I cannot think of a more complete tool to follow the tennis tournament on the go.

News, Players' profiles, Scores (matches in progress and completed matches), Schedule and Draws keep the most demanding fan updated in real time, while photos and videos add visual and editorial contribution, including footage of press conferences and interviews.

A comprehensive guide for the spectators at the two arenas includes maps, transportation and directions, seat charts and even a dining guide.

The application is built, hosted and sponsored by IBM.

Rafael Nadal

Another sponsor is American Express, bringing the Iphone user an online live radio which the user can contribute to by sending questions from the phone application itself and several collateral benefits for Amex members.

The cherry on top of the application is the “Tweets” section, which lists the official Tweeter US Open feed, plus a few celebrities’ too.

This great application works in parallel with the website, which is also fully “social networked”, with links to Facebook and Tweeter pages, posts, comments (which are searchable by geographical area), most popular stories and photos, plus downloadable wallpapers, widgets and various competitions, and the live video and audio broadcasts.

Next time I will need to show someone examples of online interaction and engagement, why hopping around the Internet collecting examples when the US Open online presence alone is a full and complete showcase?

MLB, which counts at the time I write 353,291 followers on Twitter, is one of the most active Sport Organisations in the field of online technology and social media.

Very unusual choice, the @MLB blog,  but only apparently. At first we could ask ourselves why would MLB somehow go “against the nature” of Twitter, which by definition is “a real-time short messaging service that works over multiple networks and devices”.

If we “extend” it into a blog then it is not Twitter anymore. Why not having just a blog then? Or why not combining Twitter and Facebook where the latter allows longer text and display images in a more attractive way?

I think that MLB has done the right strategic choice here.

They probably thought:

1. We have a good fan base on Twitter
2. Our Facebook page hasn’t got a particularly big audience ( 37,000 fans, as opposed to NHL with 130,000, NFL with 155,000 and NBA 1,415,000 fans), which wouldn’t give us enough visibility even if we wanted to integrate our message through Twitter and Facebook together.
3. Building an audience from scratch on a separate blog (as an official MLB “voice” besides all the great individual blogs on MLBlogs) would take time and probably disperse energy and fans.

And here is the only apparently unusual choice of a “Twitter extension” blog.

I agree with this strategy as it is the smartest way to leverage MLB’s at the moment biggest social network, the 353,291 followers on Twitter, and integrate the platform with an “appendix”, but more than anything else it shows how a powerful and smart strategy makes the difference and technology alone is useless.

I like also the choice of MLB to explore new paths and solutions, even going against the ones that will shout out at the “violation” of Twitter’s nature (oh please…).

Didn’t we say it already a few weeks ago? The limit of Online Technology is creativity and personality.

Alessandro De Zanche

I spoke to a few of them in the last two months about the importance of a carefully and strategically planned step to approach the online world, more focused on new opportunities and leveraging the latest technology rather than on prehistory (the read-only internet where websites were online brochures, mass targeting without distinction whoever landed on a certain page).

The key point here is not about just collecting data, but how we use the data also.

I’ll make an example using Behavioural Targeting, a product I worked on for years at Yahoo!.

One of the biggest issue we had was to persuade companies and advertising agencies that “Behavioural Targeting” is an empty word, with dozens of different providers and platforms making a different use of the collected data, hence the need, before making a choice on what provider to use, to have a high level understanding on how each platform is working (leveraging the data).

Leveraging the data is the key

I know it sounds geeky, but many Targeting companies are taking advantage of clients not being up to speed with technology, selling them a product that of Behavioural Targeting has got only the name.

Approach Product A: Sometime (a week? a month? six months ago?), somewhere on some page, Barry clicked on an ad about Cars, hence we assume Barry is interested in Cars so we will serve him Cars related ads.

Approach Product B: Two days ago Bill clicked on two Cars ads and searched for Cars related keywords, while today he visited a Cars related page. We do NOT ONLY know that Bill is interested in Cars, we know that Bill is HIGHLY interested in Cars NOW, so we can leverage this data by serving him Cars related ads.

Question: which of the two products will give me more Conversions? The one that generically targets users that have generically shown interest in a product at some generic point in time or the one that scientifically and methodically picks users with a high interest in a product in this very moment?

Same applies to Sport Organisations.
Strategic planning and goal setting allow to:

1. Designing tools, platforms, initiatives and practices that will collect the specific data we need.
2. Leveraging the data at the right time for hitting our goals, being it monetisation, audience building, or any other objective.

Alessandro De Zanche

What came out of the study is that while interactive marketing budgets decreased in this recession, they decreased less than traditional advertising.
“Six out of ten marketers (Forrester Research) surveyed agreed with the statement “we will increase budget for interactive by shifting money away from traditional marketing.” Only 7% said “we have no plans to increase our marketing budget.”

Again, says Josh Bernoff, senior vice president, idea development at Forrester Research: “Now it looks more like advertising is inefficient, relative to digital. More than half of the marketers we surveyed said that effectiveness of direct mail, television, magazines, outdoor, newspapers, and radio would stay the same or decrease within three years. In contrast, well over 70% expected the effectiveness of channels like created social media, online video, and mobile marketing to increase.”

