The audience you are not getting because you are focused on your own niche

Here is the ugly truth about American soccer. It is something kids DO, not who they are. Yet many soccer clubs and tournaments focus their marketing and message around the assumption that soccer is central to the players lives and that everything else is ancillary or inconsequential.

The ASAE (American Society of Association Executives) produced the video below for their annual meeting just this past weekend. (It runs a little long, the movie beats you up a little with the message, but pay attention to the subtitles. They are really small, but perhaps the most important part of the whole piece.)

I get it; trade associations connect people together and that was the obvious point. But, the not so obvious point is that all these people who are working at trade associations during the day are spending their nights and weekends with their true passion; music.

We have seen this kind of thing before, but usually the talent is mediocre. But, these folks are darn good! The ASAE not only had the criterion of involving their members, but that the member had to have a high level of skill, proficiency and passion. Brilliant!

What does a harmonica have to do with biodiesel? Nothing except for Joe Jobe. Or a guitar with concrete or paint? For Joe Vickers and Phil Bour, the combination make perfect sense. Railroads and drum kits? Michael Fore makes it work. He probably taps out routines on his desk, driving his co-workers crazy. And there is no hiding the rapture Mike Skiados (ASAE) feels when he plays his guitar.

The Disney movie High School Musical (HSM) was a similar deafening intervention cry from kids, yet few adults paid attention to the underlying message, mostly dismissing it as bubble-gum entertainment. But the kids got it and that is what made the movie “stick.”

Social Media like Facebook gets this concept by allowing members to establish a core identity and then add interests and groups to them. More specialized sites like Meet the Boss, various Ning sites and sites like WePlay.com don’t. Neither do “gardens of brands” like Skittles or Ford. In their world, there is no room for “other interests” and no way to connect the person with them. (As an aside, the WSJ had an interesting article on fans. Worth a read… after you are done with this post and have commented/tweeted, of course.)

Anyone who doesn’t know me is surprised that among my passionate interests are newspapers, old typewriters, literature, photography, coffee, typography, dogs and harmonicas. Computers and soccer come in almost last on the list. Internet is the way I make a living and it is imperative I am knowledgeable and skilled in it, but it is not my passion. In their world, I develop Web-based properties therefore I must be a geek and only care about the latest technology. Sorry. Technology is a tool; no more, no less.

For sports organizations, the random connections that social media reveals is like gold. How many times have you approached a large brand for a sponsorship and gotten, “What does our brand/product have to do with soccer?” If you dig deeper into the social media networks like Facebook, you may well have a stronger answer. Your model is HSM and the ASAE video.

Our advice: Find the connections. The more random and strange, the better. Watch the touchlines and the space between games more intently than the games themselves at your next tournament. What are the kids doing? What are their parents doing? How many questions do your get about a particular topic? Why? Ask questions, observe behaviors. Your next sponsor may be in the non-soccer parts of the game that your sponsor’s target audience is most passionate about.

Note: This post was originally intended for just TourneyCentral, but because the medium here is also the message, we posted this on almost every brand we own. Dogs and soccer? Coffee and soccer? Marketing and soccer? Yeah, it all fits when you start looking hard enough. And, thank you Cindy Butts for the inspiration.

Seth Godin is no longer entirely a big fat idiot

Originally published at: GerardMcLean.com

A couple days ago, I wrote that Seth Godin is a big fat idiot. I still stand by my opinions for the topic that he flung out there with reckless abandon and a lack of respect for the real work that is needed to implement his idea. Comments that perpetrate the myth that service is free or that online services should be near free is irresponsible and robs a lot of artists, designers and skilled craftsmen of respect*. It devalues their contribution to the human experience.

Today, he wrote a blog piece that was brilliant. It was brilliant because he showed a respect for artist, designers and interface engineers. He gave them kudos for recognizing that beauty was not something that is ancillary to the human experience, but central to it. We have human experience because of beauty, not in spite of it.

Design matters. Design matters a lot. Design means the difference between a Web site that is navigated well or a frustrating “where the hell am I?” experience. A well-designed and beautiful lobby to a business sets the tone and expectation for the eventual human experience that may or may not lead to an exchange of good and services. A beautifully-designed package for something as banal as peanut butter sells the product from the shelf at retail. If beauty was not important, we’d all be driving the same car, painted the same color.

But beauty is not something someone does in their spare time when business is slow. Beauty is planned and executed by talented artists, designers and tradesmen who deserve respect for their craft. Beauty is respected by those whose vocation it is to “be in the mood.” Beauty is also protected and nurtured by those same mood-setters, away from the “slash and burn” red pens of the bean-counters and nay-sayers who gripe that beauty is too expensive and that it does not add to the bottom line.

An appreciation of the power of beauty is what sets the great apart from the average and the cheap. Nobody ever shops at WalMart for the experience, but almost everyone shops at Tiffany’s and Macy’s for it.

Mr. Godin is at his very best when he makes deep, revealing observations about stuff that a lot of us take for granted and miss in our busy lives and then examines it from a unique perspective. Where he stumbles is when he throws out an operational “you know what you oughta do!” statement to the grunts in the trenches for whom there is real money, real blood and real sweat on the line.

* Mr. Godin is not the only one doing this. The Wall Street Journal does it consistently with technology as does CNN. I’m pretty sure there are others. Heck, even bloggers do it to themselves!

Another way to think about social media ROI

Alexander Graham Bell probably got impatient with business owners asking for an ROI on his telephone invention

When was the last time you asked the phone company to justify the cost of installing a telephone in your place of business? They would probably just laugh at you. It has probably been over 50 years since that question was last asked of a telephone sales rep by a shop owner.

On April 3, 1973 Motorola manager Martin Cooper placed a cellular phone call to Joel Engel, head of research at AT&T’s Bell Labs, signaling the demise of the land-line telephone. It will probably be several decades from now before the last wired telephone is deactivated, but chances are, it will happen. And sales reps for wireless phones are not probably not being asked for an ROI study prior to a company signing a cell phone contract.

So, why do companies ask for an ROI for the next wave of communication and conversation with their customers? Why do social media experts do it? When will a blog, Twitter account and a Facebook page turn the corner from an “investment” into an expense line item?

Probably at half the speed it took telephones. But, it will happen.

The next time someone asks you for an ROI study on social media, pick up the phone off their desk and ask them to give you the ROI the phone company gave them.

Originally published at: gerardmclean.com

The definitive metaphor for social media

There has been a rush with the social media consultant groups and evangelists about how to define this thing called “social media.” Chris Brogan defined it as cafe-shaped conversation. And many people jumped on that metaphor. Sophie Macalister defines Tiwtter “as more like hanging out in the break room than actual productive work.”

Hubspot got a bit lively when they published a video and blog post about not measuring ROI on social media. That got a lot of comments, many which attempted to define social media so it can be measured.

It seems like everyone is struggling to define this thing called Social Media and how it correctly fits into how business will be conducted. While social media may be better defined as the elephant in the room with five blind men, a perfect metaphor popped into my head this morning when I sent someone a link to MildFire and their response was, “How do you find this stuff?!?”

The real answer was I grabbed it off a Twitter stream as I was sitting and zoning between tasks. But, the answer I heard coming out of my mouth was: “It’s like this huge asteroid belt that flies by my desk all day long.. something catches my eye and I reach and grab it. Sometimes it is a shiny rock, sometimes it is a nugget of gold.”

So, the definitive metaphor — at least for Twitter — is it is an asteroid belt.

As for MildFire, I’m not sure yet if they are a nugget of gold or a shiny rock, so they go into the drawer until I have time to asses their value.

Originally published at: DogWalkBlog.com