The 2010 FIFA World Cup kicked off on June 11. While total viewership is still unknown at this point, Nielsen has reported an 80% audience gain for ESPN and ABC during their weekend coverage of the event. For past World Cups, FIFA reports a worldwide audience of 26.29 billion in 2006 and 26.4 billion in 2002. If these statistics are not convincing enough, I give you my dad as another example. He would stay up late or get up in the middle of the night to watch a match, and he has been doing so for as long as I could remember.
Undoubtedly, the FIFA World Cup and soccer in general claim one of the biggest fan bases around the world, and many people feel fiercely loyal toward the sport and toward their team (think fans’ riots after losing a game). Wouldn’t it be great if your company can have the same level of loyalty among your customers? While whether an average consumer’s loyalty toward a brand can reach the level of loyalty toward a sports team is open to debate, there are at least valuable loyalty lessons that can be learned from how people associate themselves with sports and sports teams. Here I would like to talk about two main takeaways.
Excitement and Passion
Soccer fans are passionate about the sport. Why? It is exciting! When you watch a soccer game (or any sports for that matter), you don’t know who is going to win, you are carried away by moment-to-moment excitement, and you get a rush from capturing a glimpse of an incredible move by a player that may be talked about for decades afterwards. It may be hard to imagine the same kind of passion and excitement in your products. For example, most people are not going to feel really excited about a tube of toothpaste. But that does not mean you cannot bring excitement and passion into your customer relationship. There are three ways about it:
- If your product category has excitement potential, you can try to build excitement about the category itself. Examples of this include fashion, automobiles, and entertainment.
- If your product category is not that exciting (e.g., if you are unfortunately stuck with marketing a toothpaste), you can still build excitement around your brand name. In this case, brand image is the surrogate of an exciting team. To do so, your company’s culture needs to have a touch of excitement built in, and your communication strategies should coherently convey a sense of excitement. This would include your advertising messages, your sponsored events, your online social networks, etc.
- Sometimes it is also possible to build passion about a lifestyle and then tag the brand name alongside it. This is different from category-level excitement in that it is not about a single product category but about a unique way of lifestyle that may span across multiple product categories. For instance, consider the extreme sports lifestyle. It has a unique target audience and it spans across fashion, sports, and other industries. It is a way of life that people feel passionate about. If your brand happens to be in such areas, you can benefit from the excitement and passion that are associated with this lifestyle.
Build Connection (in Different Ways)
Except for the most generous donors, I bet most sports teams or players do not know the names and faces of their biggest fans. But this does not deter those fans from feeling a strong connection with and loyalty toward their teams. Why? Sports build connections for individuals, in many different ways:
- Connection with other fans: Human beings are social animals. When people come together to cheer for something or feel sad about something, that is a very powerful emotional connection. In football, a well-known pre-game entertainment is tailgating. While on surface it may be about drinking beers and having fun. It also symbolizes people’s belonging to a community of others with similar passions. When your brand can facilitate this type of belongingness and satisfy people’s social connection needs, you will benefit from a stronger emotional connection with your customers.
- Connection with star players: Some people follow a sports team because it has their favorite player in it. As proof of this, when a star player switches teams, the player often brings with him a group of loyal fans to the new team. For a brand, the same kind of star power can be associated. But using a celebrity spokesperson that originally had nothing to do with the brand is not necessarily the best approach. At the end of the day, that person can take your loyalty audience to a competing brand easily. Ideally, this star player for your brand should be “homegrown” so that there is a natural association between your brand and the star, which will work much stronger than an imposed celebrity tie. In this regard, your employees matter A LOT. Even if a consumer knows no one at your company but that one warm and funny customer service representative, you will already have built some emotional connection with the consumer.
- Connection with locales: Many people follow the team of their local city or state or university. This intimacy by geographic connection is what keeps local communities alive. While some may argue that the Internet and online social networks have weakened local communities, I actually think the opposite is true with marketing. There is a cultural trend against big brands and national chains. Instead, consumers are flocking to local businesses that are right around the corner. For smaller local businesses, this is good news, and they should build on this local sentiment. For national brands, not all hopes are lost in this area. Local connections can still be built with sponsorship of local events or in the form of hybrid national/local campaigns such as the Pepsi Refresh Project.
Whichever way you build your connection with customers, do try to discover multiple ways of doing that. Similar to human relationships, where people who interact in multiple contexts (e.g., co-workers and gym buddies) tend to share stronger relationships, more ways to give your customers a sense of connection will also result in a deeper and more meaningful relationship.
The idea of 26+ billion people watching the same event is exciting and truly inspiring. This should be the standard that companies set their eyes to as well. With the right (and sincere) strategies, businesses can get to a higher level of connection with their customers and in turn will enjoy the benefit of more loyal customers.
Disney owns television networks (including ESPN), sports facilities, magazines, hotels and conference facilities. But the lessons that DI teaches originate .
Traits such as integrity, honor, obedience and loyalty were just as important to Lombardi as succeeding both on and off the field.
I do agree with all of the ideas you have presented in your post. They are really convincing and will certainly work. Still, the posts are very short for novices. Could you please extend them a bit from next time? Thanks for the post.
Amanda’s dad is a hardcore Huskers fan. In less than 2 years, both have already made valiant efforts to sway Ava’s sports loyalty to their side of the proverbial NCAA fence.