Bottom line of the study is that “digital, which will be about 12% of overall advertising spend in 2009, is likely to grow to about 21% in five years. Along the way overall advertising budgets will decline.”

This applies very much to Sport Organisations, whose core values match more than any other industry the core values of online technology: Sharing, Collaboration, Interaction, Engagement, Passion, Involvement, Community.

But this is not enough: they must act and join the “Social Revolution” happening through online technology. The alternative is to disappear, some slowly, some suddenly.

Alessandro De Zanche

Engagement, interaction, community, belonging, involvement, loyalty are just a few of the core concepts that are common to both Sport and online technology.

San Francisco 49ers

This is why I am closely following an amazing story happening in San Francisco, California.

After 63 years of history in the NFL and 5 Superbowl wins, the city of San Francisco is risking to lose the 49ers in favour of Santa Clara, CA.

The owners of the team and Santa Clara’s politicians are all up for the deal that would guarantee a brand new, state of the art, stadium for the 49ers, while on the other hand San Franciscans and San Francisco’s major are fighting to keep the team.

63 years of history, tradition, culture, tightly interconnected between the city, its people and the team, risk to be wiped off by a move dictated by financial interest: but are we sure that financial benefits on paper will meet the favours of the fan base and will not translate into a catastrophe for both the 49ers, that moving to Santa Clara would lose most of their audience and the city of San Francisco, that would lose not just a football team but a piece of its history and culture? Not to mention the cost of 900 million USD to finance the whole project.

In this context is where the hand of Technology appears, stretching towards Jeff Kruger. I don’t know Jeff personally, but I would like to analyse his challenge from an online marketing perspective.

He has thrown all his passion, love, sense of belonging and affection for the team on the table and created a website, savethe49ers.com, where he is providing information, blogging, hosting forums and links to articles on the subject. In his own words: “This site is for anyone who understands that keeping the 49ers in San Francisco via a new stadium is of critical importance. It’s not about football. It’s about the growth and standing of the city, its people, history, diversity, and the long-term viability of the greatest city in the world”.

The Internet as an instrument to send a wake up call to a city and a community.

Now, let’s step back a second and analyse San Francisco’s challenge in a way that we can all get some learnings from.

There are two types of approach that can be taken (I am talking theoretically for discussion purposes without knowing what Jeff is doing specifically):

The generic approach:

A Facebook and a Twitter page will be setup, creating an opportunity to grow an online community around the subject; the savethe49ers.com blog will be regularly updated but also the author will comment on other external blogs with links to the savethe49ers.com website, increasing the number of visits, a video could be designed focusing on the relationship between San Francisco, its people and the team through history, culture, and a glorious past. The video could be virally spread across multiple channels, touch people’s emotions, grow that voice “Save the 49ers!” so loud that the team’s owners and politicians will not be able to ignore it anymore.

The effective approach:

Wait a second: didn’t we mention Tradition, History, Culture, 63 years of life and 5 Super Bowl wins? Are we really sure that Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and company will cover all our target audience and help to reach our goals? Answer: most likely it will not be enough and will have to be matched in parallel by other online actions aimed to the older part of the audience.

As of April ’09, Facebook’s users’ demographic profile say that over 54% of them are below the age of 24 and over 80% are younger than 34. It is true that the 35-54 segment is sky rocketing with an over 280% increase year on year but it is also true that if we want to count on the people that lived those successful and epic times of 49ers’ history we will have to focus on other directions, in parallel with the previous approach of tapping into the social networks where the younger target segments of the Save the 49ers spend a lot of their time on.

Take away: know your audience, perform a market research if needed, understand its demo and psychographic profiles and ONLY THEN formulate a strategy, followed by an appropriate choice of technology.

Only with a “scientific” and sophisticated approach your online presence will be productive and successful.

Alessandro De Zanche

Michael Jordan

Let’s take for example Facebook and Twitter, nowadays with no doubt two of the most used (and abused) platforms and let’s imagine again the above conclusion: “they do it, we should do it too!”, with company A deciding to copy company B and create their own Facebook page.
Probably, before taking this decision, Company A should have spent some time reflecting on the fact that while Company B is a volleyball club with a young audience profile, typically spending time online and actively connected via social networks, Company A is a chain of golfing resorts whose clients are in their majority wealthy professionals, over 30, technology savvy but with a lower grade of active participations to social networks.

On the other hand, Company A’s audience would probably enjoy a much greater benefit by receiving a weekly newsletter on next weekends tournaments and time sensitive discounts on luxury merchandising.
Bottom line, technology is just a tool, an instrument at the service of Sport Organisations, key in supporting their strategies and achieving their goals, but last in the steps of their online presence’s definition:

1. Audience profiling.
2. Goals setting.
3. Strategy definition.
4. Choice of technology.

Michael Jordan, probably the best basketball player of all times, did very poorly when trying his luck in baseball.
So will likely Facebook or Twitter or any other platform matched to your online fan base if you don’t know their profile and/or haven’t got goals and a strategy behind.

Alessandro De Zanche