Holidays present great opportunities for sports organizations to move the needle, and Father’s Day is no exception. I’ve been trying to keep an eye on what advertisements and promotions teams, leagues and brands are offering this year, using a Pinterest board to track them all. Here is what I have discovered so far, and I will add more as I find them.

One consistent theme in sports business is change. Organizations change. Fans evolve. New products are developed. Technology prompts transformation. Competition sparks innovation. And it is important to keep these same topics in mind when managing your career in sports business. They can provide an entry point for those from other industries who dream of finding a career in sports.

I recently read the excellent Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future by Dorie Clark. In it she clearly makes the case for defining and refining your personal brand, identifying professional opportunities, and developing a narrative that tells the story of how your skills and experiences make you an attractive candidate for your next role.

Clark, whose own diverse background includes work in politics, with non-profits, in consulting and academe, makes the case that the path to career success is no longer about finding a great company, biding your time and moving up the corporate ladder. Instead an entrepreneurial mindset is required.

The key to the book’s success is three-fold. First, the suggestions are backed up by actions to execute. For example, instead of simply suggesting you find a Mentor (Chapter 6), Ms. Clark gives specific behavioral ideas for identifying, approaching and developing deep relationships with Mentors.

Second, in each chapter there are several alternative suggestions. This is not the typical one-size-fits all career book. Instead, there are multiple ideas offered on each topic and the reader can decide which suggestion – or combination of suggestions – to implement.

Third, the anecdotes Ms. Clark provides of people who have switched careers, found new jobs, taken on new responsibilities and developed new personal brands are inspiring. But not all had immediate success! In fact the stories of people who tried new ventures and failed are the most compelling. In some cases they returned to their former roles reinvigorated after a “grass-is-always-greener experience”, while others’ new adventures ended up far different than what they set out to accomplish. Both cases provide a great reminder that reinventing yourself requires work and the path to career fulfillment is not linear.

The book also highlights the integration of Social Media in managing your personal brand. The book prompted me to start using Tout as an additional platform for creating video content. Ms. Clark’s recent article on content creation in Forbes featuring Gary Vaynerchuk sheds further light on this evolving trend.

So while the book is not written with a sports industry audience in mind, the lessons offered may prove invaluable in managing your own career in these rapidly changing times.  Insights gained from reading Reinventing You will also help you recognize talented people from diverse backgrounds who can bring great value to your organization.

Three official college bowl game Twitter accounts (plus the Pac-12) got into some friendly social banter on Friday afternoon. I love seeing tweets like this – letting some personality come through with these big brands is the best way to engage fans. You have a little trash talk (“#EightViewBump”), some pop culture (a Game of Thrones reference, which I unfortunately don’t get since I don’t watch the show), and of course some humor (the 2-gallon jug of white-out – someone on the White-Out social media team needs to jump on this!). I especially like the last tweet reply to Christian Bruey of WFTV – “It’s football, not brain surgery. Have fun!” He’s absolutely right!

Today’s post is courtesy of guest blogger Bill Peck.

A creative brief is a document that outlines the conversation between an agency or marketing group and the team or client around a strategic marketing and communications effort to accomplish an end goal –more revenue. A creative brief is usually the least you can expect from a creative agency when putting together a communications and marketing plan for a certain team or season. I’ve worked with at least one organization that did this every off-season in preparation for the next season of competition. At that particular organization, there was a complete renovation of marks, logos and brand identity during my tenure in addition to a long term plan of tactics set forth for at least a few years into the future. Building on that and other experiences, an effective creative brief does several things for your brand strategy…here are a few examples:

• It defines who you think your fans are
• It outlines what you do for your fans and customers
• It gives the complete outline of what your team is trying to accomplish, from the 50,000 foot view down to ground level

Essentially a creative brief gets the conversation started about the “5 W’s” – who, what, when, where, why. It incorporates everything from where are we now to where do we want to be and gets a dialogue going between the people who know strategic marketing and communications along with the people who know the game, the team and the fans. In more detail and taken from a class project I did as a graduate student at Seattle University, an effective creative brief asks the following questions:

• Who is our target?
• What do they think, feel or do right now?
• After this touch or this campaign, what do we want them to think, feel or do?
• What is the main thought of this campaign?
• Why should the target care about this?
• What else do we need to know to get started?
• Any thought starters?
• Anything we should avoid?

These questions are the framework from which to build your creative brief, but to be effective, a creative brief is just that, brief. It is a one to two page maximum length document that gives you a starting point from which to work toward final goals.

