Category: Interviews

Redefining Your Brand Part I

Posted on by Drew Neisser

I had the pleasure of interviewing Lisa Fawcett, VP of Global Marketing for CooperVision, a few months back about her rebranding journey.  CooperVision, by the way, sells over a billion dollars worth of contact lens’ annually around the world and as a result of their rebranding work (by Siegel+Gale) ended up in a truly distinctive place.  Not being a branding expert, I found the whole thing quite enlightening and turned this interview into an article that will appear shortly on FastCompany.com.

Drew: Could you give me some background on your rebranding journey?
Sure. The branding journey at CooperVision,  wasn’t something that was taken lightly. It had been part of the strategic planning process for the company identified with other major initiatives.  Establishing a strong corporate brand was one of the key elements to the strategic plan

Drew: Was there a specific trigger?
The organization embarked on this for a handful of reasons. First, unlike some companies that embark on this journey, the organization was growing and doing extremely well, there wasn’t a problem we were looking to fix. Our business had changed over the last five years, and the marketplace had also changed.  We wanted to make sure we continued to evolve so we maintained our relevance for the future. Secondly, CooperVision had grown by acquisition, purchasing other contact lens companies, and recent growth had been fueled by developing and launching new products. . It was time to make sure the organization was all aligned under a single corporate brand. All key stakeholders – customers, consumers, employees, shareholders understood what CooperVision stands for and the value we bring to the contact lens industry.

Drew Neisser: I’m hoping that you will be able to define what in your mind establishes strong corporate brand.
Sure, it revolves around what we define as our strategic framework.  It has four components. First is our brand promise, that differentiation we bring to the contact lens market. It defines why customers want to do business with us, that’s the center of the hub.

Drew: Okay that’s one. What’s next? 
Then we started to define a purpose, why do we come to work every day, what makes us get out of bed.  It’s the promise that defines how we compete in the market and why customers purchase our product. The purpose statement is why employees come to work every day.   They are two different components of the branding puzzle.

Drew: What are the other components?
The other two components were establishing a set of core values for the organization and developing a corporate voice.  The values govern how we behave, how we talk to one another, et cetera.  The voice is defines ‘how’ we speak to the customers, contact lens wearers, employees, and other key stakeholders, it defines our ‘tone’.    These 4 components; promise, purpose, values and voice brings us to the last stage of this journey – visual expression of the brand.  It can be a tendency with branding projects for people to get caught up with the visual expression of the brand, developing new logos and images, without identifying the strong foundation of the companies promise, purpose, values and voice to go with it.

Drew: Where does visual identity fit into all of this?
One of the reasons we were very interested in working with Siegel+Gale is we knew a brand is more than just its visual expression. Siegel & Gale knew that too. You really need to understand what makes the company different in the marketplace, how its values govern its behaviors, how it speaks to the marketplace, and how employees are engaged on a day to day basis.  Only after that heavy lifting is done can the organization develop a visual expression of the brand.

Drew: Did you have a sense from the beginning how you were going to measure success?
We had 3 items that were the ‘acid test’ for measuring success.  First, employees feel CooperVision is a great place to work and we are aligning our resources around a common mission for growth.  Second, our customers and consumers, believe we provide differentiation that creates real value. We found white space CooperVision could own and was relevant to our customers.  We want to continue to track our brand to make sure we are living up to that differentiated promise in the market.  Thirdly, if we truly defined our differentiated promise to the market it would allow for streamlined decision making and allocation of resources.  Projects or initiatives would either live up to the promise and we say “Yes”, or they don’t and we say “No.”

Drew:  What kind of timeframe are we talking about?
From start to finish it was an 18-month process.  Primarily it was an 18-month process as there was significant research  upfront.  We spent time with our main constituents, employees, contact lenses wearers, eye care practitioners and retailers all around the world. We needed to truly understand their perception of CooperVision as well as the other manufacturers. We always felt we approached the market differently and that contributed to our success, but did our stakeholders feel the same way?

Drew: Why were employees so important to the process?
If we’re going to make a promise to the market, it can’t be 12 executives sitting in a room deciding what the company is to be.  Ultimately, the employees are the promise keepers, so need to be vested in what the brand promise is to the market.  We went to great lengths to make sure employees were able to express their views about what the company was  good at, what areas the company  needed to improve upon, what they felt was important to the marketplace.  We then matched those views against what our customers and lens wearers told us globally. This collective effort became the underpinnings of the branding work.

