InSiteMarketing

Push or Pull…regardless of the strategy, digital marketing is fast becoming a dominant communications channel in the marketing world.  I had quickly responded to an invitation to the National Sports Marketing Network conference titled ENGAGING THE SPORTS FAN OUTSIDE THE TELECAST, hosted by Sports Illustrated.
The panel consisted of some very knowledgeable professionals in the sports media world to include Jeff Price (President of SI.com), Doug Perlman (President of Accrue Advisors), Mark Basler (Vice President, Worldwide Business Development Azuki), Chris Cleary (Chief Strategy Officer Go211.com), Kenneth Fuchs (Vice President/General Manager SI Digital), and Brett Goodman (Senior Vice President, Strategic Partnerships & Business Affairs NBC Universal Sports & Olympics).

Overall, the discussion focused on how user-generated websites, blogs, mobile content and fantasy games are driving fan interest and broadening fan bases and the effect they are having on the traditional marketing mix where marketeers are use to working in.

The tone was set from the beginning by Jeff Price who opened the discussion with “how does the sport industry avoid the trap of the music industry?” citing the example of Apple and the .99 download which turned the music industry upside down.  Is the sports industry vulnerable to such an industry swing by social media?   With social media/networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube to name a few are flooding the digital space… marketers are rushing to understand how best to embrace and utilize these platforms to enhance brand recognition and to reach more customers.

While there were some differences of opinion on predicting future consumer brand interaction, specifically how younger audiences will or will not spend significant time in front of a telecast, there was broad agreement that engaging customers through digital channels will significantly grow as 50% of the worlds population (approximately 6 billion) have some sort of handheld communications device…. that is a lot of potential push/pull customer engagement opportunity.

It’s quite apparent that digital marketing is fast becoming a dominant and almost the preferred tactic when targeting Gen Now, Gen C, and Gen Z demographics.  I would think that if more people would embrace this new revolution… digital marketing would provide a plethora of open source opportunities to the sports industry.