Pilote CEO to Present Social Media for Business Bootcamp.
September 29, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Pilote Media are proud to annouce their Social Media for Buisness Bootcamp seminar to be held in London on the 14th of October 2009. Presented by Pilote CEO, David Fuller, the 3 hour session is designed to dispell myths about social media and show how platforms like Twitter, Facebook and even ‘old fashioned’ forums and bulletin boards can be powerful business tools.
David, who has worked for global branding giants like Unilever and pioneering social networks says:
It’s a shame that the media focus on the celebrity use of tools like Twitter. There are millions of serious business people in the world who are realising that these platforms are not ‘just for kids’, they are an evolution in the way a brand talks to its customers, suppliers and the wider world.
Pilote have developed the seminar for those in business who are still coming to terms with the variety of tools that are lumped together as social media. In David’s view:
I talk to a lot of people who don’t understand why business hasn’t adopted some of these practises more quickly, but in the main, these people are early adopters. For those who are head down in the day to day running of a business, especially in uncertain times, it is not always easy to get your head around the opportunities and implications of new ideas. One of the problems though, is that social media has been sold as technology and is therefore seen as the domain of the IT crowd. Actually, these tools are for marketing, PR and corporate communications professionals and more and more, those in business development.
David’s Social Media for Business Bootcamp will run on the 14th of October, 2009 in London. For more information visit the event page.
Who is Managing Your Online Brand? Don’t Forget your Fans.
May 12, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
A couple of years ago I took part in a trade mission organised by the Motorsports Industry Association in the UK to visit the land of NASCAR. Standing in the garage area of Lowes Motor Speedway in Charlotte amongst a group of people who were used to the paddocks of F1, I realised that people in the business of sport often take their experiences for granted.
Between the garage area and the track, which was open to the public before the race, was an 8 foot chain-link fence. As our group casually ran our hands along the sponsor decals and listened to Jeff Gordon tell us how he thought the car would perform later, hundreds of fans pressed their faces through the chain-link fence, desperate to get a few inches closer to their heroes.
Our goal then was to convince NASCAR and others that fans treated the smallest piece of inside information from their sporting idols as gifts. We called it ‘pub-currency’ - the kind of thing you would tell your mates about while having a beer. Getting a text message from a driver or a photo that no-one else had via your PC desktop was something that sports-marketers wrote off as insignificant, but for fans, it was like standing in the garage or dressing room.
In 2009, the ability for sports stars to communicate ‘directly’ with fans is easier than ever. While some tools, like twitter, are still relatively niche, they are being used by savvy sports marketing people to give fans something they crave - frequent, direct interaction with heroes.
But that’s not all. Tools like blogs and twitter enable sponsors to develop long term relationships with consumers. The lesson we learned from NASCAR and later from Manchester United was that communication in the off-season was as important, if not more so, than news during an event.
So, I have declared my interests. I am passionate about using new and emerging technologies to enable brands to develop long term relationships with fans through sport. One of the reasons I set up yachtsponsorship.com was to communicate with promoters, teams and sponsors, the best practises from other sports and show they can be used with sailing to deliver real ROI.
The last couple of days, I have been researching how sailing as a sport uses these new technologies. The results vary massively, but in general there is a trick being missed, especially when there is nothing going on. During long distance races like the Vendee Globe, competitors were forced by race organisers and sponsors to blog daily, but now their websites are like time-capsules - as if the clock stopped a couple of days after the boat crossed the line. How can we build heroes in the sport if they go silent for months on end?
Here are some examples from the UK. Ben Ainslie, one of the most recognisable personalities in the sport, last updated his blog on the 13th of February. The last update on his facebook page was August 20, 2008. Alex Thomson, who is said to embrace new technologies last updated his blog on February 9, while his facebook page was updated on 10 December 2008 by an administrator.
Thank goodness for Paul Cayard. Paul is one of the sailors who writes regualarly and candidly - even when he is not neccesrily competing. This weekend, Paul was in Boston for the Volvo Ocean Race stopover. I know this because his blog tells me:
This event is really catching on with the mainstream public. It seems that anyone who gets a close up look at the event becomes hooked. There was a lot of non sailing public roaming through the race village this weekend and they immediately became intrigued. With the Race Village situated right down town, Volvo has really brought the event to the people.
