popularity of fantasy football, which now boasts 32 million players and generates more then $1 billion in revenue each year, has fundamentally changed the way fans follow the sport.  It’s hard to find a fantasy footballer that doesn’t love to talk about his or her fantasy team, or in many cases, teams. 

Extra Point: Shifting audiences from spectators to participants captures enthusiasm, ensures brand buy-in and builds loyalty by letting consumers call the plays; some of the most popular social media platforms offer consumers similar opportunities to be a part of your brand experience.

5. The NFL Network: All football, all the time, the NFL Network is a true football fan’s utopia.  Born out of the insight that fans are hungry for relevant content year-round, the NFL Network is now in 60 million homes and continues to grow. 

Extra Point: Creating and leveraging your own channels and producing your own content gives you control over your brand’s message and story. Identify content that resonates with your key audiences and focus more on getting the message out via owned channels versus earned.

6. NFL Sunday Ticket: Sunday Ticket allows fans to follow their favorite team from any city and “travel” to any and every NFL game from the comfort of their favorite chair. 

Extra Point:  Build programs that offer audiences on-demand access to the information and content they want – anywhere, anytime.

7. Women’s Apparel: As part of a league wide strategy, women’s product licensees have exploded in the past 12 months. With women making up 44 percent of its fan base, the NFL began the NFL Women’s Apparel: Fit For You marketing campaign last year to promote licensed merchandise, including everything from handbags and nail polish to bracelets and team apparel. Today, it’s the league’s fastest growing business.

Extra Point: It’s no secret that when in comes to PR and marketing efforts one size does not fit all. The NFL reminds us that customization of products, programs and messaging drives brand affinity and plenty of conversation.

8. Super Bowl: The NFL has turned the Super Bowl into a national holiday.  It is America’s single most-watched event.  Last year’s Super Bowl was the most watched program in U.S. television history, drawing more than 111 million viewers. The season-long debate of who’s going to make it to the Super Bowl creates countless hours of conversation in bars, on talk radio and blogs. 

Extra Point: Flipping the paradigm and ending your campaign with a splash rather than starting it that way builds momentum, increases the frequency of the conversation and lengthens the engagement with your audiences. (Don’t be afraid to celebrate success – the NFL does every year to much aplomb, even when the participating teams don’t turn out to be from the country’s biggest metropolitan markets. Great products deserve recognition).

While not every product or brand is as avidly followed as an NFL team and the NFL season, public relations and marketing pros looking to succeed in the conversation age would benefit from taking a closer look at the NFL marketing playbook. The NFL is one organization that is scoring a lot of points in building the always-on, multi-channel conversation.

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The Power of Crowdsourcing Insights and Innovation

Friday, April 20th, 2012

By Pascal Beucler, SVP & Chief Strategy Officer, MSLGROUP & Gaurav Mishra, Asia Director of Social Media, MSLGROUP

Pascal Beucler

According to the recent PwC CEO Survey of 1200+ business leaders across 69 countries, business leaders believe that crowdsourcing people’s insights are one of the main drivers for leading innovation and change. Earlier this year, we launched the People’s Lab crowdsourcing platform and approach to help our clients crowdsource insights and innovation. People’s Lab forms the core of our distinctive insights and foresight approach, which consists of four elements: organic conversation analysis, MSLGROUP’s own insight communities, client-specific insights communities, and ethnographic deep dives into these communities.

This four-part approach helps us distill a deep understanding of societal values, consumption behaviors and attitudes towards brands, not only in terms of insights that help explain our world today, but also foresights that give us a glimpse of future worlds.

Gaurav Mishra

As an example, 100+ thinkers and planners within MSLGROUP share and discuss inspiring projects on citizenship, crowdsourcing and storytelling on the MSLGROUP Insights Network. Every week, we pick up one project and do a deep dive into conversations around it — on the MSLGROUP Insights Network itself but also on the broader social web — to distill insights and foresights.

We have been sharing these insights and foresights with you on our People’s Insights blog. Now, we have compiled the best insights from the network and the blog into the People’s Insights Quarterly Magazine, which you can download from SlideShare or view below:

People’s Insights Quarterly Magazine

View more documents from MSLGROUP

We started with the belief that some of the most inspiring projects that are shaping marketing and communications are at the intersection of citizenship, crowdsourcing and storytelling. Three months and thirteen weekly insights reports later, we feel validated that our intuition was right.

Introducing The Quarterly Magazine

In the first issue of the People’s Insights Quarterly Magazine, we start off with a framework for purpose-inspired transmedia storytelling, which weaves together elements from all the three drivers of citizenship, crowdsourcing and storytelling.

