Sports marketing strategies and consumer engagement

Sports Marketing

NFL or the 'National Football league' as it is referred to, is America's pride and cause for the inculcation of the inherent patriotic spirit in the heart of the American. The NFL conducts football games as a part of the tradition every year, and every year Americans gather at the stadium where patriotism is at its height and nationalistic fervor is at its peak. In the game that was conducted on September 24, 2001, soon after the attack on the World Towers by an Islamic militant group that left more than thousands dead and severely injured, the national spirit was at its ultimate peak, and the Americans gathered there underwent heightened emotions and feelings, and this was the time when pamphlets were distributed among the audience with the words of the 'Star Spangled Banner', and the 'God Bless America', and 'America the Beautiful'. Small American flags, almost a million of them in number, were also brought to the stadium to be distributed among the audience. There were a lot of tears and memories of the injured and the dead in the attacks were brought up and shared among the large number of people gathered there. (Patriotism abounds as NFL makes emotional return)

The Super Bowl can be said to be a game where patriotic fervor is brought to the forefront, and herein lays the marketing strategy of the NFL. Every year, the Super Bowl offers marketers the opportunity to learn more about marketing strategies from studying the advertising strategies and the players and also the various coordinators of the game. For example, the Super Bowl XXXVI that took place, as part of the games played under the National football League was a very good example of the packaging of the 'patriotic' theme by the advertisers and the marketers of the game. This was a game where American patriotism was supported by large groups of people, and this included people from the various departments like that of police, the armed services department, the fire department, as well as the interviews conducted with the troops that have been posted in Afghanistan.

The proud heritage and the very mettle of the American people was showcased through this game, and it was towards keeping up with this theme that the logo design of the game was in keeping with the American stars and stripes, and in blue and white and red. The music that had been selected to be played during the opening sections of the game was in keeping with the theme, and therefore was a sort of music that would induce patriotism, and the various depictions of famous historic personalities and icons of America was also part of the performance. The various lessons that can be learned about the marketing strategies used by the organizers and the marketers of the NFL during the Super Bowl Games are applicable not only to the marketers with large budgets but also to those with a small one, and they can be applied to the traditional means of marketing as well as to the newest concept of marketing through the Internet. (13 Lessons in Marketing, Super Bowl Style)

The first lesson to be learnt from the Super Bowl Game XXXVI is the fact that both Levi and Pepsi had prepared well before the game in that they were able conduct a study and to analyze the target audience in such a manner that they were able to understand perfectly well the interests of the teenager through the ages, and they were able to change their marketing strategies according to the needs of the present day teenager. According to the marketing study that they had undertaken, it was discovered that the present day teenager was demonstrating an inordinate interest in nostalgia, and the two companies Levi and Pepsi adapted their theme to this basic interest, and this had a massive appeal to the teenager at the Super Bowl Game. In addition, Levi ran the same advertisement twice, once in English, and once in Spanish, and this showed that the company had a basic understanding and a keen sense of awareness of the demographics of the target audience that the advertisement was being aimed at.

Another interesting factor of the marketing strategy that was used by Levi was that it conducted a 'customer preference survey' of the visitors to the Website, and the winning customer was announced at the Game, before their actual commercial was aired. The company 'E*Trade' used the opportunity of the Super Bowl football Game to launch its own campaign about the change in its old image, and this type of strategy proved to be extremely effective, if only because of the reason that the audience at such events is generally very large, and comprises a great part of the target audience for the launch of such marketing and advertising campaigns. The new and latest product that had been created by the company AT& T. called 'mLife' was effectively launched during the Super Bowl Game. Several days before the Game, mlife commercials had been aired by AT& T, but anonymously. This had led to a lot of speculation and curiosity as to what exactly 'mLife' was.

It was during the Game that the secret that mLife was a concept for a wireless and mobile life was discovered, amid much appreciation. This is another strategy that was used during the NFL by a Company wanting to launch its new product. That 'sponsorship can make or help build brands' was effectively demonstrated during the Super Bowl Game. Schwab, E*Trade, and Miller were the three companies, among numerous others, that helped in building or creating brand equity by sponsoring different portions of the Game. In a similar manner, the fact that a major event, like that of the Super Bowl Game of Football, is in fact an opportunity for a company to launch several new products in the market must be remembered. It was in this way that the Sports Goods manufacturing Company 'Reebok' launched its 'limited edition' sneakers as a commemorative of the Super bowl Game that as being played at the time. (13 Lessons in Marketing, Super Bowl Style)

This is a very effective marketing strategy, and can be used by various marketers when they want to launch a product. Motorola happened to opt for producing the headsets that were worn by the coaches of the Super Bowl game players. Therefore, this gave Motorola the opportunity to choose a place of prominence for the display of their logos. The position that they chose was a prominent one indeed, and this was at the earpieces, and facing outwards near the microphones used by them. This position gave Motorola a very definite edge over other advertisers, as the coaches were seen throughout the Game, and so were the Logos. Another important marketing strategy used by the NFL was that it tried to draw interest into both its websites as well as into its various broadcasts by getting the innumerable fans of the game intimately involved in the Game.

