NFL Moves Advertising, Sports Marketing Needle To Unprecedented Levels

As reported today by Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal, and as summarized in this piece by MediaBistro.com's new online sports media publication, SportsNewser, the NFL's 2010-11 broadcast advertising sales, including spots for all regular-season games televised across the league's five authorized broadcast outlets (i.e., CBS, NBC, ESPN, FOX, and NFL Network) and super-expensive slots for Super Bowl XLV, are nearly sold out -- even though the season does not officially begin until Thursday, September 9.

Considering the lingering effects of the recession on all advertising forms, and the dramatic and widely-reported reductions in sports marketing expenditures over the past 24 months, this is unprecedented news, even for a major sports league as the NFL, long regarded as the most prominent and successful marketing juggernaut in global professional sports.

To date, sales executives at CBS, NBC, ESPN and NFL Network all state that their respective ad inventories are at least 90% sold for the season. FOX Sports verified its regular-season business is more than 95 percent sold, an increase of over 20 percent above last year’s pace, when networks were selling their NFL games in the middle of the worst recession in generations.

Much of the advanced sales have been attributed to the networks' early efforts to move inventory, and to the resurgence of automotive manufacturers, many of which dramatically cut, or altogether elminated, their broadcast advertising budgets in 2009. According to Neil Mulcahy, FOX’s executive vice president of sports sales, "Sales levels heading into this season, led by a resurgent auto category, have exceeded our best expectations. In addition to autos, we’ve seen year-to-year growth in almost every category we do business with."

Even more impressively, FOX Sports, according to sources, will enter the 2010 season with nearly all of its ad inventory already sold for Super Bowl XLV, to be played in Cowboys Stadium for the first time on February 6, 2011. Most of the remaining Super Bowl spots are in the fourth quarter. What makes this so unbelievable? FOX Sports is securing approximately $3 million for a stand-alone 30-second spot, though most of the spots are sold as larger packages. While much is made each year about the scope and expense of new ads debuting during the Super Bowl broadcast, it is unfathomable to think that this many brands are making such large-scale commitments more than six months out, and without any visibility whatsoever as to which teams (and their DMA markets) will be represented in the big game. Wow.

The broader implication of all this is best summarized by Ed Erhardt, president of customer marketing and sales at ESPN:

“The story to me is that the NFL is the No. 1 entertainment brand in the country. Advertisers are going to go where there’s an audience and passion and live viewing, and NFL and college football have that.”

Fantasy Football Reaches Marketing Fever Pitch As 2010 NFL Season Nears

With just under two weeks to go until the aggressively-promoted official start of the 2010 National Football League (NFL) season, and with exactly one week until my own fantasy football league's draft in Las Vegas, these two converging forces prompted me to be contemplate exactly HOW ubiquitous fantasy sports has become over the past two decades, and more specifically, HOW extensively the fantasy football genre has grown in recent years. Simply stated, fantasy football is BOTH an integrated marketing and content development success story whose sports, societal, and cultural significance cannot be ignored or underrated. Having said that, let's look at this sports phenomenon more closely.

Frankly, ever-expanding interest in fantasy football, and the subsequent explosion in print, online, broadcast, and social media content over the past 10 years, can be attributed to the tremendous investments by media companies, and a host of smaller providers, to produce and distribue intelligent information, products, and online vehicles which cater to insightful, discerning participants clamoring for higher-quality information that can be consumerd across multiple technology platforms. If that sounds like a mouthful, you're right...it is...but it is absolutely true. And there would be no supply for any of these products without sufficient demand, of which there is plenty. Without question, fantasy football is not just big business; it's GINORMOUS business.

According to the latest estimates and consumer research from the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA), a professional organization formed in 1997 to serve as the authorized voice for and official advocate of the industry, there are approximately 30 million fantasy sports participants currently in the United States and Canada. More impressively, those individuals spend almost $4 billion annually on league registration and transaction fees, print and online magazine subscriptions, software applications, "insider" scounting reports, and other related products and services. Of those nearly 30 million individuals, approximately 85%, or about 23 million, play fantasy football, with total spending alone in the fantasy football arena estimated to be between $800 million and $1 billion each year. The numbers, which are staggering, represent a doubling of the market since 2005 which saw only 12 million fantasy football players enter leagues around the country.

