Probably the biggest difference between the sport of sailing and motorsport is the fundamental reason for doing it in the first place. While yacht racing exists primarily for its competitors to go sailing, motorsport exists to sell more cars. The phrase “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday” comes from a belief that consumers are influenced by a brand’s involvement in the sport and it will influence the purchase decision.

Car manufacturers believe this mantra, even in series like F1, where the car being raced bears no resemblance to the vehicles in the dealer forecourt. On the other hand, it is extremely rare to see manufacturers of sail-boats involved at all in the sport of sailing.

While the idea that winning converts to sales is well accepted, it is extremely difficult to measure. Digital technology has made it easier to track conversion for products bought online, but for products like a car, bought at a dealership, the only way to really know what influenced the transaction is to ask the customer. This week, I heard such a story…

The Trofeo Abarth 500 GB is a one-make motor racing series in the UK featuring the Abarth 500. The series has the backing of the manufacturer, Abarth, which is part of the Fiat group. The race version of this car is almost identical to the one you can buy from your local Abarth dealer. There is a small, but extremely passionate community of people who love the Abarth brand.

As part of the marketing for the Trofeo series we reach out to fans and invite them to be VIP guests for the weekend. All they have to do in return is record their experience on a Flip video camera that we supply. We call it ‘Fan with a Cam‘. After the 2nd round of the championship at Silverstone, I was approached by a fan who had attended the event asking to buy hospitality tickets for his girlfriend. Instead, I offered him the chance to become our ‘Fan with a Cam’ for the latest round at Cadwell Park.

It turns out that the real Abarth fan was his girlfriend. Speaking to her over the weekend she revealed that she had wanted to buy an Abarth 500 for nearly a year, but upon watching them race at Silverstone, the home of the British Grand Prix, she left the racetrack with a single purpose – to buy one. And she did. Back at a different racetrack 4 weeks later she was the very proud owner of an Abarth 500. Not just a customer, but a fan.

The story is a nice reminder that marketing does not exist for its own sake. Interactions are not the same as transactions. ‘Follows’ and ‘Retweets’ and ‘Likes’ and ‘Shares’ are meaningless unless they convert into more sales.

Until recently, I had never heard of Abarth. The marque is part of the Fiat group which also includes Italian sports-car classic brands such as Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Maserati and of course Ferrari. One of the reasons that the Trofeo Abarth 500 GB was created was to increase the awareness of the Abarth brand, but also to hopefully drive sales.

Here are some insights from the weekend.

1. Understand your audience.

I know. It’s fundamental right? But this simple piece of advice is overlooked time and time again, often by consultants trying to sell a technology or process that has no relevance to your stakeholders. Abarth had several audiences to relate to throughout the weekend including; motorcycle fans, professional motorcycle teams and riders and specialist motorcycle media.

Make no mistake, a car brand at a motorcycle event is risky. Bike people are a very close community, extremely brand loyal and passionate about their sport. Luckily, the Abarth brand has motorcycle credentials – the founder, Karl Abarth, starting his career as a motorcycle mechanic and racer. The Trofeo Abarth 500 GB event poster paid homage to this history and thousands of these posters were given away during the weekend to bike fans.

In the paddock, Abarth hosted a party with a live band and invited riders, mechanics, the media and volunteer track marshals to experience hospitality usually reserved for VIPs. For the cost of a beer, the brand bought great word-of-mouth that created ambassadors on forums and social media.

2. Simple is often the best.

While a lot of online buzz focusses on new marketing techniques like ’social media’, brand building is a much more broad discipline than just ‘clicks’ and ‘follows’ and ‘links’. The simple marketing tactic employed during the weekend to build awareness was to give away hundreds of flags. All around the Cadwell Park complex, children, and some grown adults, literally flew the flag for a brand that they had probably never encountered before. Not quite ambush marketing, but certainly the Abarth scorpion appeared in a lot of photos and even on live tv coverage.

3. Do your homework.

It would have been so easy to evangelise about how the 30,000 strong crowd could have got together on Foursquare, but when the venue isn’t even listed, then you realise that urban, high-tech marketing may not be the best way forwards.

