Sponsorship has been increasing in popularity as a marketing tool for brands to create awareness, drive sales or new business, and increase customer loyalty or employee engagement.  With added interest and investment in Sponsorship, brands are now beginning to tread very carefully around the marketing tool and here are some of the reasons why. 

Mismatched brands and rights

Brands spend a lot of time and money carefully planning and deciding on the right property to sponsor (either this or its Chairman’s choice).  Despite this, there are brands that have spent huge sums of money on the wrong rights, which have not paid dividends and certainly haven’t offered much return on investment.  In some cases sponsorship has had negative effects in terms of ROI and a bad fit between brand and property has led to damaged reputations for the former and reduced commercial value for the latter.  However, today, brands have become much savvier about what they attach their name to because of the huge cost of sponsorship and with the global recession this has never been as crucial as it is now. 

Financial Services

During the recession’s worst moments any financial services company about to spend money on sponsorship was met with harsh criticism and serious public backlash.  Even now, as we begin coming out of the worst of it there are still strong opinions on the practice.  Bank of America ended any talks with the New York Yankees due to huge financial difficulties and UBS cancelled its sponsorship of the Hong Kong Open after it received a $59.2 billion bailout from the Swiss government.  Both did so for fear of major public backlash.   RBS on the other hand announced $41 billion in losses just after extending its sponsorship of the Six Nations – a decision which was met with outcry, especially as it is 70% owned by the government. 

The effects of digital

With digital, bad news can travel extremely fast.  This has meant that companies have had to rethink marketing strategies.  Bad press around a property can cause devastating effects for any company that has created a strong association through heavy marketing activity.  To illustrate the enormous implications of a scandal, combined with the power of digital, just look at Tiger Woods.  As soon as the story broke about his behaviour it spread across the world in seconds.  Shareholders of Nike, Gatorade, and other sponsors consequently lost a collective of $5 to $12 billion due to a significant drop in their stock’s values. 

Embarrassment 

Poorly performing teams, embarrassing scandals, politically damaging stories.  These are all reasons for brands (or in some cases properties) to cut-off associations with partners.  Famous and very recent examples of this are Accenture dropping Tiger Woods, Nationwide dropping the FA, and only last week, two Indian state-run firms – NTPC and Power Grid Corp of India – have decided to scrap their multi-million dollar sponsorships of the Delhi Commonwealth Games due to negative publicity around allegations of corruption, mismanagement and malpractice. 

In addition, the BP oil fiasco that has engulfed the Gulf of Mexico has severely damaged the reputations of many of the arts properties it sponsors, primarily The Royal Opera House, Tate Galleries, and British Museum.

Brands are now very cautious about what they attach their name to.  Understanding sponsorship and the effect that it has on consumers is key to understanding the possible risks of association, as well as the benefits.

The recent Tiger Woods crisis showed the world how brands and athletes are tightly linked. While Accenture, Gatorade, AT&T dropped the golfer, other brands such as Gillette and Procter and Gamble, have significantly dimmed down their use of Tiger in advertising campaigns. EA Sports played differently as  Tiger shared his PGA Tour 2011 video game cover for the first time in 13 years. On the other hand, Nike stood by his athlete and aired an interesting, yet controversial advertsing campaign.

Athletes are the icons of sports brands. The Tiger Woods case showed  us that it can be a double edged sword.  I reckon the most famous football marketing icons would be David Beckham, Zinedine Zidane & Lionel Messi  among others for adidas, Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney & Didier Drogba (among others) for Nike. Eto’o being the Puma icon for some years now. 

It’s not an easy task to link a player to a brand. It is a long way process. Brands have a very well thought scouting system, and know talented young players before they get under mediatic spotlights. Sponsorship deals are being made, with parents agreement, and the kid grows up with the brand throughout his career. For those who saw the U-19 final where France deafeated Spain 2-1, all these youngsters were (already) wearing either adidas, Nike or Puma footwear. Obviously, these brands did not come up yesterday to add these players to their portfolio.