Beyond the sheer size of this audience and its impressive annual purchasing power, the real catalyst behind fantasy football's growth, and the vast amount of marketing dollars invested in the category, is its highly-desirable consumer demographics. As outlined by both the FTSA and The Fantasy Football Times, a popular Web site offering player news and analysis, consider the following consumer behavior statistics:

~ The typical participant spends a minimum of $200 per year on fantasy football.
~ On average, fantasy football players devote at least 30 minutes per day, and 3-4 hours per week, managing their teams. Somes estimated claim the weekly total is much as nine hours.
~ The core age group is 12-48, with 25-34 containing the greatest number of players.
~ Average fantasy football players' household income from $60-100,000 per year.
~ Gender breakdown: 93% male, although the number of females is growing.
~ Ethnicity: 91% white.
~ Age: 13% are teenagers.
~ Education: 70% have a bachelor's degree or higher.
~ Football Fanatics: 50% claim to be diehard football fans.

What does all this mean? The profile of fantasy football players represents a group that has been historically, and notoriously, been a very difficult one to reach. As a result, high-profile consumer brands such as General Motors, SprintNextel, Verizon, Goodyear, and Papa John's are dumping millions of dollars into advertising, promotional, and social media support for fantasy football products such as TV shows, scouting magazines, Web sites, and online games. The attraction is best summed by Chris Russo, senior vice president of new media and publishing for the NFL, in this great piece from 2005 in USA Today: "It's the most attentive audience that you're going to get. These people aren't just spending five minutes on the Web site. They're going on the Web site and spending an hour and a half."

And the marketing implications for fantasy football now go much further, especially with the explosion of social media platforms and their usage by consumers. In a MediaPost op-ed which generated a ton of attention just prior to the start of last year's NFL season, Catalyst President and Managing Director Cory Treffiletti wrote:

Without a doubt, fantasy football is the most perfect example of integrated marketing in existence today. It marries the best of online marketing and social media with real-world events and that most basic of human traits: pure, unbridled competitiveness.

While marketers and sports sites are thrilled with fantasy football players' dedication to the category, other businesses — where the fantasy players work — may be less happy. Almost two-thirds of fantasy football players say they check their fantasy teams online during work, FSTA says. According to new estimates from outplacement company Challenger Gray & Christmas, it costs companies nationwide over $250 million for every 10 minutes of the workday that employees spend on fantasy football.

Finally, if you ever wondered how the magical world of fantasy sports got its start, I highly recommend viewing ESPN's documentary on the genre, entitled "Silly Little Game, which innovative filmmakers Adam Kurland and Lucas Jansen developed for the network's critically-acclaimed "30 For 30" series. You can also view this well-reviewed installment of the series below:

Oh, and more thing: please wish me luck next week at my draft in Vegas. I am drafting eighth out of 14 teams, which is not a very strong draft position. I'll need all the help I can get!

Twitter Gaga: Lady Gaga Now Has The Most Followers On Twitter

It's now official: world-famous pop star Lady Gaga, a.k.a. Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, surpassed Britney Spears over the weekend as the Twitter user with most followers ever.

As reported in this post today on FishbowlLA, the 24-year-old American recording artist now has 5,755,982 followers on her account, @LadyGaga, as of this writing. Britney Spears, whose Twitter handle is @BritneySpears, "only" has 5,708,840 followers as of this afternoon.

To celebrate the milestone, Lady Gaga instinctively posted an inaugural video message on Twitter thanking her loyal fans, known as "Little Monsters," for making her the undisputed "Queen of the Twittisphere:"

Three related side notes: 1.) Neither Lady Gaga nor Britney Spears follows the other on Twitter; 2.) Lady Gaga has only posted 465 tweets since joining the microblogging service two years ago; and 3.) Lady Gaga also outduels Britney, who has tweeted just 431 times, in terms of sheer tweet volume.

