Changing nature of media production and consumption in sport

As I revisit stumblings by high profile Australian athletes around the micro-blogging social media platform Twitter for the purposes of my current research, I look with fresh eyes at the Faggot Tweet: Sponsors Speak scandal of last year.

Refreshingly, my position on the relevance of context and content remains unchanged. If anything, I would further jump up and down on my strategic communicators tool box with the intention of seeing more support given to our elite athletes in navigating the new media channels.

In order for this to happen however, it's the administrators and communications professionals who need to stop. listen and learn from the tech team. It's the marketing communications leaders who need to patiently stumble through diciphering the tech team's codes and 'geek jargon', just as they have had to endure our homage to the acronym for the past 20 years.

People and business fundamentals haven't changed, technologies have. And with technology, new communications platforms have been consumed by information-hungry individuals and groups as the nature of association and information gathering has become more social. By this, I mean a global sharing process.

Not surprisingly, this change in the production and consumption of information now brings new, global and dynamic communications channels into the structured and controlled environment of corporate entities. This embedded disconnect does not have to be detrimental to the evolving relationship between corporate, team and individual brands, it just requires an entirely new approach which permits key players to not always get it right.

Stumbling isn't a problem for those businesses with strong key stakeholder engagement and support. So maybe the evolution towards transparency of communications through technology and the inherent nature of the new communications environment in the business of international sport, is more reflective of the health of key partner relationships than anything to actually do with sport performance.

While this is a sentence I never thought I'd write, it is undeniable, that when it comes to intra-organisational social media engagement in sport, the UFC is streaks ahead of the professional sporting pack.

Social Media: Hype or Communications Revolution?

No matter who I am speaking with, everyone wants to know about social media and how to best use it for their business.

The most frightening thing for me is the inflexibility from business owners and senior management teams. Used to throwing money at marketing and sales activities, this group of learned corporates expect this new media channel to fit within the existing consumer consumption paradigm. But it doesn't.

Now, I could lie to any corporate waving a cheque in my direction and tell them that social media is where they need to be and that I can brand them up to Koo-ee... if I was that way inclined, but I'm not.

Quite possibly to my fiscal detriment I tell them THEY need to shift current practices, THEY need to engage personally, because social media is tactile and it's about THEM. And in doing so, they need to be ready for anything. But very few are ready to hear the truth of best practice in social media.

The most common reaction I get is the age-old blank, silent 'you have no idea what you're talking about, I can't possibly do that' look of horror. They're the ones you can't help - yet. But rest assured, they'll come knocking in about 6 - 12 months (maybe less) wanting to take the plunge and for you to hold their hand. That's a good thing, they've had the critical shift in mindset: from observation to a considered willingness moving towards participation.

It's hard to remember sometimes that nearly half of the Australian population do not know life without a mobile telephone...so for them, social media is about as strenuous a jump now, as what Atari to VCR was in the 80's.

Mobile telephony and consumer communications are ubiquitous. What was once achieved with a full-page ad in the sunday papers, now needs to be re-purposed for iPad, iPhone, Blackberry just to ensure the target consumers have the chance (not guaranteed distribution) of engaging with your diligently crafted creative. Then in order to get positive Word Of Mouth (which SM does not guarantee), you need to Tweet, facebook, myspace, blog, retweet and Digg, in the interests of starting (or hopefully continuing) the desired brand and business conversation.

Marketing and Communications practices need to change in order to maximise the potential of new media technologies. It's a bit like driving a car with stability control switched off because you already know how to drive; or outsourcing your call centre without conducting product training or considering systems management processes. It just kind of exists without adding tangible and measurable value intrinsically to your brand and your business.

Ceding control is confronting. It's against every marketing and sales principle worth engaging. That was of course, until the arrival of social media capability.

Knowing if, when and how to cede control is the key to getting cut through within the savvy new media consumer sphere.

So is Social Media hype or part of a Communications Revolution? Neither, merely part of the evolution of 21st century communications.

A quick video to explain...

Social Media from Phil Guest on Vimeo.