Gael Kakuta, the Chelsea player, Alexandre Lacazette the Olympique Lyonnais striker and Cédric Bakambu are the perfect examples. Three upcoming french stars, the first one wears the Superfly Vapour II, the OL player strikes with the adidas adizero F50 and Bakambu scored 2 goals against The Netherlands with his Pumas.

The “big three” are in constant look for the next Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo. Once players are contracted by either one the three (adidas, Nike, Puma) it is difficult for the other two to step in. In other words, I don’t see Nike approaching Xavi nor adidas willing to sign Didier Drogba. Not only the Spaniard and the Ivory Coast player are already strongly “stamped” by their current sponsor but it will be a very costly deal if it gets through. Secondly I would like to think that the sponsors would rather invest in signing new young players with this amount of cash.

Brands link their image (and vice versa) to footballers from a very early age and this is a long term investment which will pay off when these talented players will lift a World Cup or Champions League trophy. In the meantime, they would have encapsulated their sponsors brand image and values. They would have represented the brand throughout their career. For instance, Zidane & Beckham will always be associated with the adidas brand and ultimately with the Predator boot. Recently, we have seen Nike’s effort to market Cristiano Ronaldo with the Mercurial Vapor Superfly II and Rooney with the T90 Laser III.

Happy to hear your thoughts!

Even in the sports industry where results on the field typically speak for themselves, communication is becoming increasingly more important and valuable.

Take Arsenal FC for example. The North London club is adopting a more sophisticated sports marketing model and central to this is a shift to a US-influenced corporate communication policy. The first step towards the new business model began in January 2009 when the club appointed Ivan Gazidis, then deputy commissioner of Major League Soccer in the USA, as its new chief executive. The club’s publicized recent search for a new head of communications, to replace Amanda Docherty after 12 years in the post, is further evidence of the club’s new approach to communication.

Arsenal is seeking an authentic voice which can articulate the brand values that the club represents. On a daily basis, Arsenal FC, like any other business, has to share meaningful and relevant information with customers (fans), sponsors, partners and investors – increasingly on a global scale.

The chosen person for the open head of communications position will have to answer to and work with the great Arsene Wenger who has had a colossal presence and influence at the club since his arrival in 1996. Wenger himself is a great communicator who can converse in six languages, has a master’s degree in Economics from the University of Strasbourg and is somebody who has real confidence in statistical analysis. In other words, Wenger and his coaching staff, who manage the club’s assets on the pitch, also understand the importance of information and communication.

The Gunners were valued by Forbes in 2010 as the 3rd most valuable soccer team in the world after Manchester United and Real Madrid, with an expected value of £837 million ($1.2 billion). The club was ranked 8^th most valuable sporting franchise overall. Arsenal’s shares are still traded on the Plus market, an exchange for smaller companies, meaning that anyone can buy shares.  So anyone could potentially have a vested interest in the regular statements from Avenell Road, Highbury N5.

If the club can successfully embed the new corporate communication policy, it should find it easier to develop and communicate brand values domestically and globally – and that means generating more revenue for the club.

There are different disciplines of social media. Broadly they can be broken down into - Listening, Talking, Supporting and  Innovating. I think all organizations can (and should) do the  listening piece,  if for nothing else than as a planning tool for future activity or simply seeing what is being said about them, their competitors and their industry –basic research.

However, maybe the time actually isn’t right for your organization to start ENGAGING. The social media echo chamber is noisy at the moment and some companies have done their brand more harm than good by getting into it when they shouldn’t have. So, even though it may seem that every man and his dog is now ‘doing’ social media, if any of the following sound familiar then maybe your business isn’t quite ready to jump on the engagement bandwagon.