Drew: Were there any surprises that came out?
Given we are a global company we are fortunate enough to sell our product in very unique markets.  The conventional belief is our customers and consumers would be vastly different given the unique cultures and markets. Are their differences among contact lens wearers and eye care practitioners globally?  Absolutely.  Are they ‘vast’ differences? No. What was nice is through this research we were able to ‘unveil’ some common-ground to focus on. It helped the organization align on a promise that could meet the worldwide needs for our business.  I realize that is often not the case for other companies.  What was nice for CooperVision was we were able to circle in on a few things that really resonated, and were relevant and credible on a global basis. That is very powerful.

NOTE:  This is part 1 of my interview with Lisa.  The 2nd part will appear in the next day or so.  If you found this interesting, feel free to subscribe to TheDrewBlog;-)

How Networks Should Use Social TV Apps

Posted on by Drew Neisser

At MediaPost’s Social Media Insider Summit last week, there were a number of informative speakers.  Among the best was Kristin Hersant of Echo, who provided real world examples of social TV apps which seem like a brilliant way for the TV networks to reverse the “I’ll watch it later” time-shifting trend.  In fact, AMC credits their recent “Breaking Bad” social TV app for helping to improve the shows ratings!  I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I did.

DN: First, can you give me a quick overview of what Echo does?
Consumers are flocking to social networks in record numbers because they want to receive relevant news and information about their favorite people, topics and brands in real-time. This results in declining traffic trends for major websites… according to Webtrends, the number of visitors to Fortune 100 websites declined by an average of 23% from 2010 to 2011.

Echo helps businesses make their websites and mobile apps as addictive as leading social networks by creating real-time social experiences with their own content. We do this through the Echo Platform, a collection of web services that enable developers to rapidly build and deploy real-time apps.

Echo customers can either buy pre-built apps through our App Ecosystem, bring other apps to be “echo enabled” or build their own apps in-house. Every app built on the Echo Platform works seamlessly with the others to transform websites and mobile apps into branded destinations that increase website traffic, build brand loyalty and drive user behavior.

DN: You mentioned some pretty interesting statistics about the overlap of social media & TV watching—can you share them here and offer insights on the implications?
According to Neilson, 88% of tablet owners and 86% of smart phone owners are using their second screen device while watching TV. That offers an unprecedented opportunity for networks, and the brands that advertise on them, to engage directly with their viewers – effectively turning the belief that watching TV is a passive activity on its head.

Networks and brands turn to Echo when they want to own that conversation and build social experiences that drive a specific business KPI or user behavior. Our platform is behind the Social TV apps for ABC, AMC Networks, ESPN, NBC News, Showtime, USA Network and WWE and we were recently awarded Best Whitelabel Solution at the 2012 Social TV Awards.

DN: I really enjoyed learning about the app that AMC Networks developed for Breaking Bad.  Can you give a quick synopsis of what was created for that show?
AMC Networks has developed a series of Social TV apps using the Echo Platform that are available for AMC, WE tv and IFC. The backbone of these experiences is a stream of real-time conversation where viewers of each episode can participate in live, real-time chat on their network websites as they’re watching each episode, building a strong sense of community and engagement with the storyline of each show. This is augmented by a Story Sync app that injects real-time polls, trivia, and quizzes into the viewer stream as viewers are watching the show. The Story Sync is formatted to work on a tablet and is promoted on-air leading up to and during each live broadcast.

What were the key metrics for this program and how did it do?
The purpose of these apps is to enrich and enhance the viewing experience for each live broadcast. This is because in order for a show to get credit for a Nielsen viewing, it must be watched within the first three days of its initial airing. In the age of the DVR, it can be challenging to drive live show viewership, however AMC’s integrated social strategy appears to be making an impact. For Breaking Bad specifically, AMC saw a 605% increase in social engagement for the 2012 season premiere over last year and a 14% increase in ratings. Not all of that can be attributed directly to their social tv strategy, but the general sentiment is that it’s working very well for them.

