For years, corporate brands have spent vast amounts of money sponsoring and aligning themselves to celebrities to accrue reflected value from the fans who are loyal to them. The theory is obvious, “people love this singer, actor, athlete etc…so if they become our brand ambassador, they will love us too”. In the past, this was easier to manage but in today’s world of ubiquitous information and social media, the pitfalls are just as obvious.

This post from Doc Searls captures the problem perfectly. In the wake of the Tiger Woods scandal “his biggest corporate sponsors, such as Nike and Gatorade, saw as much as $12 billion wiped off the value of their shares in the wake of the scandal.”

In the current business world, brands aren’t human beings. They should be, and any social media practitioner worth her salt will be working damn hard with their clients to try and make them more so, but as it stands they are companies, corporate vehicles which are not set up to deal with human error…the kind we are all susceptible to, especially some high profile celebs.

Some may seem perfect, Tiger Woods being the obvious example, but as we have seen, no-one is going to be perfect all the time, they all have transgressions, which as a human is fine…well, most of the time! Other human beings by and large will forgive mistakes from others. However, when one makes a mistake which is seen as representing a company then its not so easy. Companies can’t claim human error.

If companies want to get the most out of these relationships, they need to accept that these people are just that, people and there will be times that they step out of the corporate line. From a social media angle (sorry, got to bring it back to that at some point!), celebrities who are active on social channels in an authentic way, may be a better bet for corporate endorsements. If the public ‘know’ the person behind the celebrity better, they may be more forgiving when the curtain gets ripped down or the celeb is beaten with the proverbial golf club by his proverbial wife. Some celebs use social media for good – Shaq, Lance Armstrong spring to mind and, no doubt their corporate sponsors do very well off them…but these companies need to be aware what they are potentially setting themselves up for.

Corporates need to let go of the term ‘brand’ and all the connotations it brings when they are working with celebrities. When they hire the celeb, they think that person is now representative of the brand…something which humans can’t do! They can be themselves and if the company is comfortable with whom they are and what they stand for as a human being…then there is value to be derived by association. Expecting the person to fit into the perceived brand of a company is a recipe for (potential) disaster.

Would love to hear any thoughts in the comments.

There is an old joke (marginally NSFW)

Two bulls, a father and son, are grazing on a hill overlooking a field full of cows. The son says “Hey Dad, look at all those cows down there let’s run down and f**k a couple of them.” The old bull replies, “No son, lets walk down and f**k them all”

Gary Vaynerchuck was quoted at SXSW that brands are currently guilty of “behaving like 19yr old dudes” when it comes to social media. They are chasing the sale, being too quick to rush into a community and promote or market their latest product rather than listening and working out how best to provide value and be useful. Chris Brogan had a great soundbite at Like Minds Conference in Exeter, “people hate being sold to, but we love to buy” (or something very similar!). Customers can spot the salesmen in an online community and aren’t always receptive…sometimes the opposite, but if you spend time ‘feeding’ the community and adding value, without the ‘sale’ being at the centre of your communications, the opportunites will come and be more meaningful when they do.

Concentrate on listening, gaining insight, understanding the community before rushing down the hill…the rewards will be far greater in the long term!

There has been a fair amount going on this week in social media with the Social Media World Forum (smwf) on Monday and Tuesday and SXSW the other side of the pond. Due to this, there is a bonus post in our top six this week.

1. Brands Must Become Media to Earn Relevance – Brian Solis

Always on the money in terms of in depth analysis and forward thinking, Brian Solis looks at how brands have to become adept at creating content and actually becoming media. He also breaks down the differences between paid, earned and owned media and looks at how, as content creators, brands and individuals can use social media to build influence and trust within their niche.

2. Social Fans More Likely to Buy – emarketer.com

Who’s looking for some ROI ammo? That’s most of us then! A recent study from Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate (US) indicates that if you are a friend or follower of a brand then you are more likely to buy their stuff. Not exactly a Eureka moment but anyone working with B2C clients, it may be worth throwing pointing them here.

3. 4 Ways the Entertainment Industry is Getting More Social – David A. Yovanno

If you are a fan of something or someone then social media should be your friend. TV companies, Movie studios, bands or labels and especially sports teams or athletes now have the tools to bring their fans into their world like never before. In this guest post by David A. Yovanno on Mashable, he looks at some examples of how the entertainment world is getting its social on.

4. Hats off to Heineken - Molly Flatt

I had originally credited this one to Mashable but a tweet from James Whatley at 1000Heads set me straight on how they had it first! This is one of the best WOM (word of mouth) campaigns I have seen in a while. The video is below so doesn’t need too many words, but note the harnessing of: real life, both genders, online and offline and the human touch. Enjoy.