Does it work? Yes it does. How do I know? I have proof. See my next blog about a case study that has big implications for sports sponsorship.

This is important. I regularly see thoughts from the Twitterati asking “why doesn’t sport use social media more?” The answer for many sporting organisations is still – ‘that’s not where my audience is.’

While I can understand the frustration of social media evangelists, having been through a number of new technology cycles, I am not surprised at the adoption rate for new technologies. It was the same with the Internet and mobile phones.

It’s funny the business practises that stay with you. I remember a policy that employed by Procter & Gamble in Australia where I worked for a time. Senior Management were required to spend a number of days a month outside of the office and out in the supermarkets and pharmacies where the consumer made the ultimate buying decision. Many sales reps had a special route that showcased the stores where the companies products had maximum distribution or ceiling high displays. The problem with this was that management went away thinking that all was well.

At Unilever, a similar process was in place. Once off the road, as National Account Manager I used to demand that reps show me their worst stores. The ones where the competition always looked better, where the store owner refused to stock our products. Visiting these stores explained the numbers.

A similar thing happens with technology platforms. The early adopters who ‘get it’ start to convince everyone else that they should ‘get it’ too. They talk to other early adopters who nod and say ‘yes we are right’. Then you go and find examples to prove your point – clubs with millions of Facebook followers, and present it as proof. It’s very unfashionable to talk about the mass market, the majority who don’t use social media. And that’s just in the English speaking world.

Now try this exercise. Next time you feel like blogging about how a particular brand or organisation is missing out by not being on social media, don’t ask your followers and facebook friends if they agree with you – instead, leave your office, wander down to where the ‘real’ customers are and do a quick vox-pop. Ask them if they have ever heard of Twitter. Ask them if their favourite team had a facebook page whether they would use it to interact with that team.

Here are some quotes from real people from recent days. You might disagree, but they are what people think…

“I hate Facebook – too many old skeletons and people I don’t have any reason to talk to finding me. I don’t need Facebook to book tickets, I can use the club website or just call them.”

“Apparently there is this new one called LinkedIn which is meant to be for business, but I think it’s for small business – like lots of graphic designers and life coaches selling to each other. If you work for yourself I can see the point, but not in a corporate.”

“I just don’t get Twitter. It’s like code. Why would anyone care what I have to say? I like fans thinking what I might be having for breakfast without letting them down by telling them what I actually eat. Then you have all this techie programmer stuff to learn like RT and hashtag… it’s too hard. My blog works pretty well.”

“It’s all rubbish. What’s wrong with a good old-fashioned newspaper. Good writing, all the scores, portable, never runs out of batteries, I can read it wherever I want. Why do I have to interact? Most of the people who follow my team are morons. I wouldn’t want anything to do with them.”

Now instead of pushing social media, because that is your favourite thing at the moment, ask instead – Where is my audience?

If 90% of your fans have iPhones, then great – build an app. If 85% of them are active on Twitter, great fire up your Twitter accounts and engage. If however, your fanbase is talking on PHP-BB forums scattered around the country, then that’s where you should be talking to them.

There is no doubt that YouTube has changed the sporting landscape. The ability to be able to broadcast high quality – or low quality video around the world is available to anyone with a £15 webcam. As Nathenson says – Youtube is a great equaliser. Chelsea Football Club and the smallest teams have access to the same tools and the same audience, but you need to put in the effort.

While some brands might be scared of putting out content that has lower production values, despite making truly awful corporate videos, Nathenson says that User Interface is not important. Think of Twitter and Facebook and YouTube, not exactly the most good looking or friendly sites. Instead it is the content that is king. Some of the most successful videos on YouTube have no beginning, no middle and no end. What they do have is personality.

What YouTube knows, from millions of hours of content being uploaded and watched every minute of every day is that the old rules don’t apply.

Jeff Nathenson’s top tips for being successful.