Tweetup Added To Oxford Dictionary Of English

As reported last week by the Daily Telegraph (U.K.) and other media outlets, Oxford University Press announced some significant and interesting additions, including "tweetup," to the just-released third edition of its Oxford Dictionary of English. The inclusion is yet another in a series of social media terms, such as "defriend," "tweet," and "microblogging," that have been added to the dictionary in the past 24 months as social media platforms have become more prominent and popular around the world.

Formerly named the New Oxford Dictionary of English, the Oxford Dictionary Of English is a single-volume English language dictionary first published in 1998 by Oxford University Press. This dictionary is not based on the lengthier and more comprehensive Oxford English Dictionary (OED), and therefore, should not be mistaken for a new or updated version of the OED. Instead it is a completely new dictionary which strives to represent, as faithfully as possible, the current usage of English words. At present, the Oxford Dictionary Of English is the largest single-volume English-language dictionary published by Oxford University Press.

According to the dictionary, "tweetup" has a very simple definition: a meeting arranged through Twitter.

Other newcomers this year include cheeseball (lacking taste or style); turducken (a roast dish consisting of a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey); vuvuzela, the long horn seen and heard throughout this year's FIFA World Cup in South Africa; wardrobe malfunction (when someone exposes an intimate part of their body after clothing slips); bromance (a close but non-sexual relationship between two men); and frenemy (a person that one is friendly with despite a fundamental dislike).

The implication? As technology and social media become more globally pervasive, we will continue to see words and phrases from these areas be more integrated into every-day conversation and writing, and ultimately become an ingrained part of language in the English-speaking world.

Five Steps To Dealing With The Relentless Pace Of Marketing

Editor's Note: The following is an insightful, well-written essay authored and posted earlier this week by Todd Defren, principal of SHIFT Communications, and one of the world's most highly-respected public relations (PR) bloggers and social media experts. Defren's writings can be found on his blog, PR Squared, which is also required reading on The CMAC blogroll below. I enjoyed and agreed with this commentary so much that I am reprinting it here for all of you, my esteemed readers.
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The advent of social media has not only made the marketer’s role more strategic and complicated, it’s also made it much more BUSY. Our client was waxing nostalgic for the days when “getting ink” was the big mark of success.

Now it’s:

1. Get ink.
2. Track and engage influencers ranging from Scoble to a momblogger to a Facebook group admin.
3. Escalate customer service issues found online before they become a mess on Twitter or Google.
4. Develop fresh, compelling content, every single week (or every single day!) for the social media outposts including the corporate blog, the YouTube Channel, the Facebook Page, the Twitter stream, LinkedIn Answers, Slideshare, etc.
5. Keep tabs on competitive content.

“There are days when I just want to chuck it all,” the marketer said. “The job has become relentless, the requirements for content are voracious. Every day you see someone ELSE post something brilliant and buzzworthy — and you’re jealous and afraid — but then that bit of content is buried under something ELSE even better … So you realize that even the brightest bit of content you create has, at best, a 2–week shelf life, and by then you’d better be thinking about your Next Big Thing …”

Sound familiar? (Tired, yet?)

The cruelest part of this story is that this client contact wasn’t even 30–years-old yet! Despite their youth they were already exhausted.

This is a dilemma for every marketer, every PR agency, everyone. We recently lost a great employee because she had “crisped” from the pace. It’s understandable. I haven’t blogged in almost 2 weeks (due to a brief vacation and a busy schedule), and I’ve literally been in a near-panic about it, as I watch my friends like Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, David Armano, Valeria Maltoni, Jason Falls, etc. blog their booties off, with great content all along the way.

What to do?

When faced with overwhelming to-do’s, I find it best to break things down into the smallest parts possible. This doesn’t necessarily make the job easier in the end, but it does help to re-focus the mind on what’s important.

First: decide on your goals. Is your goal to be the coolest & most popular? Is your goal to be known as a thought leader in your industry? Is your goal to boost SEO for search terms related to your space? If you don’t figure this out, you’ll drive yourself nuts because lacking a plan, your ego will take over and drive you mad.

