My dad was in the money management business and he used to tell his prospects “everyone has a financial plan, either by design, or by default.” It seems to work the same way with Myspace. If you’ve got a recognizable brand name (like an NFL franchise for example), then chances are you have a “myspace” page, whether you know it or not. You are actively or passively managing your brand (on-line presence).
The question for all of us is “what are we going to do about it?”
My trusty assistant, Daron Williams, has been doing some digging around inside myspace and she uncovered several NFL teams’ Myspace pages. I’m not sure if these are ‘official’ but several have a great deal of myspace friends.
Chicago Bears (7,293 friends)- http://www.myspace.com/chicagobears
Philadelphia Eagles (10,420)- http://www.myspace.com/philadelphiaeagles
Miami Dolphins (mascot) (1.831)- http://www.myspace.com/miamidolphins
New England Patriots (529) - http://www.myspace.com/newenglandpatriots
Baltimore Ravens (1,209)- http://www.myspace.com/baltimoreravens
San Diego Chargers (7,821)- http://www.myspace.com/sandiegochargers
New Orleans Saints (2,560)- http://www.myspace.com/nosaints
Tampa Bay Buccaneers (589)- http://www.myspace.com/tampabaybuccaneers
Arizona Cardinals (562)- http://www.myspace.com/azcardinals
First, we need to find ourselves and gain control of our trademarks
Many of these pages seem to have been created by individual fans, which raises a couple of issues. Is it better to allow fans to use our name and trademarks? Or do we need to assert a little control?
For the Colts, when we finally woke up and looked at Myspace, we found a nice young fan had already signed up our most desired URL, www.myspace.com/colts, and was freely using our registered trademarks. We see this type of behavior quite a bit, and we have to make a judgement call as to whether to allow it. In this case, we decided to send a request to Myspace to take that page down due to trademark infringement. They took it down in about 2 minutes, and we were up and running with our URL.
Next we need to DESIGN our myspace plan.
So we stopped a fan from using our name and marks, and we may have hurt feelings in the process, so what are we going to do with this URL now that we’ve got it? That’s what we’re trying to figure out.
Looking through these NFL pages we noticed that some team sites have attracted quite a few friends. We asked ourselves, “what are they doing right,” and we began to form a strategy for how we plan to use Myspace.
Step 1. At least initially, we will seek to leverage the Colts myspace page to drive traffic to our main website and to our social network. We will essentially syndicate or content to the myspace page (RSS) and hope that visitors will click on those links and come visit our sites.
Step 2. In addition, we will create a register to win contest that gives Myspace users a reason to link up with us and become our friends inside Myspace. Why build friends in Myspace? Well, mainly because there is already a community there and, we’re noticing, it has a different vibe from the one on our current site. The differences in fan personalities on our Fan Forum and on Myspace are striking. On our Forum there is a certain decorum. There are rules. Regular visitors feel strongly about maintaining these rules. On Myspace, things are quite a bit looser.
Bottom line, some fans prefer Myspace, either because they grew up there, or they want to let their hair down a little (translation they don’t want to be censored). Regardless of their personal preferences, they’re all Colts fans who we want to attract into our community. Our hope is that mycolts.net will become a place where all types of fans can get (and do) what they want. For now, we need to meet them where they’re at.
Step 3. Finally, we will seek our own players Myspace pages and try to link to them as friends. This is a bit of a tricky issue. Our players have their own brands to manage. Many have personal Websites and many have Myspace pages. As a team we are somewhat restricted in terms of what we can and cannot do with players. For example, I doubt that our players will be encouraged to create personal profile pages inside our social network, even though that would make total sense. We may get there someday, but for now I’m guessing the team will choose to mind its own business (on-line) and let the players do the sam.
But we believe fans would appreciate it if someone aggragated all the player pages into one place. Seems obvious that the Colts Myspace page would be the place where that happens. Because of its very nature, Myspace gives us a way to link with our own players in a a more casual (somewhat more neutral) atmosphere. So that’s what we’ll try and do. We think that will cause more fans to visit, link up as friends, and perhaps visit our site(s) and join our fan network.
So there you have it. A tidy little 3 step plan - by design.
These three things will give us a start toward leveraging the community that already exists inside Myspace. Someday, we may even decide to make an investment to become a paid advertiser inside myspace, like many brand have already done, if we can figure out how to produce measureable profits from it. Before we start spending money, however, we want to pay attention to what the major on-line brands are doing with Myspace. As these marketers discover the value of social networks, we hope to invite them to sponsor our own.