Here is an example of a creative brief one might put together for a college basketball program:

• Who is our Target?
  • Current students are our first priority because this is an audience that is already involved in campus life and are peers to the athletes on the court.  The student connection must be developed if we are to create a premier college basketball game environment.
  • Seattle University alumni are another critical primary target because these are people who already have a strong connection to our institution, especially senior alumni who were students at a time of great athletic success for SeattleU and remember SU as a perennial contender for the national title.
  • Young alumni are a target audience who likely have disposable income and looking for a way to support their institution.
  • Alumni and people with families who are looking for affordable entertainment options are another target audience of importance.
  • Basketball fans who are looking for affordable tickets to see high-quality, local teams at a highly visible community arena.  SeattleU will work to market every aspect of the team, including the regional opponents as a potential lead to draw fans into the building.
  • High school students and families.  SeattleU prides itself on being a community partner that connects with people on a personal level.  Use these connections to build on the fun aspect of sports and the connections that come from the shared experience of live presence at sporting events.  As an affordable entertainment option, SU encourages high school students and families to be a part of a great game experience that is easy to find.
  • What do they think, feel, or do right now?
    • Many students are currently unaware that Seattle University has a basketball team – we must develop awareness.
    • Of the students who are aware of the team, many of them are not aware of the free benefits available to them, including:
      • Free transportation to/from KeyArena
      • Free admission with SU ID
      • Free $5 concession vouchers for first 50 students
      • Student entertainment on the concourse during pre-game
      • Tons of free giveaways during the season
• In a close-knit campus community, word travels fast; many do not feel a connection with the team or its players
• After this touch or this campaign, what do we want them to think, feel, or do?
  • Personal connection to Seattle University basketball players and deeper connection to University
  • “This is Seattle Basketball.”
  • Engage with team players and coaches and with other fans
  • What is the main thought of this campaign? (or campaign elements)
    • “ON A MISSION”
    • Why should the target care about this?
      • We are at the heart of Seattle and the only collegiate sports team that bears that name.
      • We are downtown and at the heart of the city, both on and off campus.
      • We are a university community that supports SeattleU’s Jesuit mission and vision.  We are about students, alumni, and family.
      • We have a history of outstanding athletics success and seek to build upon that tradition of excellence.
      • We are an entertaining collegiate atmosphere that thrives on the energy and passion of its student body, THE RED ZONE.
      • What else do we need to know to get started?
        • Seattle University marketing brand strategy and licensing protocol.
        • Include traditional media such as TV, radio, and billboards.
          • Use TV games as an avenue to reach a broad audience and emphasize the “have to be here” experience
          • Drive attendance to TV games and emphasize all games on same radio dial
          • Place billboards strategically in areas with high alumni concentrations or near social centers
• Include social media and engage fans in conversation
  • Standard: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, team blog
  • Other: Gowalla, Tumblr, Flickr, etc.
• Promote pricing discounts on group purchases through Groupon or LivingSocial
• Develop a piece of fan gear that can be used in PR stunts, displayed in-game, and used year-round
  • Especially around holiday shopping season
• Develop a fan guide, print and online
  • Include fight song lyrics and audio, cheers, RedZone facts and questions, links to social media and team/University websites, Q&A about the team and coaches, University athletics history and timeline
• Develop personal connections with players through online videos and team blog
• Integrate in-game messaging read by student athletes
• Anything we should avoid?
  • We are not the University of Washington and don’t associate or compare ourselves with them.
  • Focus on the positive and encourage feedback
    • Avoid being a victim plagued by low attendance and lack of student presence

What do we want our fans to do after we start talking to them? This is a great question – begin with the end in mind.

Something else worth noting is that last question – “anything we should avoid?” When working with an outside organization this is an especially important question and one you might not consider until it is too late or until the brief has already been assembled. If you know of something that didn’t work last year or the year before, get that out into the open. If you got zero clicks on a few ads you put online, let your creative team know this. The more you can collaborate and work together, the more likely the final plan of where to begin will succeed.

I hope this post has helped you and I’d love to hear what you think about how your marketing team is doing with their own creative brief. Please leave your comments below. Go Forth!

Bill Peck is a sports business professional whose experience is in both internal and external operations. Bill’s Sports Business Blog can be found at williamtpeckii.com.