5. Social Listening for Economists? – Aaron Lewis

Interesting angle from Aaron Lewis on how social media can be used as an economic prediction engine. By using the social media monitoring tools (in this case Crimson Hexagon), a decline in social chatter about job hunting pre-empted a slight increase in overall economic performance in the US. Not sure if we should hang our hats on the data just yet…but I like the way he is thinking!

6. Sequoia’s Kvamme: Social Media Marketing Can Replace Advertising – Liz Gannes

According to Sequoia Capital’s Mark Kvamme, “If you can harness social media marketing, you don’t have to pay for advertising any more.” With so many people now creating their own media, if marketers and advertisers of old can navigate the new waters and find a way in to these communities then they can turbo charge their messages. They are going to need to learn the new languages and etiquette though.

7.  Chat Roulette Funny Piano Improv #1 – PianoChatImprov (Merton)

Controversial, I know but I couldn’t resist throwing in a seventh this week. If you aren’t familiar with chatroulette then go here or here. Then watch the below video and laugh accordingly!

“Of all the amazing new technologies that are opening up possibilities to communicate and connect in the digital space, video is the one that holds the most promise” (Valeria Maltoni – Conversation Agent)

Human beings are visual creatures and the experiences we get from seeing someone or something is far deeper than reading text or hearing audio. The good news, is social media and the web in general is becoming more video friendly. It is easy to make videos, easy to upload them to sites with potentially millions of viewers and easy for those people to share them. With the search engines and advertisers now more interested in engagement levels and time and depth of a site visit, it is a bit of no brainer for media owners and brands to not harness this.

You hear online video and you think YouTube, and why not? There are over 400m people per month watching between 6-9 million channels! Impressive. Also, we have the social networks who have their own video upload platforms and streaming sites such as Ustream or JustinTV. A recent, and very interesting entrant is Vpype. I saw them in action at SMWF on Monday and think this has some real legs from a fan engagement perspective.

This is truly social video . Sure, you can watch a video on YouTube and comment on it or watch a live event or broadcast on Ustream (even with some nice social chat features running alongside) but the ability to run a live, unscripted, ‘meeting’ or ‘party’ with your friends or fans is a far more engaging and authentic proposition.

Features include:

-          Live chat alongside each video

-          Chat History and storage

-          Viral tools to promote broadcasts on Facebook and Twitter

Bring out the Celebrities

I think the real winners in this will be celebrities or brands who have a community of advocates such as bands, fashion designers and especially sports teams and athletes. The ability to provide an experience such as Vpype to fans, embedded into a platform where they are already investing a huge amount of their online time is one that they should be seriously looking at.

Too many media owners are still thinking they need to use this type of golden content as a way to drive traffic to their ‘official websites’ or require a two page registration form before you can access this good stuff. You don’t need to put your audience or fans in a headlock before giving them what they want! The tools are available to provide remarkable experiences outside of official sites and it will be interesting to see who starts putting some stakes in the ground and experimenting.

Would love to hear you thoughts…and Happy St Patrick’s Day!

This popped up in my Twitter stream yesterday via @Christinekorda , ‘A list of the 10 most bizarre social networks’ and I think it highlights, if we didn’t already know, how niche and contextual the social web is. This is extremely important to remember for brands looking to engage with potential customers.

It is so easy to focus on the latest ‘shiny tool’ or the biggest network, as we are constantly being bombarded with eye watering usage stats that lead to a ‘everyone else is doing it, so we must’ mindset, when the sensible strategy should be ‘a lot of my customers are doing it, so we must’. Yes, half the universe is on Facebook and however many billion tweets per month are about brands (exaggerating for effect!), and these shouldn’t be ignored but the challenge as a marketer is to figure out what is the best community for your customers,  where  can we have the most impact, what will provide the best context for your product.

If you sell mustache combs then wouldn’t http://www.stachepassions.com/ be better than a Facebook group?

If you are launching a new vampire show (and that is every network and channel in the known World right now) then maybe http://vampirefreaks.com/ would be better than MySpace?

If you have a product aimed at Christians then you should have a presence on http://lineforheaven.com/

Of course, it shouldn’t be mutually exclusive and presences with the major social networks won’t do you any harm, but some cost benefit analysis on where you will get the most value for your time is a major factor for SME’s. The value in your marketing efforts are going to be diluted big time if you are just part of the noise and unless you have a solid value proposition and offering, it would be naive to assume that customers will come and seek you out on Facebook or start enaging with you on Twitter.

There are tools (free and paid) to help you find where the fish are, and who the fish are. This should be the corner stone of any social media strategy and implementation plan, otherwise you run the risk of ‘fondling the hammer’ as Jeremiah Owyang put it. Some proper research and social profiling of your customers online behavior will be worth its weight in gold when it comes to ROI time…

Oh yeah, and once you have found where to fish, please don’t dynamite fish…Spearfishing is so much better!