Second: ask for help. The voracious Interwebs should not be faced alone, not forever. For my part, I have initiated a series of casual conversations with friends and colleagues to enlist their aid in planning (and developing) “what’s next,” both for this blog and for SHIFT’s other digital embassies.

Third: set a reasonable pace. There will always be someone smarter, more prolific, and more popular than you or your company. Don’t fall prey to the need to compete on the speed of content creation; instead, set a pace that you know won’t drive you bonkers.

Fourth: “under-promise and over-deliver.” For example, promise youself you’ll write “One good blog post per week” (sounds reasonable), and if you write a second or (gasp!) a third post — you’ve over-exceeded a reasonable goal by 300 percent! Granted, this is related to “pace” but it extends to other areas such as measurement (see below), commenting on external blogs, developing a new series of Facebook quizzes, etc.

Fifth: measure. You’ll probably have to do this for your boss, anyway, but even if you don’t, set some reasonable metrics that you’re sure you can readily and easily track. There are tons of tools, both free (Google Analytics, Facebook Insights) and not-so-free (Sysomos, Radian6) that can give you a grasp on how you’re doing. Write those goals down and track your progress.

I hope this helped you. (It helped me!) Remember, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. A marathon takes training, endurance, and sticktoitiveness. Mostly sticktoitiveness.

Take A Ride On The Reading: Social Media Monopoly

I love playing Monopoly, although, admittedly, I'm not very good at it. In fact, my wife not only schools me at regular Monopoly, but she also whips me at Golf Monopoly, Disney Monopoly, Simpsons Monopoly, and basically every iteration of the popular Hasbro game we've every played. Ironically, I'm the one with the MBA, but I digress. It never makes a difference.

However, I wonder how she WOULD fare if the social media space were turned into a Monopoly game? I'd love to find out by playing this version of the game, courtesy of Barry Ritholtz's great blog, The Big Picture:

Click on the graphic for a larger, more detailed version; it's worth a closer inspection.

Naturally, Facebook and Twitter are the most expensive properties, taking the place of Broadway and Park Place. Instead, of Chance and Community Chest, this version sports Technorati and Mashable, while the railroads, such as B&O and Reading, have been replaced with key smartphone platforms like Droid and iPhone.

The Seven Deadly Sins Of Affiliate Marketing

Editor's Note: The following is a guest blog post about affiliate marketing written by Lee Zacks, founder and CEO of Zacks Investment Research, an investment ratings, research, and recommendations firm.
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Affiliate marketing, the practice in which a business rewards one or more parties for each visitor or customer brought in by the affiliate's online marketing efforts, is becoming more and more popular, especially with the current state of the economy. High unemployment rates have many people turning to the Internet as a means of making ends meet.

It sounds great at first. You’re told all you have to do is start a free blog and write a few articles, and you can achieve wild riches. Many people buy into this myth, and are let down after weeks go by and they haven’t made a single dollar. Believe it or not, more than 90% of Internet entrepreneurs fold up shop within the first month. Once reality sets in, it’s easy to get discouraged. Affiliate marketing, like any other business, requires hard work and effort for success to become a reality.

For the reasons, I'm going to discuss seven of the worst mistakes that an affiliate marketer can make. If you can avoid these career killing pitfalls, you’ll have a good chance at becoming a successful affiliate marketer.

1. Using Free Services
The problem with many affiliate marketers is they don’t want to make an investment into their business. This is due in part to all of the tutorials available that instruct marketers to use free services. While there is nothing wrong with free services, the lack of imminent control over one’s content can be a problem. If the company providing the free service decided to delete your account, or went out of business, you could lose content that may have been making you some money.

2. Promoting The Wrong Product
Market research is especially important in affiliate marketing. Many affiliates promote products that are not related to their blog or website or not targeted to their demographic audience, hence making it near impossible to succeed. Researching your chosen niche is crucial.

3. Promoting Too Many Products and Services
It’s easy to lose focus. There are so many great products to promote that many affiliate marketers try to promote five or ten products at once. Some even clutter their web pages with so many links or banners that the web page just looks chaotic. It’s not good to spread yourself so thin. Rather than promoting mulitple products and giving ten percent effort to each, it’s better to put one-hundred percent effort into promoting a single product.

