One of the most elusive searches for traditional sports and entertainment properties is the quest to get younge.to identify with and activate against that very active audience that may have already grown tired of the traditional and looks elsewhere for its thrills. For an audience more interested in the half pipe and BMX than baseball or football, the ways for brands to reach them have changed in some ways, but in many ways remain the same. For all the social media activation, the core decision makers and those brands still need live events and television to complete the package, even if the potential audience (and the numbers that go with it) may show that those participating would rather be out doing than sitting inside and watching. The video game insertion play has made sense for some brands, and this week Doritos unveiled an.interactive ba. which, when combined with an online program, gives you new ways to watch a concert by Blink 182 (which means an adaptation to sports probably is.t far away). So if the TV numbers are slight, and the live events are primarily freebies in terms of gate, what is the area where brands can get their activation profit ban. This wee.s Bergen Record had a big piece on retail and the products the ways marketers are hitting their goals through promotion, using TV and the event costs as loss leaders to promote that will lead to product sale. In many ways this is the classic play that boxing, wrestling and most recently MMA have drawn their large numbers, although the goal was a pay per view event vs. moving product. You use the TV as the promotion to draw fans and lead them to the place where they will spend mone.in this case retail. Thus far the brand loyalty for this grou.similar to NASCA.lies in the product first and the event second, with TV and digital a very distant third. The irony in that sequence is that the older marketing cognoscenti still scramble to figure out and throw money at, all the social media bells and whistles, sometimes at the expense of the traditional.
What does it mea. The younger demo will activate with the right combination of touch points from all media. Their activation today is not that different from what young people wanted in the pas..they want.stuff. Maybe in the past that.stuf. was baseball cards and plastic football helmets. Today its teeshirts and snowboards. Has the lifespan of.stuf. shortene. Sure. But by coming up with the right mix of ways to tell the stor.and exposing not just the younger people but their parents and older sibling.the activation to this group can be effective and drive dollars and ROI. It may be a more segmented outreach than before, but it still has to have the right critical mix of new and traditional to be effective to the widest audience.
Some other good reads…the LA Times had an interesting take on Michael Phelps return and the acceptance of marijuana use today…the Boston Globe had a good profile of Nomar Garciaparra's return to Boston.…and the Washington Post’s Tom Boswell chimed in on how to build the Nats brand from the bottom up.