DN: I bet a lot of people don’t realize that Nielsen ratings only include those watching the program live and not later via DVR.  Do you thinking social apps like the ones that AMC built with Echo can get more people to watch shows live (versus time shifting)?  
This strategy has already proven effective across a number of our customers. Most of them see large spikes in social activity during their live broadcasts, however one of the challenges that every social TV program has to deal with is “spoiler alerts,” when multiple people are co-viewing and chatting with each other from different time zones. AMC currently syncs their experiences to the East Coast and West Coast airings and we are building functionality into a future version of the Echo Platform that will specifically address this issue.

DN: Are these apps making TV watching more of a communal experience?  
Absolutely. Consumers love engaging with each other around their favorite sporting events, characters, shows and content.  I recommend that you try the AMC apps next time you’re watching your favorite show on AMC… The Walking Dead live discussion is particularly entertaining because of the zombie killer subject matter.

DN: Can you provide one other example of an app that has improved TV ratings?  If so, please tell me about it.  If not, just give me one other example of an effective app?  Thanks.
AMC is the only customer who has made their rating increase public, however there are number of other Echo Enabled Social TV apps that are driving viewer engagement through the roof. WWE was able to permanently double the number of page views on wwe.com after launching their new website and USA Network has grown their monthly unique users from zero to 700K in one year for their popular Character Chatter application.

Final note: for more on what i gleaned from the conference, please see my FastCompany.com post: The 6,224-Foot View Of Social Media. Finally, if you like what you’re reading, feel free to subscribe to my blog if you’re not already!

Making the Most of Your Facebook Database

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Jeff French, Founder and Chairman of Louddoor spoke at MediaPost’s recent Social Media Insider Summit way up in beautiful Lake Tahoe.  I thought he had a lot of really interesting things to say about social media data mining so I followed up with this interview.  Louddoor’s secret sauce is that they have a 50 million strong Facebook user database that gives them terrific insights into user behavior that marketers can then leverage–I think you’ll find what Jeff has to say quite enlightening.

DN: Give me the 10,000 foot view on Louddoor?
Louddoor is the leading market research and audience targeting Platform for brands and agencies on Facebook.

DN: Tell me a bit about your Facebook user database?
Our database is 100% opt-in and represents data shared by participants in our various market research studies.

DN: Have you all been able to calculate “value per like” and if so, how?
Yes. Value per Like is different for every Page on Facebook. To calculate what a fan is worth you have to establish a control group of similarly situated customers that are not fans and compare their behavior and spending habits to a statistically relevant sample of fans. It’s important to gather a full census of your fans. If you post in the newsfeed to recruit your panel you might as well throw the results in the trash can. Everyone knows that being a Fan on Facebook correlates to higher customer value but our goal is to isolate the causative effects of being a fan and that takes a well executed double blind study. This is the data marketers need to make more informed decisions. It’s not easy to get but it can be done if you have the right partner.

DN: Why is value per like such an important metric?
Its one of many important metrics but having a Value Per Like benchmark can help a brand marketer spend on Facebook with more confidence. When you know what a fan is worth you can make better decisions all around. We’re also in the nascent stages of constructing regression analysis to better understand long term fan value. Everyday we learn something new that gives brand marketers and their agencies more confidence in Facebook Advertising.

DN: You did some interesting user modeling for Hornitos uncovering “mudders” as a passion—tell me about that process?
We conducted a detailed market research study where we surveyed over 25,000 Facebook users about their tequila consumption habits. We found an incredibly strong correlation between users who frequently drink tequila straight (shots, neat, rocks) and the various “mud race” events like Spartan Race and Tough Mudder. We used these findings to target the “mud race” audience for future activations and were able to deliver outstanding results for the client.

DN: How do you allay Facebook user concerns about privacy given all the data you’ve gathered?
First, we never share any personally identifiable user data with anyone (including our clients). We clearly disclose to our users that the data provided on our Platform will be used on an anonymous basis to construct better ad targeting and analytics algoritms for use on Facebook. Users understand that ads keep Facebook free and when you get right down to it they want these ads to be more relevant to them. Mark Zuckerberg himself puts the user experience on Facebook in front of everything else. We believe strongly that our research is improving the Facebook user experience for brands and consumers by creating more relevant ads. It’s a true win-win and we’ve never had a single user complaint regarding a privacy issue.