4. Not Starting An E-Mail List
Many affiliate marketers refuse to believe in the importance of email marketing. This is partly due to the wealth of information available about article marketing. Many are led to believe that article marketing is a miracle money maker. While it’s true that money can be made this way, it’s much better to establish a contact and build trust with a potential buyer through email.

5. Spamming
Spam is a gray area when it comes to affiliate marketing. Basically, spamming is blatantly promoting your products or services to those who didn’t ask for information. The worst kind of spam is e-mail spam. Many affiliate marketers engage in this without even knowing. Spamming is a sure-fire way to ruin your reputation as a marketer.

6. Not Writing Unique Content
Affiliate marketing requires a lot of writing. It usually comes in the form of sales copy, classified ads, and articles. Since outsourcing the work is costly, many affiliate marketers turn to what’s known as private label rights, or PLR articles. These are articles that have been written specifically for the use of others, but the problem is that they have been sold to many people. This means that they are no longer unique. Most marketers rewrite the content before publishing, but the general idea of the article remains the same. Content is king on the Internet, and those that write fresh, exciting content will always have a leg up on the competition.

7. Not Using The Services They Promote
A great way to promote affiliate marketing products is by writing reviews. However, many affiliate marketers review products that they haven't tried. If written properly, this can be effective. For the most part, though, readers can tell if the reviewer has actually tried the product. It’s not a good idea to recommend a product to anyone that you don’t like and haven't used. If you don’t use the product, you can’t honestly know if you like it to write a review. If the product isn’t quality, and you continue to recommend it, you’ll quickly lose customers and tarnish your reputation. Many services, offer free trial periods, so you as an affiliate can actually try it out so that you could write a true and honest review that you can promote.

Affiliate marketing is hard work. However, you shouldn’t get discouraged. The best advice I could give you is to avoid making the above mistakes, and NEVER, EVER give up! Persistence and knowledge are the two most important tools you could possess if you want to be a successful affiliate marketer.

Communist Oppressor North Korea Embraces Twitter...Paradoxically

As reported yesterday in stories carried by the Financial Post, Mashable, PC World, WebNewser, and scores of other media outlets around the world, the oppressive Communist country of North Korea has established its first official presence on Twitter, the micro-blogging site that is being embraced by increasing numbers of governments and world leaders.

Last week, North Korean news agency Uriminzokkiri, one of the country's few media outlets to write in English for a foreign audience, set up a Twitter account (@uriminzok). The Web site of the agency, whose name means "Our Nation," is the closest thing North Korea has to an official home page. The site carries the link to its Twitter stream in the upper right-hand corner. The account has nearly 5,000 followers (4,903, to be exact) as of this writing.

Uriminzokkiri's first Tweet said, in Korean, that "our nation" now has a Twitter account. Subsequent Tweets contained links to historical North Korean documents and news items from Uriminzokkiri.

Notoriously, North Korea is one of the world’s most secretive regimes, but lately, it has been embracing social media. Last month, Uriminzokkiri launched a YouTube channel, which currently contains 101 videos. However, the North Korean government is hardly being open or transparent; much of the content posted on these accounts is pure propaganda, and interaction with other users is minimal.

Several Twitter accounts purporting to be from North Korea have already been set up, including one (@kimjongil) that claims to be the official account of the country's maligned leader Kim Jong Il. The account drew headlines when it was first launched, but its authenticity is in question, largely because its messages position Kim as an object of ridicule. Another account was launched in the name of the Korea Central News Agency, the country's official news service, but it was believed to be run by a third party and has snce been suspended.

The irony of all this was summed up best by Financial Post blogger Jameson Berkow:

Paradox, defined as follows. North Korea, easily among the [external] most oppressive regimes in modern human history, has officially taken membership in one of the most free and uncensored venues for mass self-expression ever to exist.

