Last week, the Canadian Sporting Goods Association sat down with Danielle Kristmanson, Origin’s Principal and Creative Director and Marie Josee Legault, Origin’s Partner/Strategic Planning Director. The subject was social media and the shifting landscape of marketing. If you didn’t get the newsletter in your inbox, here is the first half. To read the whole interview, sign up for the CSGA newsletter, or email mike@origindesign.ca for a PDF copy.
1. How would you define social media?
Danielle Kristmanson: Like a giant cocktail party, minus the free drinks and hors d’oeuvres. It’s a place where people gather to meet, chat with other people, be informed and be entertained. Like every good cocktail party, social media provides a place for smart, articulate, and charismatic people to make friends while impressing others with what they know and who they know. Unfortunately, it also provides a place for the predictable pompous, big-mouth, dumb-ass who rambles on irrelevant topics or talks incessantly about himself without letting anyone else get a word in edge-wise. Yeah, that guy gets into the social media party too. Like a cocktail party, there’s rarely a doorman filtering out the riff-raff.
Marie Josee (MJ) Legault: Not sure how to wash a kid’s ears? Make shoes out of cardboard? Out in the social web, there’s most likely a video with the answer, a tutorial on how to do it, a blog post on whether or not you should, and a ream of people com- menting on all of it. That is social media: a shift from monologue to dialogue and a democratization of knowledge and information that transforms people from content consumers to content producers.
2. Where should people in the sporting goods industry focus their social media efforts?
MJ: The question we ask our clients is not so much “where,” but “why.” Lots of clients call us saying, “I think I need to be on Twitter.” Our answer to them is, “Why?” Social media is a part of a marketing mix. So with that in mind, we need to start with objectives, determine some strategies, and then get down to tactics like, “I think you need to be on Twitter.”
DK: Yeah, MJ is right. There are a number of channels and communities to take advantage of within the social web, but where sporting goods businesses should focus their efforts depends a lot on how far they’ve already waded into the realm and the resources (both human and financial) they have available to them. With most clients, when we get down to tactics, getting your own social media channels up and running is important. It’s important to note, however, the difference between “up” (and by that I mean setting up a Facebook page and Twitter account), and “running” (which we describe as having resources dedicated to generating and posting regular content, engaging with fans, and providing valuable information and entertainment). Advertising your sidewalk sale and retweeting your suppliers’ tweets does not qualify as “running.” I’d be inclined to call that “coasting.”
3. Why, in your opinion, has there been such a shift to social media from traditional advertising?
DK: The access to information that the internet has provided to consumers, along with the rise of social media channels, has effectively turned the whole world of marketing and communications on its head. The consumer figured out that they could get the real goods about your business from places other than your brochure or catalogue or newspaper ad or even your website. Corporate trust began to decline, peer trust began to rise, and we saw the beginning of the end of the “push” marketing that we have all been doing for hundreds of years. “Pull” or “inbound” marketing began to emerge as consumers started demanding more from the businesses they buy from.
MJ: As the channel became legitimized, some businesses bought in and started the shift to social media to provide that engagement that their customers were looking for, while others stayed the course with traditional advertising. And then the recession hit. And suddenly, social media looked like a less expensive marketing option in a year or two when marketing budgets were drying up. That was when the big shift started, and most businesses have found in the process that it is a very important part of their new marketing mix.
4. When did social media truly move from fad to mainstream?
DK: In the last two years. We know this, because we rarely get called on to speak on the merits of social media marketing today. We hardly ever hear the question “is social media marketing here to stay?”
5. How has social media changed the way companies market?
MJ: They are understanding now that marketing is no longer about telling people what you think they want to hear. Instead, it is now about asking them what they want and delivering on the request. Social media was born to do this. Traditional advertising channels are going to be in trouble until they figure out how to deliver this same experience. They will…it’s just taking them a while to figure it out.
6. Why should sporting goods companies be interested in social media?
DK: For the same reasons companies in virtually every industry should be: consumer engagement. Beyond that though, social media is especially powerful when it is working for businesses that target “social” customers. Sports are inherently social. We do them with our family, friends, team mates, etc., and those groups are social mechanisms. They are driven by communication within the groups. It makes sense that sporting goods companies leverage the fact that their customers are social by nature.
To read the whole interview, sign up for the CSGA newsletter, or email mike@origindesign.ca for a PDF copy.
