Mobile and social media have become ingrained in all of our lives, but are they really viable marketing platforms? During the “Socialize and Mobilize” panel on Day One of the ’14 Intersport Activation Summit, NFL GM/Mobile Manish Jha noted that audiences adapted to cable television far more rapidly than ad dollars shifted from broadcast to cable, and said that the same has been true even for desktop internet advertising compared to TV. But Jha added that while mobile is even farther behind in terms of ad dollars, it is a medium that offers marketers opportunities to “deliver value to consumers” based on their behavior and preferences. Jha: “When you get an offer that is meaningful and relevant to you, it’s not just advertising, it’s value.” Phizzle CEO Ben Davis: “We have the opportunity to use mobile to truly learn and understand fans’ behavior.”
GREAT POWER, GREAT RESPONSIBILITY: The ability of marketers to glean information about consumers based on their mobile usage raised questions about ethics and privacy. Jha noted that for the NFL’s mobile activation around its Super Bowl Boulevard, the league made sure it asked mobile users to opt into its location-based push notifications before providing them with information via beacon technology on how to maximize the experience. Jha: “We decided to be super transparent, and we decided we wanted to give fans the ability to not participate. And we got very high adoption rates. ... You really want to be very judicious in how you communicate with fans, and you want to be very relevant and contextual.” Attention Span Media CEO Josh McHugh coined the phrase “creepiness line” to refer to the amount of information consumers are comfortable with brands having and leveraging before they feel as though their privacy is being compromised. Referring to a campaign his agency ran, McHugh said, “We made sure there are two or three levels of interest or affinity [for the brand] before we reached out to them. So we knew when we ‘at-messaged’ that person, they’re not going to turn around and say ‘Why are you talking to me? That’s creepy.’” But Intersport Associate VP/Sponsorship & Events D.J. Koeller asserted that sports fans are more willing to sacrifice personal information in order to gain content related to their favorite teams or sports. Koeller: “From a fan’s standpoint, there isn’t a cost. There is nothing I wouldn’t give up to get that insight. ... Are you giving them unbelievable access? Are you giving them unique content? If so, I’m willing to give up.” He added that millennials, having grown up with the internet, are simply used to putting their personal information online and in the hands of corporations. But Jha warned, “The amount of trust that fans give us by opting into these things, it’s a tremendous responsibility that we are custodians of a lot of very sensitive information about users. ... If you abuse the privilege, I think it does not bode well for individual brands, nor for the industry.”