Cayard has the best interests of the sport in mind finishing with:
I was speaking to a British sports marketing executive who was visiting the race for the first time, a guy who ran the marketing for Honda in Formula One previously, and he said that the Volvo is truly a top level sports marketing property. It was impressive to see the new faces, from other areas of sport, gravitating to the event.
I’m not sure if Honda F1 is the best example of sports marketing in recent years, but it’s good to know that finally the message is getting out there - that sailing at its best provides a great platform for sponsors.
Not all sailors have time to sit down and write blogs the length of Paul Cayard’s, but there is little or no excuse not to be able to shoot off 140 characters every so often.
Dee Caffari has joined twitter in the last couple of days, but the star of the Round Britain twitter comms so far is Johanna Payton, a journalist who is accompanying Dee on the journey. Maybe, just maybe it’s because Jo is new to the sport and has no preconceptions about what fans might find interesting. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t have to walk a corporate sponsor tightrope.
Perhaps the problem comes down to a question of demarcation. Who’s responsibility is it to develop and maintain a consistent online presence? Is it a PR job or is it up to the competitors themselves to manage their personal brands and get to grips with communicating with their fans? Should the marketing teams of sponsors be involved or are they they ones blocking uptake based on corporate ‘brand-police’ practises?
Several PR agencies that I have spoken to in recent days have told me that they have the tools in-house to provide these services to their clients. One referred me to a brand that they were managing a twitter account for - it has 30 followers! Others have said that they believe it is something that the competitors manage on their own.
The growing online presence of fans hungry for content shows that there is latent demand from fans for more interaction - and it’s not that hard. If you can find time to blog while sailing about in the southern ocean, you can find time to communicate when you are off the water.
Here’s the ad - I have worked with sports properties such as NASCAR, MotoGP and Manchester United as well as individual athletes to develop long term relationships with fans. These relationships are hugely important to deliver additional ROI for sponsors as well as maintaining the health of a sport. If the fans go away or stop watching, then the sponsors will follow. If you want to use some of these new tools to attract or retain sponsors or even just sure up a fan-base get in touch via Pilote Media.
A Tale of Two PR Companies. Sports Marketing PR 2.0
March 5, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
IT technology was supposed to make things easier. ‘Work smarter not harder’ is the slogan for the information age. But just as you think you have understood it - how to make the most of email, how to measure click-throughs and page impressions, the geeks invent a new thing. Or they rename an old thing and make everyone else seem foolish. How many of these terms do you understand: Web 2.0, RSS, twitter, UGC, personal media…
The latest buzzword is ‘Social Media’. Ask 10 people what social media is and you will probably get 10 different answers. The term ’social media’ is misunderstood by many. From nowhere, social media consultants have appeared selling their opinions on reputation management and sentiment engineering. Whatever you call it, the technologies that allow huge numbers of people to create, publish, share and comment upon content (images, text, video, audio, gps co-ordinates), are important for sports marketing and PR.
One of the services receiving a lot of interest at the moment is Twitter. While on the surface the functionality seems simple, almost banal, the power of millions of people saying what they are doing, feeling, thinking at any one point in time should not be underestimated.
Let’s compare two examples. Imagine a sports entity; a pro-sailor, a team, an event organiser with a large company as a sponsor. This entity also has a traditional PR company working to maximise the ‘coverage’ of news and activities and in turn help the sponsor achieve their goals of exposure or association or some other objective.
Example One - the Traditionalists.
In example one, the traditional PR company is measured on more old-fashioned metrics like column inches, television screen time, radio brand mentions. Even in 2009, there are PR companies that believe that national newspaper coverage alone is enough to determine the success or failure of a campaign. There might be historic reasons for this. News used to be determined by powerful editors and specialist journalists. Developing relationships with these people determined whether your story was featured or not.