Attack Of The Vendors

Like most business owners across the country, I am inundated with phone calls and e-mail inquiries from vendors of all varieties: print and broadcast advertising sales reps, office supplies and office outlets, telecommunications companies, IT vendors, professional printers, and the list goes on and on and on. Typically, I receive at least five of these calls every week.

To my credit, I am usually rather polite when I interact with these individuals, although I tend to keep my conversations and e-mail exchanges with them relatively brief. In addition to this being the most professional way to handle these situations, I also reason that just because I don't have a distinct need at the moment does not mean I won't have one in the future — and therefore, it's worthwhile for me to have a short discussion with a rep to assess his service's value and usefulness to my marketing consulting practice and to my clients. For that reason, I usually keep the rep's contact information on file for reference purposes. And in the marketing realm, one never knows when a different, or even unusual, need will arise; I've seen it happen way too many times in the past.

But lately, I've been struggling with the professionalism and expertise, or lack thereof, of sales representatives in the marketing and PR service provider space. When I first began my career WAY back in the early 90's, the account managers from these companies were some of the most knowledgeable, sophisticated, and service-oriented sales professionals around. They knew their offerings backwards and forwards; they proactively provided excellent strategic counsel on how different products could be used to the benefit my clients; and they were responsive, communicative, easy to work with, and flexible with respect to pricing. In short, they made my life easier, and they truly provided value across the board. In fact, many of the professionals I worked with at Business Wire, MediaLink (now Synaptic Digital), and others are still with their respective employers to this day, and I am pleased to call many of them my friends...not just business associates.

However, today, the landscape in this area is much different. Turnover is extremely high. Most new reps don't come from traditional marketing or communications backgrounds, let alone with previous business experience, so they don't possess much industry insight. New account execs are young and immature, and they speak and write like it. Sales training is minimal, and it shows when the rep approaches a prospect like me. Sales and marketing collateral materials are amateurish and poorly-constructed. When these people call me, I run for the hills because I know the conversation we're about to have will be a really painful one.

Case in point. An Atlanta, Ga.-based rep from an undisclosed PR service provider recently called me to pitch me on his company's service. I spent over 45 minutes with him -- spread across three phone calls -- attempting to understand the basics of the service, how it differed from other press release distributors, and its value, benefits, and pricing. Even worse, the follow-up materials he sent me via e-mail made zero sense, and still did not clearly describe the offering. Bottom line: he couldn't answer any of my questions, and his default response was: "We're better...just take my word for it." It was apparent this gentleman had little, if any, training from his employer on how to properly sell the service, and he was ill-equipped to answer pointed questions, particularly from someone like me who has close to two decades of experience. It was shameful and pathetic. I almost felt sorry for the guy. Needless to say, I didn't buy. And he never called me again. Here's another example. A new rep from a well-known broadcast monitoring vendor called me last month. Unfortunately, he is the sixth rep assigned to my geographical area in the last five years. Come on! How is this company supposed to build lasting relationships with clients when the turnover is this high?

This is typical these days. Now, of course, there are exceptions out there, and I still know and interact with many excellent and very successful reps who have been with their respective companies for many years. They know their stuff, and they know how to sell, and that is precisely why they're successful.

The irony of all this is that the marketing and PR service provider space is extraordinarily competitive, so one would think that reps would be extremely sharp and aggressive to generate sales of a given service over another. Not so.

Twitter Reaches Another Historic Milestone: 20 Billion Tweets

According to tracking service GigaTweet, and as reported by Mashable, Twitter recently just hit another historic milestone: a whopping 20 billion tweets since the service's launch.

Interestingly enough, Twitter reached the 15-billion tweet mark just two months ago (June 2010), and 10 billion tweets only five months ago (March 2010). These recent benchmarks strongly indicate that activity on the microblogging service is acclerating at unprecedented rates.

It should be noted that GigaTweet’s data is unofficial, but even Twitter acknowledged earlier this year that it is seeing more than 50 million tweets per day, and approximately 1,ooo tweets per second.

Along with this explosive growth, Twitter continues to add thousands of users every day, and the amount of media coverage devoted to the company rivals, and even exceeds, that of many Fortune 100 companies.