Sports, the one thing that really binds this world together. Its like a language we all understand and an emotion we’re all able to empathize with. Sports is an incredible and I am really glad to know that when I did sports marketing, it is such a huge market! I was under John Davis, and he’ll have a book titled “The Olympics Effect” which is gonna be really interesting for marketers, espeically in this part of the world where brands don’t really own a sport in consumers minds. Right now all i can think of is HSBC=Golf and StandChart= Maraton, basically align your brand values such that it is reflected in the sport.
Its sad to see that sports being pulled into politics, the whole Tibet- China issue should have been left out. Sports is after all sharing and coming together. Forming groups with people who share a similar passion in sports.
Take that idea and we realize that Web2.0 isn’t all that new, it’s really still about people. But when you combine these 2 ideas, for a marketing or PR purpose, it really seems like you can reach out to your consumers, on an emotionally level which is hard to explain. Why do we want Man Utd to win (or loose) when we don’t even stay in the city?
Check out this post on Football and Web2.0. The possibilities on using sports marketing and social media tools are endless.
Let’s swing by social networking sites. The class discussion today was probing on the possible future of open social and how it might or might not take off. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if Google is trying to take away Facebook’s competitive advantage of cool apps, we have to look forward and realize that social networking sites are going to have to go back to basics of distinguishing themselves.
What do i mean? There are different social networking sites for different communities. When you bring in a sports social networking site, a community that can communicate cross geographical, cultural and language barriers, its amazing!Check this social networking site called fansport, now thats a community and a unique selling point for u!
Next, we have blogs, there are quite a few around actually. This is more American based, Sports Blogs, tthe People’s Sports Network, but it shows the number of blogs devoted to individual teams. We haven’t even gone into individual sportsman blogs. Youtube videos being uploaded, podcasts being made, twitter groups, man the list goes on and we know there is a huge potential here….
So my main question now is, why hasn’t this taken off in Asia? Going by how Michael was a little annoyed at how brain dead the class was, we’ll go with the issues, stakeholders, objective (OMG, it was kindda funny to see how we forgot the basics!)
Objective: To reach out to target stakeholders with sports2.0
Staleholders: The sports teams/players, their agents, the fans/users, traditional media be involved?
Issues:
- Are our sports appealing enough in Asia to garner enough attention? ( Think cricket in India and basketball in China).
- Are the sports being discussed on web2.0 more local or foreign?
- Where is our local social networking sports site? (I don’t know if we have any, other than those in China and Inda, would appreciate it if someone enlightened me on this)
- Should we even consider using this as one of the tools to reach out to our target stakeholders in Asia?
So at the end of the day, the big question is
“Is sports 2.0 the way to go for Asia? Is it one of the paths web2.o is gonna head towards?”
Man I hope so. I’ll be honest here, i just played football at turf city at their astro turf pitch, omg, its awesome. For those who have played at Kallang, Fico or East Coast cages, just imagine this is twice the size of one cage. It’s fun! Well, its been a long long day, can’t wait for Social Media breakfast this Saturday! See ya’ll there!
Interesting article and something that I am wondering as well. I started Asia Pacifics largest sports social networking site http://www.sportingconnections.com with the hope of attracting a significant number of sports fans from around the Asia region as well as Australia and NZ but the majority of members are European heritage. I am not sure if this will really appeal to the Asian mindset.
That’s a really interesting site Oscar, always wondered if one did exsists.
Anyhows, I’m wondering what activities have you been doing to engage with the A.Pac community?
Sports in the more developed Asian countries such as Singapore have taken a huge role in our day to day lives and I’m quite surprised that the majority of your members are Europeans.