Social media is the full on battleground for brands looking to get engagement through their association with players and teams. a recent survey for twitter in the UK showed that 48% of those watching live sport would be following a stream or tweeting themselves to make the event more exciting.
As with any form of marketing it is results that drive expenditure and brands have been quick to make most effective use of individual athlete endorsements.
Many sponsors are now inserting social media clauses into contracts whereby stars will be obliged to tweet or post subtle references to a product brand.
At the Winter Olympics Gracie Gold (what a great name) sent out a ‘selfie’ on Instagram of her applying her lipstick with a comment that she couldn’t do without it. The lipstick is made by Cover Girl which could be seen in the picture and that is the kind of content which sponsors are now looking for.
Speaking to Fox News in the US, Gold’s agent Yuki Saegusa said “This is the first Olympics where I actually have a social media calendar, where an athlete has to tweet or mention something on a given day.”
“We get a list of tweets or social media things that need to be posted and then we approve them for her.”
“We want it to be from her point of view, and from her mouth and from her fingers. So we try to get her to do them — mostly.”
“We’re in a very new age now where a lot of advertising, or PR, or promotions, is social media. That’s becoming a very important aspect of marketing.”
Gold has 65,000 followers on twitter and a list of sponsors and brands that includes Cover Girl, Visa and United Airlines.
Closer to home Jamie Heaslip has twice that number of followers on twitter and since the start of the month has been an ambassador for Lovin Dublin, a new food website. His own tweets have been a blend of rugby related ones in connection with schools rugby, technology retweets marking his interest in that subject, some commentary around the Neil Francis controversy and more.
It will be a tight wire to cross between being seen as overly commercial and thereby losing credibility or promoting causes and events that are of genuine interest to you and your personal community as a sports star.
We have seen elsewhere today how social media can be especially challenging for athletes. This is an example of how it can be lucrative as well.