Then we look at thirteen inspiring projects at the intersection of these three drivers. Many of these projects build upon at least two of the three pillars of citizenship, crowdsourcing and storytelling and some leverage all three.

We hope that you will enjoy the magazine and subscribe to receive subsequent issues. We also hope that our magazine and blog will inspire you to start a conversation on how you can distill actionable insights and foresights from conversations and communities.

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March HomeMade–ness at MSL

Thursday, March 22nd, 2012

Patrick Mellen

The inspiration came from a care package from a colleague’s mother – stuffed with cookies, brownies and some sort of puffy pastry thing made us swoon. Talk soon turned to other favorite recipes, then to a day where we all brought our favorite dishes to share. BUT the key element was the NCAA tournament bracket hanging above the snack table. Soon we fleshed out the rules for an old-fashioned cook-off and March HomeMade-ness was born. The fine art of culinary smack talk soon followed.

Participants are pitted against one another starting with the Sweet Sixteen which soon becomes the Edible Eight – only the best advance to the Foodie Four and the Championship.

Dishes are scored by judges based on three points of criteria: taste, presentation, and originality.

The winning dish from our 2011 tournament was none other than my “Overnight French Toast.” I am sad to report that in the very first round of this year’s competition my dish was bested by Jaclyn Buccellato’s “Magic Meatballs” (which were darn good).

In the preliminary rounds, each cook presents his or her dish and recounts their earliest memories of the recipe, and answers any questions. The best part of course is the eating of the food.

Much like its namesake March basketball tournament, it’s all about the upsets. A number of past fan favorites such as the aforementioned “Overnight French Toast,” “the BLT Dip” and the “Pot of Gold Brownies” have been ousted by the likes of “Cheesy Cha Cha Chicken Enchiladas,” “Spiked Nutella Zucotto” and “Sweet n Savory Chili.”

I for one, can’t wait for next week’s Edible Eight when – I’m going to wolf down a double helping of the “Chocolate Almond Torte” – right after I eat as much  “Hoagie Dip,” as I can get on my plate.

Patrick Mellen is an Administrative Assistant at MSL New York and has worked in the Consumer Practice since 2007

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Using Social Media to Predict March Madness: It’ll be Duke vs. KU

Tuesday, March 13th, 2012

Bill Bode is with Schwartz MSL San Francisco

It’s March, which can only mean one thing to the Schwartz MSL Research Group- it’s time to once again get out our calculators and basketballs- it’s Social Media March Madness time.

Since we first starting measuring social media muscle amongst college fan bases back in 2008 (we believe we were the first to do it), the NCAA Social Media rankings have slowly become one of our favorite and most popular analyses of the year. This year, two members of the Schwartz Research Group (Bill Bode and Kiley Phalan) took the lead. As Syracuse alum, Kiley had high stakes rooting on her Orangemen. On the other hand, Bill’s alma mater, Towson University barely missed the tournament. (Just kidding. This year, Towson set a NCAA Division-I record 41-game losing streak. Go Tigers!)

Twitter exploded in 2011, and college hoops fans have taken notice. After years of using Facebook fans as our primary data point, this year, the Schwartz MSL Research Group enhanced and refined our methodology. We realized Facebook fans of the Schools main page did not measure engagement with the basketball team. When analyzing brands it is essential to analyze the right basket. Additionally, which so much sports commentary happening on Twitter, we added that to our analysis for the first time this year.

How do we determine a winner?  To determine each school’s SMPR (Social Media Power Ranking), we used the following formula: (# of Facebook fans for each college basketball team + # of Twitter followers for each college basketball Twitter handle/Number of students attending the university, according to Wikipedia.) Sure, it’s not an exact science, but it’s the closest we can get to assess each school’s social media prowess and compare them against each other. This also eliminates school size as a factor in determining the winner.

We won’t keep you waiting. Ladies and gentleman, your 2012 March Madness Social Media Power Rankings:

Observations:

•    Kansas takes the top prize over Duke, with a SMPR of 5.244

•    Last year’s winner, Ohio State, is eliminated in the first round this year to #15 seed Loyola MD. This is likely due to our change in methodology, requiring the Facebook and Twitter fan pages to be basketball-exclusive (Ohio State has 1,135,676 likes, but only 18,042 fans of the Basketball team). This is the biggest upset throughout the tournament.

