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Strategic Considerations
As a sports brand you are of course in the content business. Delivering content for your brand is far easier than for a packaged goods brand, for example, because you have a ready supply of high appeal sports content to deliver. You can also work with your partners to deliver their content if you so desire. A modular media presence can help you add value in such situations, and generate incremental revenue in so doing.
Real Time Matrix introduced Vortex to maximize the opportunity to deliver diverse forms of content. Vortex offers a 100% customizable unit with high production values and the versatility to offer video, audio and text seamlessly. It provides a high-quality environment to feature the best of what you have to offer.
Widgets and RSS can also offer such an opportunity, depending on how they are designed.
Other Critical Issues
There are several other issues to consider when making the decision on which modular media platform to deploy in service of your brand:
Control
Just as it is imperative to ensure that your advertising, programs, collateral etc. accurately reflect your sports brand’s visual language and messaging, your platform should also offer a physical appearance that is brand enhancing. Unfortunately many of the consumer widgets that are currently available are rather unattractive and would seem to violate the brand standards of the companies that commission them.
An additional control issue is being able to ensure that your application does not accidentally feature content that your consumers may find objectionable, or that you may find detrimental to the brand. For example, suppose you are leveraging a viral strategy. It may be in your best interests to offer consumers access to user generated content in your modular media unit. But some user generated content may be inappropriate. A strong platform should give you just as much power over what not to feature as it does in defining what you want featured.
Finally, many sports brands are concerned that their unit might be featured in untoward areas of the Web. Websites with objectionable language and erotic content, for example, are generally not the sorts of places where most sports brands want their messages to appear. Before you make the decision on a platform to represent your property, you should determine what safeguards if any are available to protect your brand from appearing on inappropriate websites.
Personalization
As we said at the beginning of this white paper, and as has been widely reported in virtually every trade journal, consumers want “what they want when they want it how they want it.” We no longer operate in an environment where a brand can broadcast the message that it wants and essentially require that consumers see it. The days of burning a message into consumer brains are over. We need to recognize that any modular media application needs to meet consumer needs first, or your target simply won't grab it.
But what does that mean in the context of a branded modular media platform? It means that consumers should be able to customize the content that they receive, without detracting from the marketing value of the unit. For example, certain users may want to learn more about one of your players. Allowing them to do this will make your unit more valuable to them. Unfortunately very few brand widget suppliers have developed a way to deal with that challenge.
Stickiness/Longevity
The stickiness of a modular media application is also a very important consideration as you make your plans. Unfortunately, many widgets and feeds demonstrate very short shelf life with consumers. People sign up, but quickly lose interest and take them off their Web presences.
Of course, if you are building a unit that is designed solely to hold consumer attention for the few weeks before a big game, this is less of an issue. But you may be missing an opportunity to drive greater consumer interest with such a short term strategy. Hard core fans will want modular content that is relevant over the long haul. By giving them a way of learning over a longer period of time, or by creating a unit focused on a franchise rather than a single game or season, you may be able to greatly expand consumer interest.
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