Professional sports teams around the world are leveraging their brand and resources to better their communities. The social impact of sports philanthropy is growing, but it is still in the relatively early stage of development. Professional sports teams build programs with social impact missions to address a whole host of social issues, from bringing sport to underprivileged populations, empowering young women, teaching healthy lifestyles and encouraging children to stay in school. Today’s professional sports team possesses all the tools for a successful social good program.
Though the driving motivation behind sports philanthropy was originally altruistic, today, professional teams have found that their philanthropic activities add intrinsic value to the organization and benefit the team. Professional sports teams are identifying the powerful impact their brand has on members of their community, and as fan-based organizations, their success relies on building a strong and engaged community. Eli Wolff, Director of the Sport and Development Project at Brown University, notes that from a business standpoint, professional sports teams often find social impact programs lead to more tangible business results and stronger consumer connections.#
Sports teams feature massive brand values. Leveraging that brand value and using its power for social action therefore has great potential for wide social impact.
Social Impact of Philadelphia Eagles
One example of a program that successfully leverages its brand is the Philadelphia Eagles Youth Partnership. The Eagles package their program materials in all things Eagles, from the design of the vehicles to the posters, bookmarks, bookplates and storybook, optimizing their brand in efforts to attract and engage children. For example, branding playgrounds with the Eagles logo makes them attractive spaces to bring the community together. They have also used their brand to promote their Eye Mobile program, encouraging children to get their eyes checked and wear glasses to improve their eyesight. [click to continue…]
Professional sport teams each have fans that not only live in within arena zip code, but there are others who live in other states and even in other countries. Many of these fans have never been able to be communicated with by their favorite team…until now. The next question is not, “Why should I care,” but instead, “How can I capitalize on this market for additional revenue for our sports franchise?”
On the surface this photo above looks like a pretty typical fan at a baseball game holding up a baseball. Average photo except this is a picture of my brother wearing an Atlanta Braves jersey, at a Los Angeles Dodgers home game with a ball tossed to him by the Braves first baseman, Freddie Freeman. (click the link to be sure to follow Freeman on Twitter) [click to continue…]
Kristen Sonsma has spent most of her sports career in ticket sales with experience in the AFL, MLS, and NHL. Connect with her on LinkedIn or on Twitter
My only question is why are sports teams and leagues waiting around in order to miss the boat? Some sports teams are starting to use mobile marketing and are getting great results, but a lot of teams just don’t understand the value… yet.
This video is a great representation of how artists and their fans are connecting via mobile, and it is exactly the same way sports teams, leagues, and pro athletes should be connecting to their fans as well.
Let’s go over some important mobile statistics:
There are over 5 billion mobile phone users in the world.
More than 450 million Smartphones will ship in 2011
By 2013 more people will access the Internet from a mobile phone than a computer.
By 2014 7 billion devices will be connected to the Internet.
The Smartphone market will grow 4x faster than overall mobile market.
The hottest market to be in right now is deals. From Living Social to Groupon, finding a deal in your city is easier than ever. With big brands like Gap, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon already having joined in on the party, the sports world is starting to turn their attention toward this rapidly growing market.
While there have been a few sports teams who have experimented with offering discounted ticket deals through deal sites (see New Jersey Nets), sports teams need to consider the financial and brand ramifications that come from slashing ticket prices in the exchange of selling off inventory.
Win-Win Situation?
Speaking with other sports professionals, the biggest reason why they would consider working with a Groupon or Living Social is to help them move inventory that they wouldn’t normally be able to sell in a limited amount of time. Typically, this would mean tickets for a game less than a few days away.
At first glance, this would seem like a win-win situation: Fans get a great deal and the team sells off inventory that would have otherwise been considered a loss. Still, if we dig closer we will see that is not always the case.
Things To Consider
While we’ve all heard about the success stories of deal sites helping businesses grow their customer base, what rarely makes the headlines are the stories of how deal sites hurt them. [click to continue…]
Joseph is the Social Media & Marketing Solutions Manger at GAGA Sports & Entertainment where he works with professional sports teams, including the Lakers, Clippers, and San Francisco 49ers, where he develops engaging content as well as social media and digital strategies to help teams better understand and engage their fans.
Read more from Joseph and follow him on Twitter.
Today, every sports organization has a digital team that’s in charge of the upkeep and management of the teams digital assets. From the articles that go up on the website daily, to the Tweets and Facebook updates that are shared with fans, a teams digital presence has grown from just banner ads and email blasts to fan interactions and real-time content. Still, although every sports organization has a digital team in place, not all are making an impact with their efforts.
