David Weinfeld: Enhancing the sports fan experience

To build a successful mobile marketing campaign within a sports arena, the key is for advertisers to draw fans into a 360 degree brand experience. Sponsors need to take an active role in the stadium environment. Having your logo plastered on the walls of a highly trafficked concourse, will get you eyeballs, but what else? You need to activate that advertisement and get people to interact with your brand. Think of the advertising board as a jumping off point. It is your point A, from which you can lead consumers in any number of different directions.

Thanks to emerging mobile and digital technologies, a static advertisement doesn’t have to cede to being a one-dimensional branding tool. It can be a call-to-action that takes you on a scavenger hunt around an arena. Using image recognition technology from LinkMe Mobile, you can capture visual answers to sports-related trivia questions as you move throughout a venue. An advertising display can become the starting point for an augmented reality adventure. Stadium attendees can unlock clues, prizes, and special discounts by connecting their phones to mobile-enabled billboards. Whether it be via Bluetooth, augmented reality, QR code, or NFC (near field communication), a billboard doesn’t need to exist within the silo of a singular creative approach.

As CMOs and brand managers search for new, creative ways to engage consumers in sports stadiums, they must make ample use of the resources that lay before them. Instead of focusing solely on building brand awareness, advertising professionals realize widespread benefits by crafting campaigns that focus on activation and ROI. With out-of-home media and digital technology working in concert, brands can create all encompassing fan engagements.

With digital signage and interactive displays playing a larger role in stadium environments, brands have more platforms from which to create unique campaigns. Arena Media Networks offers advertisers a number of creative opportunities that extend beyond generating brand awareness. Thanks to the timeliness and flexibility of digital signage, brands can exhibit greater fluidity in these environments. Messages can be aligned with team performance and specific events that occur during a game. In building creative ads that leverage real-time information, brands can forge more lasting impressions with stadium visitors.

It’s about taking an active role in the stadium environment, building off of the emotion and excitement that flow through sports arenas. While it forces brands to think outside of the silo of brand awareness, it allows them to become part of the complete fan experience. One must not be afraid to seize upon the many interactive opportunities that fans come in contact with. Through the use of guerrilla marketing tactics and digital applications, static advertisements can become much more than single points of contact.

When you think about all of the different advertising initiatives that networks like Arena Media make possible, you can get lost in the creative possibilities. Fans can engage in multi-player fantasy sports games, interact with screens via mobile applications, and communicate with fans across the arena through digital displays. What’s exciting about sports arenas acting as the backdrop for marketing campaigns is how technologically-advanced they are.

With a myriad of technology platforms at their finger tips, it’s hard to imagine why brands wouldn’t leverage every possible opportunity to connect with fans who are already at the peak of excitement. It’s great for brands to get involved in these environments because stadiums encapsulate the shared sense of belonging amongst fans, the passion they hold for their teams, and the all-encompassing entertainment that characterizes the in-arena experience.

Media planners and marketing managers were once able to fulfill their duties by buying boards throughout stadiums and quantifying the number of people that would “see” them. But as digital technology has forced brands to better scrutinize their use of different media properties, so too must sports marketing professionals be liable for the decisions they make. The days of just buying a stadium banner or a couple static displays along an arena concourse are numbered. Brand managers must activate the engagement opportunities that grow out of these environments. Brands can now move seamlessly across stadiums, shifting messages according to team performance.

Thanks to continued innovation in the areas of experiential marketing and fan participation, sponsors can challenge their sports marketing partners to create campaigns that speak to the unique aspects of their brand. I imagine that as Arena Media grows across professional sports stadiums (the company is in over 50 professional sports venues), we’ll see an increasing amount of cross country multi-player rivalries. Thanks to smartphone application development, we’re beginning to see more venue specific mobile offerings. Whether it be direct mobile ordering, customized venue maps, or augmented reality layers, fans can unlock the core elements of the stadium experience from the palm of their hands.

The jobs of brand executives and marketing managers require greater research and creative development beyond the tried and true tactics of old. For those who are reticent to cede their brands to the control of their customers, they will continue to drift into the abyss of zero relevance. To exist in today’s stadiums and thrive therein, brands need to be willing to step from the static billboards of old and participate in the environments themselves. That could be via touchscreen interactivity, mobile activation, or any number of experiential marketing tactics. Instead of being another logo on the wall, companies must seize upon the chance to “interact” with fans.