•    The West is easily the weakest bracket. Memphis is able to wiggle their way into a Final 4 appearance, despite the fact that Syracuse, UNC, Gonzaga and UConn all have stronger rankings- luck of the draw!

•    This year’s biggest buzzer beater was the closest match up we’ve seen in the history of Schwartz MSL’s SMPR- Memphis topped Mizzou in the Elite 8 with a difference of .002.

•    Two members of the Schwartz MSL Research Group, @mcclennan and @kphalan, swear Syracuse will do better in the Dance.

The Top 10 by Social Media Power Ranking:
•    Kansas- 5.244
•    Duke- 4.577
•    UNC- 3.957
•    WVU- 3.307
•    Gonzaga- 3.165
•    Syracuse- 2.811
•    UConn- 2.205
•    Memphis- 1.832
•    Mizzou- 1.830
•    Michigan State- 1.650

Bill Bode joined Schwartz MSL San Francisco in 2010.  He’s an account executive who works with a variety of clients and industries, including consumer, healthcare and event planning.

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It’s a B2B SxSW Monday

Tuesday, March 13th, 2012

Mark McClennan, SVP, Schwartz MSL Boston

Today was my last full day at SxSW and it was once again filled with great discussions. For once I decided to forgo payments panels, and spent more of my time in panels that discussed B2B social media as well as a panel on brand journalism, and yes, one on the future of money.

The brand journalism panel and B2B panels were filled with a lot of insight and tips that will be of interest to our B2B clients and to B2B communications professionals.

First, it is clear that B2B companies are embracing content marketing. According to a survey from Marketing Profs, 49% of companies plan to increase their content marketing spending in the next 12 months. The two biggest content challenges these companies face are: 41% their content is not engaging enough and 20% have trouble producing enough content. As trusted advisors, communications professionals need to find ways to help our clients overcome both of these challenges.

This brand journalism panel, and a solo presentation from Tim Washer, Cisco’s Senior Manager of Social Media, hit on a key issue: B2B companies need to remember to talk to people in a human way.

B2B purchasing decisions are made both on facts and emotions. If you sell on just speeds and feeds in a competitive market, you are at a competitive disadvantage. Communicators need to keep this in mind and call out the human elements inherent in any story.

Following are four other key insights it took from the panels today:

  • Gamification is everywhere and is starting to be used to drive B2B engagement. When people hear about gamification they tend to think of consumer brands, Foursquare badges or Scvngr. But Cisco has added badges to at least some of its blogs. Now visitors can receive badges for visiting the blogs, leaving their first comment, leaving 10 comments, Tweeting the blog post, etc. This is a great step. It is an easy and focused incentive to drive the business outcomes a company desires (engagement and awareness). IBM and Xerox also spoke about how they are using gamification, with IBM using it internally to drive activity and identify those most passionate about social media
  • Re-examine how you gather registration information. Cisco and other B2B companies are using Facebook and OpenID to enable social login. Why does this matter? Since Cisco implemented it, they have seen a  40 percent reduction in cost and 20 percent increase in registration.
  • B2B Needs to embrace video – If your B2B company is not yet using video as part of its communications strategy you are missing great opportunities. Here is a great video from Cisco about how it is helping in Africa. It does a great job humanizing the story and moving it beyond the basics.
  • Look at humor. This one is near and dear to my heart as I do standup comedy in my spare time, and understand the power of humor in business. Humor in B2B can engage your prospects and customers. It is a positive emotion, humanizes the brand, builds goodwill and cuts through the noise. If you don’t have the budget, go to a film school and ask the professor for his best seniors. Offer them an internship and $1000 if you end up using their final product. One example of humor in action comes from this Cisco Valentine’s video. It has almost 200,000 views and drove coverage in the New York Times, Network World, Light Reading and other outlets. See it here.

If B2B communicators start doing just one of these things that they may not be doing today, they will help their brand prosper and their communications programs deliver greater ROI.

The five most quotable observations from Monday at SxSW:

  • “Content” is the new black
  • Your B2B story is good enough for YouTube, your clients and prospects even if it may not be good enough for TV
  • Information without analysis in the information age is as valuable as stone in the stone age
  • Simplicity sells.  We make things complex because frequently we are too insecure to be simple. But look at Apple.
  • Question conventional wisdom. For Trulia, blogs about sports figures drove 3x the traffic as those about celebrities

If you have any questions in this post, leave a comment or tweet me at @mcclennan to meet up at SxSWi.

Mark W McClennan, APR, is a Senior Vice President at Schwartz MSL Boston where he heads the consumer technology, financial services and research group.

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