DN: Can you share another example of how you’ve helped marketers by analyzing Facebook data?
Audience Segmentation is a hot topic right now for our clients. Facebook recently released new functionality to let brands better target posts in their fans’ newsfeed but we are going far beyond these capabilities and using Facebook Sponsored Stories to deliver the right message to the right fan at the right time with laser precision. For example, most brands have customers that respond for different reasons. Some may be more influenced by product quality while others are discount motivated. We are able to slice a client’s fan base with this level of granularity and when we deliver relevant sponsored stories powered by this data the results are simply incredible. We are literally seeing engagement results 5-10X greater than un-targeted sponsor story units. You can’t spend engagement but it’s the first step towards driving sales and measurable results.

How to Best Use Pinterest for Your Brand

Posted on by Drew Neisser

When it comes to digital marketing, there are very few who know more about the ins and outs than Katrina Klier, Senior Director / VP Worldwide Digital Marketing at Microsoft.  I caught up with Katrina at a recent The CMO Club cocktail party and she was nice enough to let me pepper her with questions about Pinterest.  Her answers are refreshingly honest and informative–of particular note  are her suggestions for how Pinterest could become more brand friendly–I hope they’re listening.

Drew Neisser: How do you see tech brands like yours being able to take advantage of Pinterest?
Katrina Klier: Pinterest is a wonderful way to showcase new products in a highly visual way as well as gain endorsements via re-pins that help create product brand awareness. Overall though I would say the tech world has been slow to get in to Pinterest. Dell has done a pretty good job: http://pinterest.com/dell/ .

Drew Neisser: Has Microsoft used Pinterest effectively thus far?
Katrina Klier: LOL, no I wouldn’t say we’ve used it effectively yet so far but we’ve learned a great deal. (The Pinterest.com/Microsoft page in inactive & the Pin it to Win it contest by the Windows team didn’t seem to get much traction.) We’ve done what most big brands do, claimed a profile and have plans for much more to come, but it isn’t live yet.

Drew Neisser: Do you have any thoughts on how Pinterest could become more brand-friendly? 
Katrina Klier: Pinterest is pretty brand friendly already. Some things I’d love them to do: Create sub-boards so it’s easier to do topical boards with multiple themes; somehow connect to a purchase place – so drive ecommerce conversion potential either directly or via some type of visual search engine that can give you a list of online or offline stores to buy what you see.  Ecommerce is a partnership opportunity for Pinterest to drive with the likes of Amazon, Wal-Mart and others.  Also finding people or brands to follow is rather clunky – if you search for people you know, you can find them, but if not a general reco is not easy. Also would like to embed boards in other websites – allowing pinboards via a service provided by Pinterest (similar to how Bing or Google provide in-site search for brands)

Drew Neisser: Are you active on Pinterest yourself and if so, what do you really like about it?
Katrina Klier: Yes, I use Pinterest http://pinterest.com/katrinaklier/  I like the visual components and the link to Facebook. I started another blog a couple months ago Travel Like a Lady and Pinterest over time will be a big part of that to show products, ideas, how-to, etc. I had to put some of my writing on hold for other demands but hopefully will get back to it shortly. I haven’t connected my marketing blog much to Pinterest as the topic is not as product or visually centric. My husband is a photographer and very active on Pinterest. It helps him categorize inspirational work as well as check out stylists, other artists and companies he is or would like to do business with. His business is very visual of course so Pinterest is a good fit and he loves the Facebook integration as well.

Final note: just in case you were wondering where Pinterest could be heading, please check out my story on MediaPost and or join me for MediaPost’s Social Media Insider Summit in Lake Tahoe next week. 

 

The Expansive Role of Marketing Part II

Posted on by Drew Neisser

This is part 2 of my interview with Tim McDermott, CMO of the Philadelphia Eagles.  In this portion, Tim discusses youth marketing, social media, fan passion, social responsibility and the expansive role of marketing within the Eagles organization.  Again, even if you’re not an Eagles fan or a sports fan for that matter, I think you’ll find it most enlightening.  Also, click here for my article on FastCompany.com related to this.

