Sports Marketing 2.0 | Pat Coyle

The Center for Media Research published recenlty an interesting study (read it here) showing that people are consuming content more than they’re communicating online. This seems pretty important to me in that it shows (yet again) the Web coming of age as a media platform.

Funny thing is, it seems to me that even before this study came out, most people didn’t realize that communication has really been the driving force of online activity since the Web was born. I hope that this study doesn’t blind marketers even more from the fact that people are communicating online. In fact, much of the communication is ABOUT the content…so it’s a virtuous circle if we marketers play our cards right.

Still, it’s difficult for big brands to leverage the communiation part of the Web. Many don’t want to be the subject of the conversation (unless the talk is guaranteed to be positive) and others simply don’t have time to engage with the online community in any meaningful way.

So I’m sure we’re going to see a lot more content posted by brands (like Bud TV, er, maybe not), but I doubt whether too many brands will take full advantage of the Web for what it offers in terms of interactivity (man to brand). Despite my doubts, I will continue pleading with brands to give this whole Web 2.0 thing a try. We’ve got a lot of mistakes to make befoer we can figure out what works…and the only way we’ll make those mistakes is to try some stuff.

Who’s with me?