Changing the way consumers view a brand may be far less costly than previously imagined, and more lucrative, according to a recent study by Next Century Media.
The study was released by Powered (download it here) and it indicates that consumers who have ’social commerce” experiences are:
Said another way, marketing approaches which give something of value to consumers without asking anything in return appear to form a very promising class of persuasive communication. NCM has refered to this class of communications as “True Sponsorship.”
True Sponsorship can include: entertainment programs as well as educational ones, in all media; cause marketing; service advertising (e.g. helping the consumer to know which products to buy and how to use them); sponsored games; sponsored processes supporting consumer generated media; and new forms which no one has thought of yet.
The study, written by NCM’s, Bill Harvey, advises marketers to study their target consumers and to learn what kinds of social commerce and Web experiences they would likely value most, and to test those experiences using the Internet.
While the results of this study seem too good to be true (from my perspective) I sure hope the data are correct. We are basing our online sponsorship offerings on a very similar strategy.
Here’s how the Colts came to think this way
Two years ago we worked with a consulting firm called Centricity Partners to help us uncover the value drivers in our fans experiences. Specifically, we wanted to learn why season ticket holders bought or did not buy season tickets. What we found is that season ticket holders want four main things: camaraderie, consistency, access and visibility. Of these four, behind-the-scenes access and visibility (i.e. they want to be RECOGNIZED and seen as important) are the things our our season ticket holders want, but which they weren’t getting.
Centricity recommended that we should focus our initial efforts on delivering those benefits. This is the recommendation that led us to launch our social networking site for Colts fans, mycolts.net, which not only increases fans’ loyalty to the Colts, but also provides a great platform for sponsors to draft on our brand.
We tell our sponsors, if you want to get fans’ attention, do something that gives them access or visibility. Hence programs like this one from AT&T in which the telco giant sponsors our online fan community AND offers fans chances to win special “access”. Unless I missed my guess, this is exactly the type of program alluded to in the NCM Study.
So I for one am happy that NCM and Powered did this research. I hope lots of marketers read it and stop to consdier ways the study applies to sports marketing, and more specifically ONLINE sports marketing.
