Posts Tagged ‘video’

Last night I had the pleasure to interview George Junginger, who is working on a new startup called Group Story, along with his business partner, Geoff Hamrick. Group Story puts a new twist on photo books for groups of people who have been at the same event, on the same sports team, or share some other common bond. Instead of having one standard book for the entire group, Group Story enables people to pick and choose photos and customize pages so their books match their own experiences.

Since Group Story is an NC-based company and since I’ve known George for a little over a year now, I thought it’d be fun to do an interview with him. I also think sports fans and athletes will be a good audience for them, and you can hear George explain why in the video. This is actually the first interview George has given about Group Story–he claims he’s camera shy, but if you watch the video, you’ll see why I don’t believe it. (hint: I think he gives a good interview).

Interview With Group Story Co-Founder George Junginger from Jason Peck on Vimeo.

Group Story has been chosen to demo at the Internet Summit in Raleigh on November 4-5. Check them out and drop me a line if you’re going to be there so we can meet up.

We’ve seen that there is a whole lot more to social media than just media or marketing. Social media tools and the tenets of listening, audience participation, user-generated content, real-time news and updates, sharing and voting are revolutionizing the way companies do business. Done properly and with a purpose, social media has the ability to transform the way companies look at:

• Market research
• Product development
• Customer service
• Sales and marketing
• Employee hiring

A few businesses and teams get this, but overall we’re still not there yet. Many teams are getting involved, but not always with a purpose or clear strategy. A Facebook page that has 100k people on it is worthless, without the proper strategy behind it. If you’re a team, you don’t really want Facebook fans, you want ticket buyers.

The video below describes some ideas for ways that teams can use social media the right way and what benefits they (and their fans) can get from this.

The last idea in the video is one I look forward to exploring more, and would love your thoughts on. It’s one thing to do some basic videos occasionally and make them exclusive to Twitter or YouTube to drive awareness and engagement. But hardcore fans are always willing to consume more, in my opinion. Why aren’t teams capitalizing on this?

More and more fans now want to participate, be involved in the creation of ticket packages, get exclusive, behind-the-scenes videos, articles and real-time updates, get personalized merchandise, vote on ideas for sponsor promotions, etc.  Clearly people want content in new forms as indicated by the explosion of sites like Twitter. Why aren’t more teams taking some of these concepts, creating new content areas and fan clubs and charging fans for access to drive revenue?

If you’re a die-hard Lakers fan, wouldn’t you pay for the right to see Kobe’s real-time updates right after the game, before the press get a crack at him? Wouldn’t you pay to have access to short, 30 second videos from Phil Jackson before and after practice? Wouldn’t you pay for a chance to ask a member of the Lakers staff or ownership any question you wanted once a month? I know I would.

I think teams may need to rethink a lot of the things they’re doing online. There should be a balance between using these free social media tools to expand an audience and keep a pulse on what fans want/think vs. charging people for access to really cool content and opportunities. Some of the things teams and players are doing on outside sites could be moved in-house (and on team communities, so they have a better value proposition) so they can be better monetized and packaged for hardcore fans. I think this is the only way teams will see a good ROI from their efforts and will be able to justify spending money on new opportunities that serve to engage fans in more ways.

I’m always interested in hearing what you think. Thanks for watching/reading and I look forward to your thoughts on this.

So you might be thinking: “What exactly does Tony Robbins have to do with sponsorship, and why did he speak at IEG’s conference?”

Though I’ve seen a number of Tony Robbins videos online and think he’s a great guy, I was wondering the same thing before I heard him speak last Monday.

For four hours, Tony had everyone listening, engaged, and, at times, on their feet and dancing (see end of video below). I’ve never seen someone who can control a crowd as well as Tony. He had the crowd fired up and gave people some things they can apply to their own life and businesses. His main focus is getting people to understand what things drive them to do what they do, and how they can use this knowledge to focus on the things they want. I came away with some good ideas about what I should focus on, and his speech energized me for the rest of the conference.

If you really focus on whatever it is you want to accomplish and attack it with an insane amount of energy, then good things will happen. This message can apply to anyone, so even though it wasn’t directly focused on sponsorship, I thought it was a great message for people to hear, especially considering that things have been difficult for many people lately.

Here’s a short clip of Tony’s speech. At the end you can see how fired up everyone was.

Dynasty Reps has recently released a new promotional video. I really like that they’ve made it available on a variety of sites and platforms, instead of trying to get everyone to come to their site to see it. Go where your customers/potential customers are and good things will happen. You can see the full list of sites the video is available on at Sports Agent Blog.

Create Your Own Dynasty from Dynasty Athlete Representation on Vimeo.
I’ve been in contact with SportsAgentBlog.com and Dynasty Reps founder Darren Heitner for awhile now. I’ve said it before, but he really understands how to use the Internet and blogging to build his business and create lasting relationships. Nice job with this video!

What’s up everyone? Yesterday I stumbled upon an article about participation marketing by Alan Rosenpan. As you know, I’m big on social media and how brands can utilize it to connect with their customers and fans. Social media was built for participation. Brands and individuals have to actively participate in order to successfully engage people on whatever communities/websites they’ve determined are valuable.

Check out the video below for some of my thoughts about participation marketing-what it is, why it matters and how teams can utilize social media to follow some of these principles. Some of these ideas are things that a lot pro teams are already doing, though I think there are some ways they can improve things.

Thanks for watching. I’d love to hear what your thoughts are for ways teams can get to know fans better, involve them in creating ticket packages/promotions  and make them feel like they have a stake in their success.

So today I downloaded Jing, which is a free screencasting utility for Mac OSX. Check out the video for my unplanned thoughts on my first visit to Sports Fananza, another of the sports social networking sites that someone posted about in the comments of my post, 50 Sports Social Networking Websites.

Click here for the video. *It may take a minute or two to load…