There is a growing movement lately for brand marketers to engage with the myspace community. Here are few examples we’ve found:
Burger King: http://www.myspace.com/burgerking
Procter & Gamble: http://www.myspace.com/secret
Intel: http://www.myspace.com/centrinoduo
Sierra Mist: http://www.myspace.com/sierramist
Wal-Mart: http://www.myspace.com/walmart
Wendy’s: http://www.myspace.com/wendysquare
VW: http://www.myspace.com/misshelga
Ricky Bobby: http://www.myspace.com/rickybobby
John Tucker: http://www.myspace.com/johntucker
Jack in the Box: http://www.myspace.com/jackbox
This is an important trend to watch. I read recently that Myspace now accounts for almost 2% of all traffic to retail E commerce sites. That is, Myspace is driving real traffic to other sites and driving real transactions. With over 130 million profiles, it’s a force to be reckoned with and an opportunity waiting to be seized.
More and more brand marketers (i.e. sponsors) are looking for ways to tap into social networks, position their brands, get close to consumers, and ultimately drive transactions. It is these very marketers who we want to partner with. We’ve got a social network too. We’re thankful for Myspace for blazing the trail and getting advertisers But we gotta have a plan, or one will be designed for us.
More reading on the subject:
Here’s a good article on the subject from ClickZ
Your posts keep getting better and better! Wow!
Keep in mind that there is an ‘adoption’ trend on the internet. People catch wind of something and they jump on it. Then something comes along better and they jump ship. Some analysts are starting to see this trend with MySpace. The service really has not improved in quite some time… and other social networks are beginning to attract more attention. As well, the early adopters have already moved on.
What is great about a Colts social network is that your fans don’t ‘move on’ (or very few of them do). It’s why you folks are the perfect source for a social network. You already have one… just not online yet.
Sooo, when are you quiting to become a full time blogger? Seriously, these have been great posts. Thank Daron Williams for me, saved me a ton of time digging through myspace for other team sites.
I do wonder if these are all run by the teams like you pointed out, I mean who gets to pick the #1 friend? Interesting who the Chargers chose…
I am amazed at the very fast response myspace had to removing content that infringes on profiles. I would have thought they’d be overloaded with requests, but perhaps just too much of this flies under the radar still on most company radar.
Mark,
Both actually. I’ve posted before about getting “Go Daddied”. I do have a problem with people making commercial use of someone else’s registered marks. In this case, the use wasn’t commercial, but there was some rather unsavory “content” posted on the fan site, which is what made it easier to ask MySpace to shut it down. Part of the reason we’re creating MYCOLTS.NET is to provide a place where fans can legally use our marks in a more controlled way. BTW, thanks for commenting and mentioning me on your blog http://moblogsmoproblems.blogspot.com/
Very encouraging for a newish blogger.
Paul,
I am amazed at the very fast response myspace had to removing content that infringes on profiles. I would have thought they’d be overloaded with requests, but perhaps just too much of this flies under the radar still on most company radar.
Nothing beats a cease and desist from your friendly law firm to the right person at Myspace. I must admit I was surprised how fast that happened. Thanks for the support. I’m finding the blog is allowing me (forcing me) to get my thoughts together. In fact, my collgeagues were joking today that if they want to know what our datbase marketing strategy is, then you have to read my blog…guess I need to spend more time talking to them, huh?
[...] I stumbled on this article today. Thought readers might find it interesting in light of my post the other day about ways NFL teams might use Myspace. [...]
[...] MySpace is one of the top sites that refer traffic to Colts.Com, and it is one of the top sites people visit after visiting Colts.com, so we have to have a strategy to leverage its popularity. A few weeks back I wrote a more detailed post about our “MySpace’ strategy. We’re currently working on a MySpace page for the Colts. It’s not posted yet, but it will be soon. Related Posts:Profiting from the team Website - Part 2 of 5Profiting from the team Website - Part 1 of 5Sponsors discovering “Coltsville,” the ultimate target marketUser Generated Content: take what they’re giving youWhat business are we in? [...]
I like Pat’s idea of a cease and desist order. The problem is that some of the internation and offshore companies are immune to lawsuits because of their offshore structure. I don’t want to bore you with the details but only a company with an onshore presense is at risk and they know it.