Sports teams and athletes are at an enormous advantage to corporate or consumer brands. They have a huge amount of content, they have an exisiting, passionate offline community who want their rpoduct. On top of that, sports fans are one of the most brand loyal groups of people I can think of and sport itself is inherently social. It brings people together around the game itself, in bars and pubs, in people’s homes…and online can help augment the game experience by bringing the fans into the inner workings of the clubs on a daily basis.

A sports team’s product isn’t just the game each week that the fans will pay to come and watch and broadcasters will pay to distribute. Fans want interaction with the team and players and not through the traditional methods of the press and staged TV interviews. In the UK, Football is going through a rough time financially and we may see more clubs going the same way Portsmouth and Crystal Palace have recently -  into administration. I am not saying for a minute that a social media program will solve these structural problems, far from it, but it can keep the fans,  from feeling like the clubs don’t care about them and keep them coming through the turnstyles or buying their favourite players shirt – wanting to stay loyal, wanting to be brand advocates. Long term, that’s surely the game.

A team’s ‘customers’ want to be as close as they possibly can to the club and the players…this is in stark contrast to consumer brands. If you sell mobile phones, insurance or detergent, do your customers really want to be your friend? They will take any freebies or decent offers but its no small ask to keep them engaged on a regular basis and enjoying every bit of content, they just aren’t that interested. Not so in sport.

So, what can a club or team do to harness this opportunity?

Make sure you have a ‘fan engagement’ strategy – This is different to an online marketing and PR strategy. It needs to provide an experience the fans can’t get through traditional channels.

Have at least one community where conversations can take place – An interactive area of the clubs website,  An official Facebook fan page, a private social network. Be active and conversational here, don’t treat it as another PR vehicle.

Think what ‘exclusive’ content you can reward your fans or members with. There is boat loads of this! Exclusive footage from training, locker room interviews (within reason!), injury news from the physios, community projects….

Bring the fans into the fold. Consider empowering the fans, if you check your Facebook groups and forums I bet there are plenty of unofficial communities already thriving – harness that. Why not create Fan reporters, team tweeters, a fan zone that has some clout with the club. In Spain, Barcelona are ‘owned’ by the fans…other teams would do well to adopt a similar mindset.

Consider what Mobile can offer. Mobile is going to be big for entertainment – The devices are getting better and the teams already have a glut of content which can be distributed to people’s pockets. Think, what can we get to the fans via mobile? Arsenal and Chelsea both have iphone applications at around the £2.99 mark which is a good start. Sure they are the big fish, but the same will be true for clubs of all sizes, just on a different scale…the same principles apply.

Another key difference is that sports fans will pay for this type of content and level of interaction. Not huge amounts, as some fans will testify that it is expensive enough supporting their team but this is a question of value rather than pounds or dollars. Anything that provides a level of joy and touches the tribal part of our brains, a few quid here and there to make me feel it’s MY club is fine by me.

New Revenue

I think clubs have genuine untapped revenue streams here, not only through online advertising, sponsorship and merchandise sales but in streaming and distributing their games and content to much, much bigger audience than they currently do through TV broadcasting contracts. For the clubs with international audiences (especially Asia and Africa who have a lot of growth in terms of intenet access ahead of them), if and when the devices and connectivity improve, they can have millions more people watch their games and additional content and pay micro payments for the privilege. We aren’t there yet but it is coming.

Youtube have begun streaming live sports events.  We have seen England football matches being streamed live, admittedly not very well yet but that is to do with the devices and the connectivity, Virgin are trailing 100mb broadband, Conservatives have said they will make high speed connectivity priority if they win the election this year, smart phone penetration is on the up…and that is just for the games, what about news, updates, promoting community and charity work?

Players

For the athletes and players there is also the opportunity to build a huge amount of brand equity. This can be used a positive platform for a media career, raise awareness for good causes they are involved with, create a more authentic and trusted voice for the individual than old school press releases. Some are doing it well, (more in the US but we are seeing signs of it this side of the pond). Chad Ochocinco has his OCNN channel, Shaq has been a Twitter exponent for a few years now. Having the players active on these channels does come with its own set of potential pitfalls, but ignoring the new communication channels and opportunities isn’t going to make them go away. The clubs, agents and athlete’s representatives need to find a balance where the players can be treated like adults and decide the type of relationship they want with their fans…they may need them after they retire!

Organisations, brands and sports clubs are all in the same boat with needing to be more trusted and that takes time and comes with authenticity and engagement. Its all people to people communications, after all!

Update: A good example of exactly what I was talking about is Manchester City. Read this excellent post by Ash Read covering similar lines of thought.