Marketing Shots – Man U, AFL, Detroit Lions and Fitness First Update

This not one of my traditional posts where I try and encourage comments and discussion but I have a few little “Marketing Shots” that I wanted to share with you …

EPL Ambush Marketing Opportunity

I was watching the Man U vs Arsenal game at Old Trafford on the weekend. Have you seen the plush seats that the subs, coaching staff et al get to sit on? They are basically leather car racing seats. Nice big red ones with Man U logo and the Audi logo on it. Sneaky thing is that they also make the visiting team sit on the Man U/Audi branded red seats as well. Bet Wenger, Benetiz and co hate that!

So why don’t the opposition take their own club branded covers to slip over the top. Bet that would piss off Man U! They’d probably get in trouble but geez it would be funny and the visiting club’s sponsor would get heaps of publicity (and probably a round of applause from everyone that hates Man U).

Noel Gallagher would probably be impressed by this tactic. Gallagher said, after the Arabs bought Man City, that “Every time a Manchester United supporter fills up their car with petrol, they put a little more into Manchester City's transfer budget”.

The AFL Thinks I Shouldn’t Miss a Game of NRL

I was looking up the broadcast guide the other day for the AFL and a banner ad for Foxtel IQ was running at the top of the page. Here are two screen shots of the dynamic banner ad. Anything strike you as odd?

I would have at least thought the AFL would think its own product was more unmissable than a rival codes.

Over Paid Graphic Designers

Saw this snippet in the SMH the other week … talk about crazy!

Fitness First Case Study Update

Thanks to Hayley_Gleeson, poptrashmusic (do you have a link?), James Duthie, Hayley_Gleeson (again :), Matt Moore, Zac Martin (barely) and Rowan Wilde who all provided great comments, and very lengthy ones at that on my post about Fitness First and Can You Force Word of Mouth. It looks like it is a great way to get you all involved rather than the deliver a “sermon from the mount” which might not leave much room for you guys to add yours smarts to.

No word from Fitness First yet so they either don’t monitor this space or don’t care. Anyway, I am going to make sure they have seen all your comments as they are very insightful and they might just learn a thing or two.

The only thing I want to add is that they should put the power of recommendation more in the member’s hand. They present themselves as a polished brand, and even go to great lengths and cost to create a flashy magazine, but they don’t even email me with updates, newsletters, offers etc.

It doesn’t take much to promote the refer a friend scheme (with all your comments taken on board) through email and provide me with the ability to send it on to people who I think might be interested who could then contact Fitness First if they wanted. It would certainly get the relationship off on the right foot.

Plus, with the technology available today (e.g. www.emma.com which I use at work) they could track which members were forwarding on their emails and to who.

Thanks also to Mumbrella who provide some link love for the Fitness First post.

Why Must We Obey Social Media Rules?

Over the last few weeks we have seen some campaigns and actions in the social media space that have pushed the boundaries. You would have to be living under a rock to have missed the whole Witchery and QLD Tourism sagas. Both of these pushed (or broke the boundaries) in terms of what some of us argue are the rules of social media.

Additionally, Julian Cole and Laurel Papworth have both provided some other examples of individuals (not companies) that have pushed the boundaries of social media.

Julian recently wrote about how "Cash for comment is alright in Social Media" and that there is currently a trend amongst Youtube Vloggers (US) that transparency is not a rule of social media. Laurel recently wrote about "Twitter: Bots gone bad" and interruptive ads on Twitter.

Peter Wagstaff, Zac Martin and I also briefly touched on this subject in episode 84 of the Marketing Today Podcast where I wondered whether in the future, brands will set up Twitter profiles and quickly harvest loads of followers with the aim of spamming them. So what if people block them? They can easily set up loads more profiles and repeat the process (especially when people auto-follow).

The argument of "brand reputation" may stand up in regards to large and reputable companies but these are not necessarily the ones who spam anyway. The risk of brand damage certainly doesn't stop us getting spam in our inboxes.

In Lauren's case, she received an apology. But what I am starting to see is a lot more examples of companies breaking the so-called rules and I am not so sure the consequences are all that much of a deterramt. For example, it can go one of three ways.

1. A company breaks the so-called rules and then pleads ignorance but still benefits (QLD Tourism),

2. A company breaks the so-called rules and benefits (Withchery, Vloggers), or

3. A company breaks the so-called rules, gets caught, and just says "sorry" and everyone gets on with it but they still benefit (@wibbler).

I posed the question on Julian's blog that "For a while some of us have been noting that the rules of social media are being defined by those that practice it (by that I mean active bloggers, twitter users etc) in the hope of keeping the corporate/brands from “polluting it” … but maybe the cracks are starting to appear?"

You will note that each of the 3 scenarios still results in a benefit being received by the company/person breaking the so-called rules. So my question is - why would they bother taking much notice of the so-called rules? Can we build stronger defences or should we resign ourselves to these new channels being polluted just like TV, Radio and Newspaper?