1. Do not block comments. Turning off the ability for people to engage with your content limits the conversation. If people are writing negative comments, they are a refection on them, or YouTube rather than your brand or the content. Even if there are negative comments, there is no way for you to stop them.

2. Be flexible and be able to move quickly. YouTube is only 5 years old. Many other big tech brands have come and gone in the space of a few years. While Facebook and Twitter and Apple iPhone Apps might be the big thing now, they might all be replaced by something else just around the corner. This leads into point 3.

3. You are going to make mistakes. There are no gurus in this space. Some people have got lucky, some have applied good old fashioned marketing and business fundamentals to the new platforms and had success, but the ones who do best are those who experiment early and often and learn from mistakes.

One thing I disagree with Jeff Nathenson on is his comment that “you can throw a rock out a window, hit a teenager and get them to run this stuff for you.” I believe that if you have spent a lot of time and money in building a brand, then if you do decide to become more open and more public with your consumers via these mechanisms then it needs to be integrated with the rest of your communications.

Having one voice from corporate with one culture and another completely different voice on new media can have long term implications. You need to be true to your company culture and just as people should be themselves on social media, so too should brands not try and pretend to be something different.

Some sporting organisations make the mistake of lumping all fans together as a homogeneous mass. While there are some broad values that could be applied to the supporters of one club versus another, large global brands like Chelsea FC have a fanbase that spans nationalities, socio-economic types and different access to technology.

As Jerry Newman was speaking, Facebook was announcing that 700,000 Chelsea Fans were being reclassfied as 700,000 people who ‘liked’ Chelsea FC. The club’s Twitter stream is attracting new followers at a rate of 2000 a month. For Chelsea, new media is an unofficial channel that can be more nuanced, less corporate and careful.

Newman’s top tips are similar to those of many who spoke on the day.

1. Understand your customers. Not a new media thing. Not even a sport thing. Just a fundamental of business. New Media allows for a feedback mechanism that is honest and in real-time.

2. Always be learning and Act on what you learn. This speaks to the power of analytics and data. Who is watching what? Where are fans coming from? What languages are they speaking? Where are the conversations happening. Why are some pages never visited? YouTube, Facebook and other top channels provide powerful insights and metrics about demographics that can be used to create more value.

3. Interact. Don’t be afraid to engage. This is the thing that scares some people the most. The fear of negative feedback paralyses businesses from getting more involved, however sports fans are by definition fanatical about the athlete or team that they follow and for every negative comment there will be brand advocates – one eyed supporters who will fight the corner of the brand. Think about Apple – for every person that is sceptical about the iPad, there are hundreds who will defend it – even if they have never seen one.

See how smaller rights owners and teams are putting some of these thoughts into practise. Proof that you don’t have to be Chelsea FC to make it work.

The thing about the BBC is that it has resources. Not just the resources to pay ‘proper’ journalists but also the brand name that technology innovators want to work with. But the BBC’s resources come from the British public, and as such the organisation has responsibilities to a wider audience than the early adopting digerati on Twitter.

The BBC also has challenges. Trying to support multiple platforms on a day with England play Slovenia at 3pm when everyone is still in the office and combine it with the 3rd day at Wimbledon and traffic will become an issue.

The BBC also has the rights to the 2012 London Olympics. Often the Olympic Games are events where there is a step change in technology. Ben Gallop believes that 2012 is a sweet spot for the broadcast of sport, with Analog having been replaced completely by digital.

Of the 5000 or so hours of sport available, the BBC will broadcast 5000 hours in some form. This is great news for the sports that the long-tail like to watch. Once every four years, sports that are ignored by the media get some coverage, but in days gone past, the producers have chosen which events to show when.

It’s not just about television, whether it be HD, 3D or IPTV. Radio, live text and other delivery mechanisms are important to provide the best live sport experience short of being there – or in the case of Formula 1 – better than being there.

All this is very well for a publicly funded national broadcaster, but how does anyone else make any money from this brave new world?

For Andrew Croker of Perform, formerly Premium TV, the answer is partly subscription payment but also betting. Just as the tobacco industry propped up sport for decades and still contributes to sports like F1, the gambling industry fuels the demand for live sport to be delivered to punters around the world.

