Augmented Reality Fashion for a Cause

This is a great campaign by Leo Burnett in Moscow.

It highlights the paradigm shift of marketers from monologue to dialogic interaction and articulates an intrinsic understanding about the way mass audiences access, process and act upon new information.  It's all about the senses: How does it look and make me feel? How does it sound to me?

Mass marketing campaigns, such as this one by World Wide Fund for Nature, need to revolve around participation and engagement, in order to meet (with an intent of exceeding) audience expectations. Something new Web 2.0 technologies enabled dialogic (two-way) conversations have engaged like never before.

If you're a marketing manager currently reviewing budgets and 2011 plans put forward by your agency, be sure to remember as you embrace the new forms available, that you don't forget the value delivered to both your brand and business via traditional communications channels.

To do so would mean a failure to recognise and understand that brand, product and service conversations are held in a diverse number of public and privates spaces, between various groups and sub-groups within your target market.

Afterall, marketing to the masses is not just about engaging with relevant messages at key reception intervals, it's about the ongoing conversation as much as it is about first impressions.

This Business Called Sport

It has been a long-time since I played phone-tag with an athlete for an interview, and yet I remain tied to this business called sport.

By birth (and not through any exceptional athletic prowess of my own) I am intimately woven into the fabric of professional sport.  Not only the public performance part, but the otherside - the 'support' network.

Over the past decade (okay nearly two) while dressing for combat in the pre-requisite corporate suit, I oscillated between managing, pitching, sponsorsing and showcasing professionals (a lot of them athletes) in various marketing, communications and media roles.

But I'm not talking about the faux glitz and glamour of the mediatized version of sport.

I'm talking about the skeleton.  The place where it's all about what's best for the athlete to ensure s/he performs. 

Don't get me wrong...this business called sport is a multi-faceted, highly evolved beast.  So none of what I'm saying is particularly new.  Although...

Managing the brand, as well as, the person in this constantly-evolving, very public intricately networked digital world, seems to be a topic in which very few industry experts are engaged.

Or am I simply out of the loop?

To truly understand the profession of athleticism takes a lot longer than an hour's interview or a lifetime of observation.  It takes practical know-how.

Professionalism, or sometimes simply, the commercialisation of sports, adds a new dimension to an athlete's portfolio.

So where can and do athletes go to train in the art of the integrated media network?

Depending on who you talk to, the answer will vary.  Talent managers, media managers, sports unions, lawyers, stylists, university professors, candle-stick makers - it's really a free for all... or is it?

Speak to a veteran performer and more often than not, they'll tell you they've muddled their way through, with the help of a handful of friends and trusted acquaintances with mixed results.

Then turn to a rookie and watch.  The good ones are already sizing-up every person in the room to see if they are friend or foe, helper or hanger-on.

Understanding is key.  Acquiring knowledge, an assurity of stepping closer to success as a professional; because performance isn't all training, playing and recovery.

It's about agility, as demanded by the 24/7 news cycle, the capabilities of new media and mobile technologies, as well as, the traditional key stakeholders: the sponsors, administrators, managers, medicos, team mates, family and supporters.

Managing the person, as well as, the brand is an integrated and highly specialised skill.  One that has elvolved beyond knowing the right editor or producer at the various TV or radio stations.

So where can athletes and sports professionals go to train for the new media age?  Or rather, as they say in the corporate world 'network' to exchange ideas and share experiences?

I'm hoping they'll be brave enough to play here... eventually.