Some good friends of mine (Tim Newman, Jason Peck, Charles Harris, and Brendan Wilhide) recently published a textbook titled “Social Media in Sport Marketing” that I highly encourage any interested students and educators to take a look at. Here is an excerpt from Chapter 2: Introduction to Principles of Sport Communication, Marketing, and Social Media:

The New Model of Sport Communication (1990s–Present)

The traditional communication model in which the media had a monopoly and could dictate the what, when, and how of distributing sport began to change when Home Box Office (HBO) began airing boxing matches in the 1970s. This was followed by satellite programming that allowed people to watch games live without waiting for the taped versions of the events to be shown on their local stations (Federal Communications Commission, 2005).

The technologies of home computers, Internet, satellite television, and digital transmissions created two immediate impacts for sport communication: (1) the power of traditional mass media decreased as fans benefited from multiple consumption options, such as live streaming and satellite radio, and (2) the sport audience became empowered as never before to consume sporting events as they desired instead of only as made available by the media (Schultz, Caskey, & Esherick, 2010). In fact, social media has expanded the “coverage” of sport to all the time as people talk about teams, players, and organizations twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Professionals in the field of sport must understand that they always, at all hours of the day, represent the organization they work for and that the personal/professional line cannot easily be separated in the global arena of social media (Favorito, 2011).

Perhaps the most important effect of these technologies, however, has been greater audience empowerment: Individuals use technologies to become actual participants in the sport communication process. Furthermore, fans have started to challenge the mainstream media by creating and distributing content independent from them. Through the use of social media and the Internet, individuals are able to create and comment on content in the world of sport at any time. When a story emerges (or sometimes is even unconfirmed), people post messages on blogs, Twitter, or message boards. These stories quickly gain traction without being published in a mainstream news outlet. Even major news outlets and television shows are now using social media to take polls and gather comments about stories to show on the bottom of the screen to enable greater levels of participation amongst viewers.

As Exhibit 2.1 illustrates, the coverage of a sport story in the modern communication model depends upon the intricate flow between the media and audience. According to sport media professionals at Sports Media Challenge (SMC), the shift has gone from a time when communication / marketing professionals would put out materials based upon what they wanted to discuss or what they felt the public wanted to hear to now, when it is more of “a conversation, where the fans get to say what they want to talk about and get to direct where the marketing focus needs to be” (Garner, Patrick, Barrett, & Lane, 2010).

I am somewhat infatuated with the idea of how data can be shared with the public with the purpose of creating value for fans and teams alike. So when I received the press release below from Angus McNab at Opta, I was really excited. I think this type of partnership has so much potential for all parties involved:

• A strong brand fit for AIG highlighted around innovation
• Excellent integration for Opta around their data and analytical power
• Great value for rugby fans with the end-result being a valuable new app
• Puts more data into the hands of the fans and tapping into the  power of the crowd

I’m not a rugby fan, but I can’t wait to see what the end result it. Looking at Mark Cuban’s request for jersey designs and this innovation challenge, I think we will continue to see sports organizations reach out to the crowd more and more for the next big idea.

Here is a full profile of the campaign, courtesy of the press release from Opta:

The sport of rugby has experienced unprecedented growth in recent years and shows no signs of slowing down. As participation spreads into non-traditional areas and across demographics, new generations are playing and watching the sport, and emerging rugby nations are dominating the pitch. Rugby is everywhere – but fans can’t be!

Opta is collaborating with AIG, a leading global insurance company, New Zealand Rugby and USA Rugby to launch the AIG Rugby Innovation Challenge, a contest to harness rugby data into the hands of fans via useful, engaging apps. The developers of the winning apps will compete for cash and prizes totaling $85,000 and will have access to Opta’s live international data feeds for two years.

For the first time in rugby’s history, AIG is making Opta’s granular rugby data – including stadium location feeds, team and player performance statistics, match statistics, and a host of other rich data feeds – available to application developers free of charge. Participants will have access to all of the New Zealand All Blacks match fixtures from 2012 via the AIG Opta Rugby Dataset, as well as selected USA Rugby match fixtures, which will be available with every single on-the-ball action categorised, and logged with an x/y coordinate attributed to where it took place on the pitch.

Angus McNab, Opta’s Head of Pro Rugby and Sponsorship, said of the challenge, “Opta is delighted to work with AIG on such a unique, ground-breaking sponsorship activation. This challenge goes beyond supporting a single team or country – it is an opportunity to unify fans in a way that has never been done before, and shows a real commitment to innovation in sport and technology – something we at Opta are very passionate about as well.”