1. You don’t have the resources

Plain and simple, if you don’t have the money, the time or the man power to dedicate to social communications then you won’t be able to execute it properly. In spite of what you may have heard, social media isn’t free. It takes the same level of resource as any other marketing or communications initiative and so you need to find budget from other areas of the business that maybe aren’t performing, you need to include social in staff’s job role’s or hire the skills you need and you need to put in the ‘hard yards’ in terms of time. There are real, financial benefits from implementing social programs into your organization, but it won’t happen by magic and doing anything ‘half arsed’ is going to fail in the long run.

2. Your customers aren’t using social media

I know its hard to imagine that anyone in the known World isn’t on social media but, while the numbers seem impressive, the fact is not everyone is! You need to do the research before any program to determine if your customers are using social technologies and if so, which ones. You can throw up a Facebook fan page, create a Twitter account, jump on Foursquare and upload videos to your YouTube channel until the cows come home, but if your customers aren’t there then it’s a waste of time. Fish where the fish are, otherwise you are just creating noise.

3. You have no idea why you are doing it!

As with any marketing and communications program, you need a clear strategy and execution plan. Going through the planning stage will help determine whether social is going to be effective for your business, will make sure your business objectives are aligned with the activity and help determine what measurement metrics need to be applied. If you luck out and manage to create a thriving, engaged community by simply creating an account and ‘joining the conversation’ (I am hating that phrase a lot as well!) then …High 5, but you are in the minority! Some sports brands, celebs, fashion labels etc might, might be able to pull it off but I would advise spending the time doing the planning.

4. Your staff aren’t trained how to use social communications

Unless you are planning on outsourcing all the engagement (which I highly advise against and could actually be another point all of its own) then your staff are going to be on the front line, talking with your current and future customers…so they better be ready! There are countless social media shockers to draw upon where the underlying reason for the ‘fail’ is lack of training and understanding of how to use the technology or the rules of engagement in a given community. You wouldn’t let an untrained intern lead your marketing programs, so don’t let them do so with social. There is a world of difference between using Facebook, LinkedIn or a blog for personal use and running a successful social program for a business.

5. You’re not seeing this as a long term initiative

If you are from a marketing or advertising background, then you will be comfortable with campaigns. Campaigns are planned, executed, measured and then they end. Social is a continuum. It’s an ongoing process of interaction with your customers (or at least it should be). If you manage to create a community around your brand, product or industry then you need to keep fuelling it to get to the real gold nuggets of business intelligence and advocacy, the last thing you want to do is lose contact with the people who can help sustain and innovate your business with you.

What have I missed? What other reasons are there for a business to not start engaging with their customers through social media? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

One of the most common things we do when looking at a new way of doing things is to look at who is doing now and who is doing it well.

This is certainly true when it comes to working in social media in the UK.  Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and many others are inventions from the US and rightfully they were the first to fully understand its potential for businesses and then sport.

When I look at examples of best practice in the industry I will naturally look to people who are the foremost thinkers on social media + marketing are also based there such as Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, Lewis Howes, Seth Godin and many more.

Why can this be a problem?  Well, take a step back for a moment and think about the differences in personality.  We see Americans as being brash, self confident and loud (sorry for the sweeping generalisation but just take it in the context of this post… it works I promise!).  Whilst we British are seen as being traditional, stiff-upper-lipped and more inhibited.

So when we see US athletes, thought leaders and businesses tweeting every few seconds, checking into everywhere they go and shouting from the roof tops what a great job they are doing, would we copy exactly what they do?

On the whole probably not.  We are nowhere near as good at self publicity when we are building up our on and off line profiles.  Social Media provide us with a massive opportunity to let people know we are experts in our field and make connections around the world.

To do this you have to put yourself up there and not be afraid to show that you know your topic and are confident enough to write, make podcasts or videos about it.  You need to do this regularly and consistently to let people know that you do what you do and that they should hire you.