More recently this PR company has been forced to learn new methods of distributing the news - via email - usually in the form of a PDF, so that it can not be easily changed or manipulated. For these promoters, the only website mentions that are worth talking about are BBC.CO.UK or TheTimesOnline. Bloggers aren’t real media.
To this company, Social media is the devil. If taken to its end, social media makes a PR company redundant. If the talent can communicate directly with their fan base, what role is there for PR, or journalists, or editors for that matter.
While this is a hypothetical example of a PR company, it is a thinly disguised collection of behaviours that we see daily in the sports marketing industry. Not all are anti new technology; some just find it overwhelming and alien.
Example Two - The New World of PR.
In our second example, we imagine a PR company that understands how media is changing. While the traditional press and television is important, they understand that niche sports like sailing are more frequently being covered on other platforms. More importantly they understand the value of the network effect. Instead of all news going through a handful of gatekeepers, the content is free to appear wherever it lands. Some of the concepts in the new world are the same as the old world - things like reach, reputation and influence. But in the new world, these relationships are not as straightforward.
Much has been written about Stephen Fry’s 120,000 twitter followers. Obviously if Mr Fry twitters about something he raises its awareness and delivers thousands of ‘eyeballs’ to the story. You might then be tempted as a PR company in the new world to target Stephen Fry, but that would be to ignore the fact that Stephen Fry also follows other people. So imagine a person who has only 5 or 6 followers, but those 5 or 6 are followed by thousands.
PR company number two has spent time developing relationships, not just with traditional media, but with influential bloggers in their space. They understand that a small blog read by 100 people can be very powerful if those 100 people are an exact match to your target audience or they influence thousands of others.
PR company number two also understands that the new world is not a one-way broadcast. This is not a Sunday broadsheet that states - this is the news and there is no more. This is more like talkback radio. If the people disagree, they can say so. In public. With an audience.
PR company number two is asking questions like:
- When was the content published? Where? Who saw it?
- What was the sentiment of the authors? Were they in favour or against?
- How many times was the story reposted? Where? By whom?
- How long did the buzz last?
- What was the highest number of mentions on twitter per minute?
- Where do the people live who were twittering about the story?
- How many comments were attached? What was the sentiment of the comments?
- Was the story shared amongst friends via Facebook? ….
Obviously PR companies don’t work in a vacuum. They are representing brands and personalities that may not yet themselves understand the value of these new media. If a client tells you that their objective is to have a photo on the front page of the paper, do you sell them the benefits of bloggers? If you don’t someone else might.
All of this assumes that you want to communicate externally. Social media principals are just as important, perhaps more so, when communicating internally, but that’s a subject for another blog.
Pilote Media are offering Social Media Health Check for companies who want to learn more. The free 30 minute sessions can be held, in London, via phone or skype conference. The aim is to provide honest, down to earth advice without the jargon. For more information see http://www.pilotemedia.com/social-media/
SB:MKTG - Website Relaunch
January 24, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
The new SB:MKTG Site
Pilote Media was asked by Somerville Baddeley Marketing to create a website that was clean, easy to update and tapped into some of the emerging social media technologies available.
The new SB:MKTG site allows the company to quickly change copy through a simple Content Management System and also incorporates a blog that is already becoming an authoritative source of news from the powersport sponsorship marketplace.
Other social media type functionality includes:
- ShareThis integration - allowing visitors to republish information to sites like Facebook and Digg.
- Twitter Account Integration - automatic posting to twitter when the blog is updated.
- Blog to Email Integration - allows readers to sign up to the blog and get it in their inbox daily.
Denis Baddeley, Principal of SB:MKTG said:
Having worked with the team from Pilote Media in the past on big projects for the likes of NASCAR and MotoGP, we know that they understand emerging media better than anyone else. We wanted to be ahead of the curve without having to spend ages testing every web 2.0 plugin and widget ourselves. Pilote Media gave us the functionality that is relevant now with typical down to earth style…
The new SB:MKTG site can be found at http://www.sbmktg.net
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Dark Blue Book
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Getting Onto The Plane
