MSL Conversations

A fresh perspective on communications and marketing in real-time.

April 24th, 2012Comments (1)

How The NFL Offers Scores Through Conversation Marketing by Kyle Farnham

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.

April 20th, 2012Comments (0)

The Power of Crowdsourcing Insights and Innovation by MSLGROUP Americas Community Blogger

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.

April 19th, 2012Comments (0)

Together Work’s Better: Day 4 by MSLGROUP Americas Community Blogger

This week, MSL New York Together Work’s Better winners Alyssa Horton and Leila Boukassi begin their journey in Singapore! The Together Work’s Better competition enables a winning team from each of MSLGROUP’s  four regions to visit any office in the network, to discover the people and the city, experience the work culture – and of course to have a little fun too. Alyssa and Leila are one of two teams from the Americas that won in the competition.  Alyssa and Leila suggested a Peace by PUMA campaign.  They are writing a daily blog so we can follow along their exciting adventure.


We spent our second day in the MSL Singapore office on Wednesday.  In the morning, we met with Amy Kong to hear about the healthcare environment in Singapore and her work with Alcon / CIBA Vision on a variety of projects from product launches to tough issues management. Amy, like all of our Singapore colleagues, is a jack of all trades; because the team is relatively small, each member is expected to be an expert in everything from media relations to the intricacies of regulatory bodies – and they are!

For lunch, we walked to Maxwell Food Centre, a food market with many multicultural “hawker stalls.”  We tried various local foods including the famous Tian Tian chicken rice – which was delicious! During our walk back to the office we stumbled across a novelty bar called Obama’s Irish Pub, which features photos of the US president and campaign memorabilia. The team also took us to taste durian ice cream at a local shop.  Durian is a native Singaporean fruit with a VERY distinct look, flavor and smell (we could even detect the smell in the ice cream!).

When we returned to the office, we met with Erin and Linda Lee, team leader of the corporate practice, to learn more about the region’s media landscape and MSL Singapore’s corporate work. Again, Linda’s team covers a wide spectrum of work from C-suite media trainings to cause marketing. Our day ended with Dawn, who provided an overview of Singapore’s P&G health and well-being work.

In all, our two days in the Singapore office were wonderful – we were welcomed warmly, introduced to the culture and we learned so much about how PR works in South East Asia. We’re  looking forward to sharing our learnings, including how we can work together with the Singapore office, when we return.

Anne Yourt in the Toronto office asked how the average day differs in Singapore versus the US. The office is much smaller, but the day-to-day agency experience in Singapore is quite similar to ours in New York – there is clear evidence that we share the same business values, work ethic and passion for the industry. The main differences are the focus on regional programming (emphasis on Singapore being a sort of command center, providing the smarts and the tools for employment outside the country). Media relations is also quite different due to the size (small) and structure (government regulated) of the landscape. Additionally, because the country is so small, clients are practically neighbors – it’s easy to jump into a cab for a one hour client meeting across town.

Tomorrow we’re headed across the border to Malaysia. We’ve heard internet access is very limited, but look out for our next blog in the coming days!

April 18th, 2012Comments (0)

Together Work’s Better: Day 3 by MSLGROUP Americas Community Blogger

This week, MSL New York Together Work’s Better winners Alyssa Horton and Leila Boukassi begin their journey in Singapore! The Together Work’s Better competition enables a winning team from each of MSLGROUP’s  four regions to visit any office in the network, to discover the people and the city, experience the work culture – and of course to have a little fun too. Alyssa and Leila are one of two teams from the Americas that won in the competition.  Alyssa and Leila suggested a Peace by PUMA campaign.  They are writing a daily blog so we can follow along their exciting adventure.

We spent Tuesday at the MSL Singapore office, which neighbors other Publicis Groupe partners in the commercial district of Singapore. We started the day meeting with Erin Hanson, General Manager, who had previously worked in the consumer practice in New York where she led several award-winning campaigns. Erin told us some incredible facts about MSLGROUP in the region: there are 38 offices in Asia, and the MSL Singapore office has grown from one employee to 25 employees since 2005. Although Singapore itself isn’t considered a major business and consumer market, MSL Singapore’s location and influence make it perfectly poised for regional campaign strategy development and implementation. The office is a hub for clients throughout Southeast Asia, and the practices work closely with other MSLGROUP offices and affiliates across the region.

After our meeting with Erin, we gave an overview of MSLGROUP Americas and MSL New York, and presented a few case studies highlighting our work in the New York healthcare practice. For lunch, colleagues Yvonne Koh, Neelam Banghard, Ricardo Roces, Audrey Tang and Amy Kong took us for Indonesian food. We tried the traditional Indonesian dessert cendol, which consists of kidney beans, fruits, vegetables and gelatin, topped with shaved ice, coconut milk and palm sugar. It was a dessert unlike any other we had ever had.

In the afternoon, we participated in a P&G/agency town hall meeting. It was interesting and gave us great insight into the team’s day-to-day activities. After work, the office took us for cocktails and dinner at Overeasy, Singapore’s take on the classic American Diner. The restaurant has a spectacular view of Marina Bay Sands, and the iconic Merlion is just around the corner. On our way back to the hotel we stopped to see the iconic “half-lion, half-fish” statue. It was pretty awe-inspiring!

Tomorrow we look forward to another full day with our MSL Singapore colleagues!

April 17th, 2012Comments (0)

Grammar Geeks 4.17: The Best Nouns by Jeff Young

Background

“Schoolhouse Rock” taught us that a noun is a person, place or thing . Of course, nouns are more complicated than that, especially the ones we like to use in grown-up writing. Here are some tips if you find yourself grasping for the right noun.

Usage

The best nouns are concrete rather than abstract, specific rather than general.

Mother is better than female, because it reveals gender as well as personal information. Soccer mom or mother hen say even more because they also give clues about age and attitude.

The best nouns are also evocative.

Some of the synonyms for boat, like vessel, are so vague they could apply to any means of transportation — or any container, for that matter. Commonplace nouns like boat, ship or sea craft are less abstract. Yacht is more descriptive (it reveals size and is a statement, perhaps, about the owner’s social status). A brand name, such as Boston Whaler, or a proper noun, such as the Titanic, are even more precise, allowing the reader to picture an exact boat or a specific era.

Adjectives, when used judiciously, help nouns evoke distinctive images.
“We’d wandered into a forest, surrounded by shaggy sugar pines that stood like brooding hens.” (This is no ordinary forest; vivid imagery transports the reader to a different world.)

Tip

The primary role of a noun is to paint a clear picture. When you write, don’t feel like you have to use a string of lush adjectives to replace a few precise nouns. Better to say, “I’m not in the mood for Olive Garden” than “I’d prefer not to eat commercialized Italian food in a loud, crowded, family restaurant.”