Brand Thunder at Soccerex London Forum by Kevin Dwinnell

Brand Thunder will be at the Soccerex London Forum on Wednesday. Boyd Butler, KAM Sports International, will be representing us. Contact us if you want to meet with Boyd.

This is an advantage of working with channel partners that are experts in their markets. By having a partner in the UK, and one that is a specialist football agency, it was an easy call to send a representative. We also have data to support the decision based on the response to the Kansas City Wizards Boom! and our Euro Football custom browser.

Brand Thunder is still a start up and we try to be frugal. Being frugal doesn’t mean don’t spend, it just means spend wisely. This feels worth it.

Thinking about a post last week discussing how our business development team is working on developing new verticals for our product. These take time, but we’re also the most experienced selling our product – so we take on the majority of that work. Once a channel opens up, we leverage our partners to grow it. With some demonstrated success, having an expert in the football field seems like the natural person to attend this forum.

Posted in Commentary | Tags: Association football, boom, brand thunder, Branded Browser, custom browser, Kansas City Wizards, soccer, soccerex | No Comments »

Interactive Tools for Building Fan Relationships – A Soccerex London Session Preview by Kevin Dwinnell

A conference session at the upcoming Soccerex London Forum is titled “Fans – Interacting with footballs’ number one stakeholder.” Since this topic hits directly in the market Brand Thunder serves with it Booms (branded browsers), I thought we should offer our take. Also, Brand Thunder will have a representative, Boyd Butler, at the Forum. If you’re attending, please contact us to arrange a time to continue this discussion in person.

The description of the session is: “In the modern era, developments in marketing and technology have dramatically increased the number of ways for football clubs and their fans to interact. However, does this increased interaction truly benefit the fans?”

Yes, and in a more meaningful way than one might expect. At its core, the purpose of an interactive marketing tool is to build the team/fan relationship and a healthy relationship is beneficial to all parties.

Interactive tools, like a Brand Thunder Boom or other web apps, are communication devices. Sure, many offer branding capabilities that play to social identification factors – a nice bonus. To create a deep and ongoing relationship, however, you’ve got to have communication. And for communication, style matters.

Consider this:

1. There are steps an organization can take to create a healthy relationship with their fans
2. There are strategies to move that relationship toward increased fan identification
3. Strong identification with a specific sports team provides a buffer from feelings of depression and alienation

Wow. Pretty powerful, right? (See. That time watching football really is therapeutic.) That’s why the increased interaction is a benefit to the fans as well as the organization. When you consider how a tool like a Boom elevates the awareness of that communication and increases the frequency of engagement, its value beyond just looking really cool becomes apparent.

The following gets into the data that backs it up the claims above and practical uses for a Boom. The sources, all listed, are interesting as well because so much of the information is applicable across relationships (personal, professional and social).

First, Jim Mastrich has a nice summary on his site. It states:
The four primary qualities that ensure a positive and constructive relationship are:

• Creating an atmosphere of mutual respect and acceptance.
• Honest and direct communication.
• Accepting responsibility for one’s actions.
• Staying intellectually and emotionally engaged with the other.

These are elements of positive interactions that have proven vital in personal (Gottman) and professional (Frederickson, Losada) relationships. (Gottman really has groundbreaking research.)

By using the real-time communication capabilities in the browser, teams are respecting their fans, providing direct communication and engaging them on an intellectual level. These are positive exchanges between team and fan. A team honors the fan by getting them news as soon, if not before, the media receives it. Then add the emotional engagement driven by the visual capabilities within the Boom, and it’s even more powerful.

When looking at what content to leverage and how to use it, explore options using the four strategies suggested for increasing fan identification proposed by researchers from the University of Massachusetts – Amherst.

• Increase team/player accessibility
• Increase community involvement
• Reinforce the team’s history and tradition
• Create opportunities for group affiliation and participation

If applying this results in a more successful business and a less depressed world, then we’ve done our jobs.

Here are some of the studies and articles referenced above:

What Predicts Divorce? The Relationship Between Marital Processes and Marital Outcomes
John Mordechai Gottman

Positive Affect and the Complex Dynamics of Human Flourishing
Barbara Fredrickson, Marcial Losada

Creating and Fostering Fan Identification in Professional Sports
William A. Sutton, Mark A. McDonald, George R. Milne, John Cimperman

The Positive Social and Self Concept Consequences of Sports Team Identification
Nyla R. Branscombe, Daniel L. Wann

Posted in Commentary | Tags: brand thunder, Branded Browser, browser boom, custom browser, Research, soccerex, sports marketing | No Comments »