This was done by allowing the fans of the Game to cast their votes online, as well as by asking them to take part in various polls that were conducted online, and also by asking them to vote during the Game for the Super Bowl MVP. In addition, the marketers of the game attempted to use multiple outlets to promote the Game, and these were the Game broadcasts, the SuperBowl.com website, and the NFL.com websites. It was in this way that a cross-promoting strategy was used to build up a large audience for the Game. 'Know the weakness of the competitor' is an adage that was used to great advantage by the marketers of the Super bowl game, and this was used to secure the support and the backing of the fans of the Game. (13 Lessons in Marketing, Super Bowl Style) When the NFL signed up with the Nielsen Media Research in a five-year agreement that detailed that it would obtain all sporting and marketing information from the Nielsen Sports Marketing Service, in other words, the agency would provide all information as was necessary from the various television and broadcasting networks so that this information would be useful in the creation and the development of the marketing plan. (NFL picks up Nielson media Research Option Inks New Five-Year deal)

The fact is that the National Football League utilizes various e-marketing strategies to not only create a wider base of fans for the Super Bowl Games, but also attempts to bring people together by creating more personal and friendly relationships among the fans of the Game. The Sports Marketing League applies all its e-marketing efforts to not only maintain a high level of fan interest in the Game but also to make them get more and more involved with the sport in itself. The NFL considers it to be a key factor in its innate strength that it possesses the ability to bring a lot of people together. The primary communication strategy used by the NFL is that of emphasizing on the concept of 'connections'.

The various e-marketing strategies that are used by the NFL support this idea, and the NFL, on a weekly basis, in order to consolidate this theme, uses an e-mail letter. This e-mail is sent through its e-mail marketing firm known as 'e-Dialog', which is responsible for the creation and the distribution of a new newsletter to be distributed through the e-mail network to all its various teams in the league, every week. This e-mail marketing firm was launched in the year 1999, and the e-mail that is created by the firm reaches more than a huge 1.5 million fans all over. The website of NFL, known as NFL.com, is used and assessed by about 7.5 million visitors every single month. In the year 2001, the NFL sports marketing team gave over the management of the website to AOL Time Warner, but retained innate control over each and every individual website to itself, and for broadband users, the iBeam Broadcasting Corporation was used as the official provider of a streaming media provider for the separate Superbowl.com website that had been created at that pint in time. (The NFL: Using e-Marketing to bring people together)

The NFL however, does not stop at these marketing strategies. The emphasis is on adapting to the changes in the world, everyday, and the NFL has indeed been able to adapt its sports marketing strategies, to some extent, to the changing environment and the changing needs of the Super Bowl Game fans of America. For example, in the month of May 2004, NFL was able to appoint a new lead executive to be in charge of the marketing and the sales operations of the NFL. This was Phil Guarascio, and he was to be in charge of the marketing challenges of the NFL. Phil Guarascio had been working in the capacity of marketing manager at Benton and Bowles, New York, an advertising agency, and also at Proctor and Gamble, and at General Motors, after which he retired from active service, and joined NFL as an advisor. Soon he was promoted to the present position of marketing Manager of NFL, and quite a few of his innovative ideas are being utilized by the NFL in its sports marketing strategies today. (Special Report, NFL tackles Marketing Challenges)

Phil Guarascio emphasized that the NFL's goal today is to not only improve and ramp up the organization from its present 'good' state to its future 'better' state and finally bringing it to a level that would be referred to as 'great'. He outlined the various marketing strategies laid out by him in order to bring about the changes and the proposed improvements. These were: to create new value models for the League, to create and discover newer sources of revenue for the League, and also to create and to establish a new 'soup-to-nuts' fans base program. The only difficulty that was foreseen by Phil Guarascio was that the NFL was totally unlike a 'product' as seen in general terms. A product like Pepsi or Chevrolet is an established product wherein the message being relayed can be controlled totally. However, in NFL, such a thing is not at all possible because the message cannot be controlled like in nay other product; and this means that the issue of branding the product is very different and also difficult.