There are examples of people making videos and websites devoted to getting them a job with a certain company… and it succeeding.  I am not saying we need to become American and copy everything they do and say.  But if you can let go of your inhibitions and shout from the roof top every once in a while, you will be amazed at how many people are listening.

By Ardi Kolah

Over the last 48 hours, senior sponsorship executives from 55 leading brand owners including adidas, Nike, BT, Barclays, LloydsTSB, Thomas Cook, Emirates, O2 and others received an invitation to take our short survey on their corporate social responsibility (CSR) and grass roots activities as part of their investments in sports sponsorship.

In broad terms, the survey explores the importance of CSR within the total marketing and communication mix, the underlying reasons for investing in CSR and grass roots activities, the impact on reputation and image of the brand owner and whether they measure outcomes as a result of these activities. We hope to survey the attitudes of all London 2012 sponsors at all levels plus those sponsors that spend the most in football, rugby, cricket and athletics.

I want to express our sincere thanks to Karen Earl, chairman of the European Sponsorship Association, Sally Hancock, Director, Olympic Marketing, Lloyds Banking Group, Mark Phillips, Head of Brand Marketing, adidas and marketing guru Peter Fisk who provided us with invaluable guidance and input regarding the survey at meetings we held with them about the research project over the past couple of weeks.

We are also delighted that Dr. Georgios Kavetsos, Research Fellow at the Faculty of Finance at Cass Business School has joined our team. Georgios is an economist and his doctorate previously looked into the impact the London 2012 Olympics announcement had on both the stock and property markets and the effect of hosting the Games on sports participation in Britain. The study we are conducting will have a strong economic and financial focus and having Georgios on the team ensures that we won’t leave any financial stone unturned!

The survey technique we are using at this stage of the CSR and sports sponsorship research project is called a Likert-type scale, named after its inventor, US business psychologist Professor Rensis Likert.

Part of the deliberations about the use of the Likert-type scale centred around the use of “neither agree nor disagree” as a choice for the respondent to a survey statement. There’s a question mark in academic thinking about what this response actually means in most cases – a view that I agree with.

And linked to this was a fascinating debate within our team about the merits of a five or seven point Likert scale!

One academic school of thought suggests that a Likert-type scale that allows for a neutral point makes people gravitate to it. Georgios recommended that we adopted a scale that was 7-point without a mid-point instead of the more regularly used 5-point with a mid point. And this is what we’ve adopted for this study.

And even the positive to negative or negative to positive order of the scale was debated in the early stages of the questionnaire construction, and it was decided to go with ‘Disagree Strongly’ being the lower number, and ‘Agree Strongly’ being the highest number on the sale.

We also decided that these two polar opposite responses would be the only anchor labels in the scale given that the Likert-type scale is supposed to be a continuous scale and so labeling each point is akin to a stepwise gradation and therefore risks distorting the research findings. In this way, respondents aren’t bound by the labels in the middle, and as a result the scale we are using is continuous. So no labels apart from the anchors!

So as you’ve just read, there’s more to ‘agreeing’ and ‘disagreeing’ than may think!

Hello everyone,

On June 18, I wrote an article on how non World Cup sponsors are linking their brand to the biggest football event. Consumer’s awareness on Nike as a World Cup partner significantly increased. I based my sources on a survey The Nielsen Company carried out from May 7th to June 6th 2010, therefore before World Cup starts.

NM Incite, Nielsen Mc Kinsey Company, issued a follow up survey from June 11-25th*, and the results is worth looking at. In fact, the World Cup sponsors are now trusting the VIP seats of having their brands associated to the FIFA World Cup.

In the “Nike wrote its future” article, I pointed out that although not being a FIFA Sponsor, Nike managed to link its brand to the World Cup. This achievement is strongly due to many elements. The “write the future” marketing campaign contributed to a huge online buzz. On field, Nike sponsored 9 Federations during the World Cup** with key players such as Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo, Drogba regardless of their  performances (which were poor). Another element to consider is Nike positioning itself as the football brand caring for the environment.