The world of gaming has changed. Gone are the days when you put on an each-way bet before the start of a horse race and waited until the end, these days in Europe 20% of the bets are taken ‘in running’ – after the event has started. In Asia that figure is 80%.

On business models though, Croker summarises – Live should not be given away. Pay-per-view is complicated. Subscription is the way to go.

From my point of view, the panellists for the topic ‘What does the future hold for the consumption of live sport?’ missed the multiplatform element of the issues. Television is their business, so for them, multiplatform delivery of live sport means television on different devices including mobile.

Perhaps the topic was limiting. Consumption is a very old fashioned word that assumes content only flows in one direction. A more open topic might have been ‘What does the future hold for the experience of live sport?’

Take Formula 1 for example. My experience of F1 involves 3 screens. I watch the television coverage from the BBC, I have my laptop open at f1.com logged into the live timing and scoring screen and I interact with commentators, teams and other fans via Twitter on my Blackberry. Part of that experience is consumption, but part of that experience is community based interactivity.

I could just as easily add radio into that experience. Mute the TV and listen to Radio 5 Live.

None of the panellists mentioned live animation. Sports like NASCAR, Cricket and sailing have all modelled real time events using telemetry data and delivered it without cameras.

There was also no mention of creating a better experience of being at the event – surely part of live consumption. Perhaps the use of services like Foursquare to interact with people who have bought a ticket and are sitting in the stadium? Augmented reality applications, like those developed by IBM and Android for Wimbledon will also effect the experience of live sport.

Just as football is not the only sport in the UK, television is not the only media. Delivering television on other devices is still just television. Only when we start thinking about the experience of live sport and not the limiting one-way broadcast mentality of consumption will we innovate the best product for fans and justify charging for it.

What’s next? Or are Twitter and Facebook etc. the platforms for a generation?

Only a fool would try to predict the future of Social Media. Youtube is only 5 years old and 5 years ago not many would have predicted the impact that it has had on media as we know it. But those of us who have been in Social media for 10 years or more know that it moves more slowly than you might think. (For those of you who disbelieve Social Media is more than 10 years old – see this history of Bolt.com )

The More things Change – The More they Stay the Same.

There is nothing new. We have 5 or so senses that we use to consume the world around us. Sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. Media is designed to activate those senses so we have audio, video, still pictures, the written word and live events.

Many of the biggest sporting communities are not on Facebook or Twitter, they are on the same forum software that used to exist when people dialled up to the earliest bulletin boards. Millions of others have a tried and tested social media platform called ‘the Pub’. So the more things change the more they stay the same.

An example of this is radio. Radio is different to any other media in that it doesn’t require the use of hands or sight. You cannot operate an iPad while driving a vehicle, but you can consume radio. Podcasts have taken radio and given it massive global audiences and Social Media will enhance radio and make it more interactive.

Apps are also a case of going back to the future. The vast majority of apps for smartphones are unimaginative rehashing of processes that existed for touch-tone phones and SMS text messaging. Remember when you used to dial the talking clock? Some of the apps haven’t moved on much. There are some great apps coming in the form of augmented reality, but apps aren’t the future. Why should I have to download an app for every brand I want to interact with? This would be like having a to download a different browser for every web-page I want to visit.

Often the simplest innovations are the best. We have faster connections than ever, we have more processing power than ever, we have HD and 3D video capability and yet Twitter offers us a mere 140 characters of text to communicate with.

Of course Twitter’s brevity is also the source of its biggest threat – that we lose collective memory because we only think back to the last 50 headlines in our feed and we lose real insight. Ideas are reduced to pithy phrases that people ‘like’ or retweet because they are too lazy to ask “is that right?” or “how do you know that?”

Hopefully there will always be a place for trusted brands in the delivery of news and insight. Sometimes the debate benefits from a period of contemplation rather than knee-jerk opinion. This in-depth reporting is expensive, so it will be interesting to see how the business models shake out.