In the case of NFL, the various branding issues affect the value of the sponsorship, and this in turn affects the usage of the market by the various sponsors, and this demonstrates the fact that all the factors are somehow or the other inter-related to each other. Phil Guarisco, when questioned about the top marketing challenges of the League, asserted that the main challenge was the maintenance of the 'fan growth' of the League. The various factors that contribute towards or affect the fan growth in some way or the other are the competition for consumers' attention, the fragmentation or the splitting up of the audience, and the entire cultural makeup of the country. All these factors can contribute towards the lessening of the number of fans, because of the fact that today, there are a lot more people who have a lot many more things to do, and the League may not be the only thing that would capture their attention. (Special Report, NFL tackles Marketing Challenges)

The innate value of the NFL lies in the solidity and the stability of the fan base that exists, and this also affects the players as well as the club owners, and also the fans. The priority, according to Phil Guarisco, is the growth and the maintenance of a base of fans that would be difficult to maintain in these changing times of today. Not only have the times and the people changed, but the pressures on the individuals of today are also increasing on a daily basis, along with the stiff competition in every aspect of life. This may lead to the decrease in the number of people who would want to and enjoy a good game of Super Bowl football put up by the NFL. Though statistics show that people are still interested in football despite the immense pressures faced by them, it is a fact that a fan cannot be taken for granted; he has to be wooed and feted so that he remains a loyal fan till the end.

An example that would demonstrate this fact would be of a car manufacturer in America anticipating and expecting stiff competition from the Japanese and the Korean car manufacturers and being well prepared for it. Therefore, in order to prepare for this sort of competition, the NFL has been going all out in its efforts towards this direction. Primarily, a series of marketing efforts were undertaken. These were: Hispanic marketing, urban marketing, and youth marketing. However, the strategy that would relate all the three researches together was not discovered and as a result, an external agency that would conduct research on what the value of the NFL was hired, and this agency conducted the 'economic' study on what was the value of the NFL and what was the value added by the NFL to each individual team. This is where the difficulty of trying to find the value of a product like the NFL was evident; whereas in the case of a product like Pepsi it would be easy to add the hard assets of Pepsi with the value of the brand, it would be difficult to do this with NFL. (Special Report, NFL tackles Marketing Challenges)

This is because of the fact that when the value of the teams is added up, the result would be the value of the NFL that would be greater than the value of the teams. This would mean that the NFL was adding up to the premiums of the Clubs. Since this was impractical, certain deep research was conducted whereby it would be possible for obtaining an approximate estimate of what would be the actual value of the brand called NFL. This in turn would mean that the NFL would become more proactive and also answerable to the owners wherein the kinds of investments that were being made by the NFL would be clear and easy to explain. Since the NFL invariably works under a tight budget, all the marketing research and studies are done with the help and the aid of various partners. This would mean that it is necessary for the NFL to understand the brand better and also that nothing would be easily taken for granted. (Special Report, NFL tackles Marketing Challenges)

Once this endeavor has been undertaken and carried out with some success, then it is possible for the developing of better strategies with which the brand can be grown further. One example is that it is a fact that there are a lot of women involved in the workings of the NFL, but there has been no study conducted as yet on how women react and respond to football. When such a study was undertaken by the research and marketing team of NFL, it was discovered that when a woman had to be a fan of football, it was only shown through her relationship and interaction with her own family members who liked and responded to football in positive ways. Therefore, it was concluded that if more women were to be involved in football, then they must be approached not directly but through their families, and this sort of knowledge helps the NFL to create and develop more sophisticated sports marketing strategies that involved women and families as one single group. This type of strategy may take up a lot more resources than any other, and therefore, the management has to foresee these expenses before embarking on them.

Once this was accomplished, then the people involved would have to be made to understand the basic logic behind such programs. On the part of the NFL, the primary reason is to make limited resources work harder than ever before in order to create more value than was ever expected before. The powerful nature of the brand makes this a comparatively easy task, because anywhere and everywhere there would be somebody who would be related to the brand in some way or the other; in fact, it is a basic truth that the NFL has a 99% recognition rate anywhere at all. The reasons for this may be that the nature of the sport itself is so popular, and also that the consumer of the sport is always loyal to the brand. There are a few people who even have a deep-seated emotional link with the NFL, and this was the precise reason that the brand was 'up leveraged'. (Special Report, NFL tackles Marketing Challenges)

Therefore it can be stated that one has to be very careful in first recognizing what these emotional factors are, then going about trying to understand the various means by which it can be executed, and finally, becoming very smart indeed about the brand, like for example the pride in the brand that brands like Pepsi and Coors demonstrate. This would enable the NFL to better persuade the investor to invest in the brand called National Football League. When this is executed well, a complete circle would be formed, and this would be where the success of the marketing strategy would lie. However, there is one problem that was anticipated well in advance by the marketing team, and this was the inevitable problem of over-saturation of the brand that is a major trap that many large companies fall into. It is a fact that several large companies are not even aware, until the last possible moment, that they have over-saturated their brand.