It's a Whole
New Ball Game
In
the fight to grab customers' time, attention and dollars, professional sports
teams are changing the rules and even neglecting tradition. That's a lesson for
all kinds of businesses.
Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation
and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology @tullman
When our parents
told us time and again to pay attention, we mostly thought it was a matter of
courtesy and not of consequence. But, as it turns out today, attention has
become a currency of its own, which we are each free to spend or squander. If
you want me to pay attention to your message, you've got to find me at the right time and place and
give me a compelling reason to listen. Show me quickly how you're going to make
my life better (save or spare me something--time, money, work, bad decisions,
etc.) or I'll quickly show you the virtual door and be long gone.
Billions of dollars
are being spent every day by millions of marketers trying desperately and increasingly
unsuccessfully -- amidst the growing noise and clutter -- to attract, engage
and direct our attention to their clients' wares and wonders. And, if it wasn't
challenging enough in its organic form, the task is made ever so much more
difficult in the digital world by the abundance of hucksters, scammers, bots, viral shysters and every other manner of market
manipulator selling phony video views, valueless virality, illegitimate likes,
two-bit tweets and useless users.
Outbound and conquest
marketing is just going to continue to get harder and harder and even less
cost-effective, which is why more and more effort is being directed toward
improving and deepening the connection and the experience of the customers that companies already
have. These folks
are the lowest hanging fruit, the easiest to reach, and the most inclined to
pay attention as long as you're meeting their progressively rising expectations
and especially their increasingly shorter attention span.
The game today isn't
being played in weeks or days or even hours. It's a double-overtime,
all-the-time, battle over seconds and -- as far as I can see -- no one is
giving this more thought than the sports guys. Watching the changes we're
seeing in sports broadcasting and the way sports are being presented to, and
shared with, the fans offers a number of important lessons for the rest of us.
With the data now
available and the mass of real-time metrics that mobile users supply, everyone
has a far more accurate window on what works in every single second of these
games. The smartest sports executives are using all this information to better
manage user experiences and--at the same time -- to remake the games themselves
to better suit both the core fans and to attract new
populations to the pool.
MLB, the NBA, and the
NFL continue to have a unique edge, being live, over so much other media that
can be readily and easily time-shifted. But this hasn't blinded them to
the growing need to get ahead of fidgety fans always looking for alternatives.
Their small steps and the experiments have been fairly modest because, while
the club owners are good businessmen, they're also very conservative people
(apart from my friend Mark Cuban) and baseball, basketball and football are
highly entrenched and sacrosanct parts of the culture and traditions of this country.
Still, the concerns
they're starting to address are very relevant to the ways that every business
will need to evaluate how they are interacting with consumers and prospects,
and how the overall experiences they are creating and delivering to their customers
can be improved. All the dimensions are in play -- how, when, where, what and
to whom you are delivering your products and/or services.
Here are a few of the
most important things to be looking out for:
(1) How Available Is
It? (Access)
Everything is going
global. Games will need to be played in the afternoon for European viewers and
on weekend mornings for Asian audiences. Streaming games on Facebook (not
contractually permitted in the U.S.) is already happening in India. How
equipped is your business to sell to, service and support customers around the
world? It's relatively easy to have your app downloaded in 100 countries. It's
much harder to provide 24/7 customer support worldwide.
(2) How Long Is It?
(Time)
Everything in business
is now a function of time. No one wants to wait for anything. Games are being
shortened with fewer time-outs and briefer halftimes, reducing coaches' trips
to the mound, quicker pitching sequences, etc. because the average fan is only
watching about half of any game. How quickly can you respond to your customers'
inquiries, ship their goods, or dispatch service personnel to their sites when
needed? The best businesses today respond to inbound customer calls in less
than a minute.
(3) How Painless Is
It? (Friction)
Sports customers want
a quick, easy and friction-free solution. In this era of mass customization,
the individual wants to create and share his or her personal experience on the
fly. The teams continue to work aggressively to add increased functionality to
the in-home and mobile experiences, including multiple selectable camera views,
multi-lingual commentary choices, player, coach and referee microphones, fan
cameras, etc. The goal is to supply everything you'd get in the stadium except
the spilled beers and the screaming slob sitting next to you. In our own
companies, the test is similar. How easy is it to do business with your
business? How long does it take to reach the right person or department? How
many layers and gatekeepers do I need to deal with to get my problem resolved?
How readily is help available if I get stuck on the website? These are all
quantifiable and relatively simple questions to answer. But the process starts
when you start paying attention because, if you don't care about these critical
outcomes, no one else in your company will either.
(4) How Do I Find Out
What's Going On? (Awareness and Discovery)
We're all connected,
and nothing is more immediate or interruptive than a text. FOMO is rampant, and
teams are starting to use your phones and mobile messaging to let you know
what's happening (or about to happen) and what you're gonna miss. Everyone
wants to be in the room when it happens. This digital outreach has been
especially effective in pulling in incidental and occasional fans and even
newbies who don't want to miss the moment. How are you getting your messages
out to the right audience at the right time and place so that they reach and
resonant with both your current customers and new prospects as well?
(5) How Much of Me Do
You Get? (Share of Attention/Stomach)
These days no one does
anything important alone. Given everyone's limited time and the difficulties of
reaching the most desirable targets, new distribution and channel partnerships
are being developed in sports and the teams are willing to "share"
access to critical audiences and mindshare as well with their advertisers and
sponsors in ways that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Split
screens continue to display on-court or on-field action right alongside ads to
avoid bathroom breaks and snack streaks during which the audience disappears
entirely. In the same fashion, most new and smaller businesses today are
absolutely going to have to ride on others' platforms and rails or have no chance of reaching sufficient
numbers of end users.
None of this is simple
except for the guy who doesn't have to make it all happen himself. But it's
worth paying attention to, trying to get a little bit better all the time, and
understanding that standing still is never an option. And, in the end, it all
comes down to Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon's rule: "Try not to
suck."