The Future – Important Trends that Could Change Sports Media.

Those who don’t remember Bolt.com or Friendster or Friends ReUnited may struggle to imagine a world where Facebook or LinkedIn don’t exist. Those who remember MySpace might understand how easy it is to get things very right very quickly but not have a plan to stay relevant.

Relevance and context are the future of not just Social Media, but media in general. We have increasing access to more real-time data that will make our experience of sport better.

The information that specialist commentators used to be fed via an earpiece from an army of researchers can now be displayed alongside live action.

The data will not just be about the game though. Those wanting to communicate with you will have more information about you. Where you are, what kind of device you are using to consume the game, which side you support, who your friends are, what influence you have in the community. The opportunities lie in using that information in a way that enhances the experience instead of making it worse.

Mobile gets a lot of attention and for good reason. There are more people with a mobile phone than have internet, but there are other connected communities like those who own gaming consoles like Playstaton, Xbox or Wii.

The technology exists for people to play a game in real-time against other players around the world, but it could also drive real-time competition against the professionals. Racing alongside Jenson Button in Monaco or playing a round of Augusta with the leading group is possible today.

In summary – while technology changes, people don’t. You’ll support your team however you can – whether that is listening to it on shortwave radio or sitting in the front row seats with a handheld view of the parts of the action you can’t see. On Monday morning you will talk about the match with your mates. You’ll feel good if your girl won or down if she lost. Social Media can enable those conversations and the platforms that are most relevant will win.

Topic Three – Losing free speech? When does a personal social media channel become the property of an organisation?

There are some big issues here that relate to the promotion of the individual versus the promotion of the team or the sponsors. Those issues exist whether you are putting your face on a packet of breakfast cereal or creating an athlete personal homepage.

I have a very simple view of social media when it comes to this kind of topic. It’s just a technology. Even though iphones and other devices have accelerometers, they don’t have a moral compass.

Social media does not fundamentally change the rules when it comes to people making public comment. The policy should be dictated by the culture of the organisation.

I’ve signed several employment contracts in the past that include clauses to the effect that if I want to talk to the media I need board approval. Some of these contracts were for large global brands and some were for small start-ups. I’ve also worked in organisations where I could say what I liked to whomever I liked, with the understanding that if I brought myself or the company into disrepute there would be consequences. Social media doesn’t have to over complicate things. If a player or coach or any other employee is on social media, they are making a public comment.

As soon as a sportsman or woman takes money from a club, team or sponsor then they become an employee, spokesperson and ambassador for that brand. Microsoft’s social media policy when it comes to employees making comment is reportedly very simple – Don’t be stupid.

Here’s the simple answer – If you are a professional team and you are paying your players a lot of money, then get them media trained. Get that media training to include social media. It’s pretty easy to make people understand that sending a tweet is the same as sending a text message to the whole world.

If you don’t want to wake up tomorrow and read it in the newspaper – don’t send it. Don’t blame the technology for lapses in personal responsibility.

So that’s social media as the delivery mechanism for the message, but what are the effects of social media on the managing of a story that has already broken.

Again, how a player or team or governing body deals with a piece of bad publicity has almost nothing to do with social media. If a story is going to break, it will break thanks to good old fashioned investigative journalism or a leak of some other method. If the story is big enough, it will end up on the front page of the ‘News of the World’ or some other non-social media outlet.

All social media does in this case is speed the news to a more geographically diverse audience.

That being said, social media is a conversation and participating in that conversation early can have a positive impact on the brand. Remember that the conversation is going to happen on social media with or without you and by ignoring it, you runt he risk of your case being totally misrepresented. By the time you read about it or see it on the news, it will be too late.

There are fantastic opportunities for professional professional sporting brands to interact with a wide audience. Whether you are an athlete or a governing body, social media is your mouthpiece to the world. Be thankful that people even want to listen to you, and be mindful that what you say will become part of the global public record.

David Fuller is a consultant on the use of emerging technology for marketing, digital strategy and online marketing.

Read Part 4 – The Future?