However, since World Cup started on June 11, adidas recovered and positioned itself at the top of the World Cup brand recognition. Indeed a follow up survey from The Nielsen Company (from June 11th-25th) points out that in the first two weeks of the tournament adidas overtook Nike as the top brand. “Adidas buzz accounted for 25.1% share of World Cup buzz online compared to 14.4% before the event. Nike, meanwhile, dropped from 30.2% to 19.4%.”

Ironically, the Jabulani controverse strongly contributed to this recovering.  The first week of the World Cup, 8% of all english World Cup related messages were about the matchball. This said, adidas sponsored 12 Federations in South Africa,  is the official matchball supplier, launched a very well received UMU campaign about unity and diversity, benefits from ad boards exposure, and sponsors  world class players Lionel Messi, Villa and Robben to name a few. Those elements did play a key role.

Pepsi also did some great efforts to associate its brand to the World Cup. The Pepsi ad launched before World Cup starring Henry, Messi, Kaka, Lampard and Drogba was a big success. However, the official World Cup beverage brand, Coca-Cola received more football apraisal than its competitor. Not only Coca-Cola did launch a cool ad celebrating……football celebrations, but Coke also executed a fantastic World Cup  Trophy Tour worldwide.

The survey also emphasised on the fact that other official sponsors managed, with smart marketing activations, to link their brand and image to the FIFA World Cup. Hyundai/Kia for instance (from 2.4% to 4.7%) and McDonald’s (2.8% to 4.2%).  The overall share of buzz for the 10 official World Cup partners/sponsors increased from 52% to 66% since the start of the tournament.

Bottom line is that sponsorship is vital for big sporting events. However, being a sponsor of the FIFA  World Cup or the Olympics is NOT a guarantee for marketing success and significant return on investment. I would even say that creativity, inovation and smartness must be a priority for sponsors, as it is proven that their competitors are not asleep!

** Although Umbro belongs to the Nike Group, I do not count the Umbro brand within the Nike ones.

* The NM Incite follow-up study compared the share of online buzz between World Cup sponsors and their major competitors in relation to the World Cup in the run up to the event (month-long period ending June 6th) and during the first two weeks of the tournament (11th -25th June). English language World Cup-related messages on blogs, message boards, groups, video and image sites – including Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter – were monitored for the study.

When brands consider sponsorship properties, they aim to maximise external opportunities – increased brand recognition, brand awareness, loyalty, customer numbers and most importantly, sales.  However, during a downturn, when sponsorship budgets are questioned by CEOs and brand marketers alike, the internal benefits to a company of sponsorship activity are often forgotten, leaving work forces bereft of a cohesive brand identity and the motivation that goes with it.

Employee engagement has been the hot topic at recent sponsorship conferences and there couldn’t be a better time for it to come back into the spotlight.  With morale in business at an all time low, while half of UK businesses maintain pay freezes and have put recruitment on hold, some businesses are seeing their sponsorships as opportunities to boost employee engagement and to inspire, enthuse and re-energise staff. 

Why engage your employees?

Engagement is key to competitiveness and innovation.  Motivated employees equate to increased productivity, increased effectiveness and increased retention.  Particularly in consumer-facing brands, the employees reflect the brand and carry that brand image with them in everything they do. This principle applies equally from the top level CEO to the call centre worker – maintaining brand values at every level is crucial.

It’s not the winning; it’s the taking part

A case in point – Olympic sponsors seem slow to capitalise on the obvious benefits and value of such a unique asset.  A massive 85% of organisations have no current plans for utilising the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympics Games to engage staff – shocking results when considering that employee engagement has been a key element to sponsorship activation for many years.  This also demonstrates one of the reasons why 80% of industry experts believe domestic sponsorship of the London 2012 Olympics games does not represent value for money.