“This is a fantastic opportunity to show how we can really enrich the rugby experience for fans who we know have a real thirst for information on all aspects of the game,” said Nick Brown, General Manager, Public Affairs for New Zealand Rugby. “Opta produces a huge range of fascinating data from every moment of every top game, so we’re confident this competition will unlock many fun and exciting new ways to meet fans’ passion for their favourite game. We also thank AIG for providing another opportunity to help us reach more fans in more places as we work together to grow the game.”

Daniel Glantz, Global Head of Sponsorship, AIG, said, “We hope that with this wealth of information, participants are inspired to present the sport of rugby in new and interactive ways, while also sharing their passion. We’re committed to growing the game, and by bringing an informative, mobile app to fans around the world, we’re getting closer to that goal“.

Powered by ChallengePost (an online portal that hosts development competitions), the AIG Rugby Innovation Challenge officially kicks off on Tuesday, June 18. For more information or for any developers that want to pre-register, visit aigrugby.challengepost.com.

It should come as no surprise that the Champions League Final drove a tremendous amount of social media activity. UEFA put together a great infographic summarizing this digital frenzy, showing metrics for website visitors, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and YouTube.

(This infographic originally appeared on Mediabistro’s AllTwitter website)

Back in April of 2009, I wrote a post called “The Washington Natinals?” that came about because the Washington Nationals played a game with a misspelling on their own jerseys. The main idea of the post was, rather than trying to throw blame around or bury the story, I thought there were multiple ways the team could turn a negative into a positive. Well, there were two more stories this week where I think the same principle can and should be applied.

Story 1: “Astros vendor brings snow cones into bathroom stall, gets fired”

So the idea of a vendor bringing their tray of food into a bathroom stall is clearly quite disgusting, and firing the vendor had to happen. But now that the staff issue was addressed, they have to turn back to the fans and replace this story with something positive. To me, the easiest way to do this is to make this weekend “Free Snow Cone Weekend” and give away as many snow cones as they can. Let’s face it, I think it’s fairly safe to assume snow cone sales might dip for a little while, but making it a give away can overcome that negative feeling and becomes a great gesture to their fans.

Story 2: “Screengrab Snafu: The Royals Graphics Department is Just Giving Up”

Take a look at this video board from a Royals game:

Credit: AwfulAnnouncing.com

This “lemon” is more like the “Natinals” story. With the mix-up in both the team logos and the players’ names, you almost have to laugh about this, and that’s exactly what the Royals should do. They need to ask themselves, “OK, so we made a mistake – how can we have fun with this?” What about creating a new between-innings game on the videoboard where fans have to unscramble mixed up player names? Or a bobblehead night where they intentionally change the name of one of their own players? Of course, the player would also need to have a sense of humor for that one to go well. The point is that, rather than looking at this as a mistake that they need to hide, look at it as an opportunity to make your fans laugh and create a positive experience.

In case you haven’t checked out the Event Calendar, we have two sports networking events scheduled for this month!

The Business of Sports – New York Networking Event

• Tuesday, June 11 at Public House NYC
• Open networking from 6:30 to 9:30PM
• Free to attend, all backgrounds welcome (No resumes please!)
• Details and RSVP here!

The Business of Sports – Boston Networking Event

• Wednesday, June 12 at Julep Bar
• Open networking from 6:30 to 9:30PM
• Free to attend, all backgrounds welcome (No resumes please!)
• Details and RSVP here!

These events provide opportunities for sports professionals on all levels to connect with other like-minded individuals and build up their professional network. Our feedback from these events continues to be tremendous, so we will keep seeking out new locations and new ways to help support this community. We hope to see as many of you as we can at one of our events very soon!

Since Pinterest is such an easy way to share lists and other graphical examples, it was only logical to expand my use of it to share sports business content. I’ve been pinning a lot of things lately to try and get my boards filled with useful resources, and I will continue to do so.

Here is a sampling of what I’m doing over there, and if you are a Pinterest user, please give me and my boards a follow!

I will also create boards to track specific trends and campaigns that emerge, like the following:

• Sports Harlem Shake Videos
• Sports Gangnam Style Videos
• Sports Black Friday Offers
• Sports Cyber Monday Offers

Additionally, check out these other great sports business focused Pinterest accounts:

• Sports Geek
• Paciolan
• J.W. Cannon
• Row 27

If you have other ideas on how else I can use Pinterest to deliver sports business content, please let me know!