5 Questions To Ask
So how do you know if you are doing a good job? While it would be convenient if there were some sort of grading scale where A’s and B’s were easy to distinguish, instead we have to develop our own scale of what is considered ‘passing’ and what is ‘failing.
Here are 5 questions that every digital team should ask themselves in no particular order: [click to continue…]
Joseph is the Social Media & Marketing Solutions Manger at GAGA Sports & Entertainment where he works with professional sports teams, including the Lakers, Clippers, and San Francisco 49ers, where he develops engaging content as well as social media and digital strategies to help teams better understand and engage their fans.
Read more from Joseph and follow him on Twitter.
The panic button. While it actually doesn’t exist per say, it’s one that we have all encountered. Whether it be an advertisement that didn’t turn out the way we wanted or putting together a team that didn’t perform like expected, the panic button symbolizes a need for help and in some cases, realization of failure. While common sense says that we should automatically hit it when we are in the appropriate situations, too often do we tell ourselves that we can fix it or resolve it on our own.
The problem with not hitting the“panic button” when necessary is that should one fail in fixing the problem, the problem just gets worse and sometimes to the point of a total loss.
In sports, the panic button is often driven business. For example, a General Manager whose team is losing every game would be expected to be replaced, but if they are selling out every game then there is a reason to keep them. Although this should be considered a paradox, it is quite common in sports. [click to continue…]
Joseph is the Social Media & Marketing Solutions Manger at GAGA Sports & Entertainment where he works with professional sports teams, including the Lakers, Clippers, and San Francisco 49ers, where he develops engaging content as well as social media and digital strategies to help teams better understand and engage their fans.
Read more from Joseph and follow him on Twitter.
The key to an effective message is its’ ability to deliver a specific message to a specific individual. The problem with many social media campaigns today though is that strategies are often geared toward hitting a large mass audience with no specific target. In comparison, this is like submitting your resume to a company without catering it toward a specific department or position. Yes, you may get a response, but what are the odds that it’s the job you are looking for?
In the case of sports, we often see the same promotions and campaigns re-engineered for individual teams with little change. While its understandable to follow along the ‘if it’s not broken, don’t fix it’ concept, the problem is that there is a problem and we need to fix it.
Fans Will Stop Listening
A large part of why traditional media & advertising strategies have lost effectiveness is that people just stopped listening. Consumers that were open to watching 30 second commercials for a new product found that they had better things to do. It wasn’t that the product wasn’t useful or interesting, rather it was that consumers had been overloaded with same the message over and over that it lost its relevance. [click to continue…]
Joseph is the Social Media & Marketing Solutions Manger at GAGA Sports & Entertainment where he works with professional sports teams, including the Lakers, Clippers, and San Francisco 49ers, where he develops engaging content as well as social media and digital strategies to help teams better understand and engage their fans.
Read more from Joseph and follow him on Twitter.
Sports PR jobs seem like they’re hidden, but they’re really not. You just have to know where to look.
Most people can’t find Sports PR jobs because they have blinders on. They get so focused on working for their favorite team, they can’t see the big picture.
That’s understandable because of all the excitement surrounding the team and the media attention superstar athletes generate.
Chris McKinney is the president of SPORTS LAUNCH™, a career services firm dedicated to helping college students and career-changers launch sports careers. Chris' new book, How to Land Your First Job in Sports: 7 Simple Steps can be found on www.SportsLaunch.net.
We’ve all done it. Whether we want to admit it or not, we’ve all become bandwagoners of a team at some point of our sports life. UrbanDictionary poetically defines a ‘bandwagoner’ as “someone who shamelessly cheers for a particular team not because he likes them or follows them faithfully, but only because that particular team is the “popular” choice or has been or is the top team in their specific sport recently. When that team which bandwagoners follow falls from grace, they gleefully jump on the next teams bandwagon and cheer for that team.”
While bandwagoners add to the momentum of a fan base, on the other end of the spectrum, we have those that started it: loyal fans. In sports, these are the individuals who are willing to stand by a team through the highs and lows. During the good times and the bad, these fans are always there to show their support for their team. [click to continue…]
Joseph is the Social Media & Marketing Solutions Manger at GAGA Sports & Entertainment where he works with professional sports teams, including the Lakers, Clippers, and San Francisco 49ers, where he develops engaging content as well as social media and digital strategies to help teams better understand and engage their fans.
Read more from Joseph and follow him on Twitter.
When you think of sports marketing, you probably think of adults writing adult-oriented campaigns, right? A creative sports marketer, however, realizes that they can and should target the juvenile demographic as well. Not only are kids receptive to sports marketing campaigns; they can also come up with their own, using their creative talents to raise funds and grow audiences for their sports teams and products. [click to continue…]
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