Engaged employees perform up to 20 percent better than less engaged employees and are 87 percent less likely to leave the organisation than employees with lower levels of engagement, so it’s certainly worth taking part in this activation method.

Carrying the torch

The Sydney 2000 Games was a significant moment for sponsorship and employee engagement. 

As sponsors of the Sydney 2000 Olympics Games, Westpac developed a stakeholder engagement project that provided more than 5,000 clients, business partners, employees and consumers with the opportunity to experience the Games.  Specifically for their employees, they developed ‘staff values’ programs where staff could nominate colleagues who show values inherent to those of the Olympics.  This included anything from respect and fair play to determination and drive.  The winners were rewarded with tickets to the games.  In total Westpac gave away over 40,000 tickets, a significant proportion of which was allocated to staff.  Furthermore, they successfully aligned the values of the Olympics with their business and staff, resulting in significant return earned on the investment through improved workforce morale and customer service.   

Employee engagement is a top priority for Lloyds TSB who has taken inspiration from Westpac.  As sponsors of the 2012 Olympics and with 68,000 staff, they want to get the most out of the £80m investment.  With a huge internal communications project, Lloyds aim to inspire staff by bringing the values of the Olympics alive and relating them back to the business.  They’re looking for employee participation and support through a calendar of events for staff, and through the launch of online magazines, intranets, giveaways, presentations, and competitions, Lloyds have managed to inspire its staff effectively and have received high-value of return on the investment.  This is reflected by the Lloyds TSB MD that he would have gladly spent the amount invested in the Olympics on the resulting engagement program alone. 

Use your imagination

It’s very tempting for brands to invest a lot of money into an event like the Olympics and only really engage staff through a couple of newsletters and some free tickets, but there is considerable opportunity lost by keeping employees uninvolved in the sponsorship.

Firstly, choosing the right property is important.  How does it fit culturally? What are the opportunities for engagement? Where can broader marketing fit in?  The partnership between British Gas and British Swimming is a fantastic example of this.  Although the project is very consumer focused they communicate the partnership to their employees and engage them in unique ways.  By communicating to employees the aims of the project, which includes supporting future talent and enabling pools to be more sustainable, they are increasing their respect and admiration for their company and making them proud to work for the brand. 

Setting objectives will help keep any employee engagement program on track and will also help with measuring results.  Only once objectives are set should an innovative and creative engagement program be developed to get employees involved. 

Finally, measuring results is paramount.  Employee engagement is easy to measure quantitatively or qualitatively using questionnaires, surveys, performance reviews, sales figures, online feedback and focus groups.  A great example here is BT’s sponsorship of the Olympics.  For them employee engagement is key.  Through consistent objective setting and feedback sessions, they have created unique projects, including athletes engaging with staff to help motivate and inspire them. Such benefits filter down to staff at lower levels, and make sure there is a consistent amount of productivity rather than strong spikes and dips. 

Sponsorship can be used to motivate, inspire and encourage. When property is linked harmoniously to a company’s vision and communicated to staff properly, employee engagement is maximised to it’s greatest effect.

Whether it’s a B2B brand pushing to increase customer loyalty, showcase their capabilities and build stronger relationships with their clients, or a B2C brand aiming to reach a mass audience and develop connections with customers, employee engagement must play an important part in any strategy.  They are the guardians of your brand – if you inspire their participation, your business cannot fail to be enriched.

Interesting post on Monday from econsultancy highlighting that at TechCrunch Disrupt the feeling seemed to be that media owners need to concentrate on providing access to content rather than ‘owning it’. The notion of content or brand ownership and control is looking increasingly more desperate and if we are honest…is sometimes  unnecessary in terms of achieving what is important – Interaction with the user, regardless of the environmnet.

Here’s an analogy a friend from Chicago gave me.

A guy walks into a bar and spots an attractive girl. He walks up to her and asks if he can buy her a drink. She says “sure, that would be lovely”. Here’s what happens next…

The guy puts the girl in a headlock and marches her out of the bar and into a taxi outside. With the headlock still firmly applied, the taxi makes the journey back to the guy’s apartment. When it arrives, the guy drags the girl out of the car and up to his apartment…when they get inside, he releases his strangle hold and gives her the drink!

Brands do this all the time with their customers. Many are still in the mindset that any interaction needs to take place on their website or their ‘virtual home’ and sometimes only after the customer has filled in a registration form. The same results could be achieved by doing their work within ‘outposts’ such as social media and the consumer will feel far less violated if they can have a good experience on neutral territory or in an environment they are comfortable in. If brands are patient enough then there will be plenty of opportunities to take the relationship to the ‘next level’ and get them back to their apartment where, maybe…they can close the deal. But don’t ruin it by applying the virtual headlock too early.

Just a thought!

Gold Coast Football Club are the latest club to enter the AFL. As they prepare to enter their first year in the league, whilst still playing in the secondary league VFL, how do they establish a new fan base?  Can they use social media to reach others in the football community that weren’t previously aware of them?

Anthony Alsop recently sat down with Greg Price from GCFC to find out.

Anthony Alsop: Hi Greg, tell us a little about yourself, what is your role for Gold Coast Football Club?

Greg: My name is Greg Price and I am the General Manager – Marketing, Communications and Community

AA: How did you end up in this role?

Greg: I was the communications consultant for GC17 Bid which successfully bid for the 17th AFL licence for the Gold Coast. Prior to that, I had worked in sports marketing & management, corporate affairs, media and public relations roles.

AA: When looking at an overall marketing strategy, how important is social media to GCFC?

Greg: Social media is a key component of our overall communications strategy. Since we are essentially building an AFL Club from the ground up, we need to build and engage our fan base at the same time as we build a team or a stadium. We need to spread the word about the Club – what we stand for, the region we represent, and the challenges ahead of us, and social media provides a great platform for us to do that. It also allows our passionate fans to spread the message for us, making them an integral part of that journey.

For most sporting organisations, social media is a great way to communicate with existing fans and bring them closer to the Club – this is a the main strength of social media. However for GCFC, we also see it as one of the primary tools we have to connect with new AFL and GCFC fans, particularly in the Gold Coast region, by using social media to tell our story throughout the broader community.

Social Media Integration on goldcoastfc.com.au 

AA: What initiatives have GCFC taken to achieve social media success?

Greg: Our social media plan is really based around our website, and the content plan that sits behind it. We have worked really hard to create a platform that gives our fans, and the broader AFL community, a place to regularly visit that keeps them very up to date with the Club’s progress. The result is a really impactful site that continues to grow in traffic, and has had terrific feedback from our fans and the industry in general.

From there, we have recently launched some specific social media tools on the site to make it as easy as possible for our fans to engage with the club and it’s content, and also to share the story with their friends.

Our social media platforms are just extensions of this communications strategy, allowing our fans to keep up to date with the Club on their platform of choice, such as Twitter and Facebook. But I wouldn’t say we have yet “achieved success” – I’m not sure you ever do in this area, as the opportunities continue to quickly evolve, just like our Club. For example, when we start playing in our new stadium next season, some location-based social media programs will allow us to give our fans an even greater connection.

AA: Who have the club looked to in other sports, for inspiration in social media?

Greg: That’s a difficult question to answer – you try to take in as much as you can from other sports and clubs, and you end up taking the best ideas and trying to build them into your own approach. In terms of sport in Australia, there are some AFL Clubs that are doing a great job at using social media to give their fans an insight into their own team.

At our club, Jeff White (former Melbourne FC ruckman) is the club’s ruck coach this year, and is also passionate about the role social media can play in sport, and has been a great in helping the Club recognise some of these opportunities.

Behind the scenes Twitpic taken by ruck coach Jeff White. Don’t worry folks, he’s a coach.