Neisser:  You mentioned your target is very broad.  Are you doing any more targeted efforts?
McDermott: There are two areas that we feel that we can grow more significantly. The youth market being one and the woman’s market being the other. We launched a three-prong youth strategy back in 2004. We had a kids TV show. We had a kid’s website, and a kid’s club. And we had the largest kids club membership of any sports team in the world. And this year we are reshaping that to continue to grow our impact amongst the youth market.

 

Neisser: Your fan base is famously enthusiastic to put it nicely. Talk to me the role the fans play in building your brands.
McDermott:  If you are a sports executive or even if you’re an owner of a sports team, I think you are really a steward of a brand. It’s really a public trust. And that’s the way you really need to look at it. And I’ve been fortunate enough to work with owners both on the football side, and in the hockey world who always made that their statements, that they are responsible for a public trust. And I think if you take that approach and you think of it as the fans are the true owners of the team. Then you’ll always do the right thing.  You simply do what is right for the fans. And it takes a lot of the complexity out of it.

Neisser: How are you handling social media and community management?
McDermott: When I returned here in January 2010, we reorganized a bit, and part of that was to set up a digital department. And the department is fully devoted to all things digital (i.e. apps, mobile apps, websites, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest– whatever the latest platform is that’s coming down the pike.) So that’s the way that we’ve decided to structure ourselves, because we felt that the world had shifted. And we needed people who were 100% dedicated to evaluating, understanding, and determining how to create, how to use some of the different new media technologies that they’re coming out there. So we do have dedicated social media coordinators, who do evaluate all of the different “what’s next?” and making suggestions on how we can use it.

 

Neisser: Can you articulate what the Eagles brand is about?
McDermott:  Sure. In fact, a couple years ago we went through an exercise with Landor, to put together a brand book and style guide. So we do have that in a very refined piece that we can then share with both the internal as well as with corporate partners. Our brand has some unique brand attributes. We’re well known for our tough as nails, passionate fan base. And it’s a unique sort of passion–I know a lot of teams would say that their fans are passionate, but our fans are passionate. I really don’t think most teams have the breadth and depth of passion, and exemplify it in the way that we do. At the same time we’re a very community oriented brand. Social responsibility is very important to our organization. So those are some of the key hallmarks.

Neisser: And I notice that there is a lot of social responsibility on your website. I imagine that’s handled separately from marketing, is there a group that is dedicated to that?
McDermott: Sure. In fact, a couple years ago we went through an exercise with Landor, to put together a brand book and style guide. So we do have that in a very refined piece that we can then share with both the internal as well as with corporate partners. Our brand has some unique brand attributes. We’re well known for our tough as nails, passionate fan base. And it’s a unique sort of passion–I know a lot of teams would say that their fans are passionate, but our fans are passionate. I really don’t think most teams have the breadth and depth of passion, and exemplify it in the way that we do. At the same time we’re a very community oriented brand. Social responsibility is very important to our organization. So those are some of the key hallmarks.

Neisser: What else do you have going in this area?
McDermott:  So back in 2004 we created a tackle, called Tackling Breast Cancer campaign. And in 2004 the first year of it, we sold pink hats with the Eagles logo. And in a period of 30 days during October, which is breast cancer awareness month, we sold 32,000 pink hats. That’s probably more hats than most professional sports teams will sell in an entire year.  That was all around raising money for breast cancer awareness. And that became a platform that we have now run for the past eight years. We’ve dedicated over — are getting close to two million dollars in donations from that.  And we’ve made it an ongoing platform since 2004. In fact, we were recently named the global sports team of the year for all of our various off the field activities.

Neisser: How big is your marketing department?
McDermott: About 35 to 40 people, about 40 people. That includes all of the merchandising staff. So we oversee our own retail shops and our own pro shops at the stadium. We oversee our outlet store. We oversee our online e-commerce. We oversee the game day sales.  We have a television production group–we call it Eagles Television Network, where we produce, or co-produce or partner on, eight different weekly TV and radio shows. So it depends upon how you define marketing. If you want to define marketing in the more myopic approach instead, it’s relatively small. It’s probably seven people that are just in the so called “marketing department.” If you want to define marketing in the more myopic approach instead, it’s relatively small. It’s probably seven people that are just in the so called “marketing department.”

Neisser: When you look at ahead at the Eagles brand building activity, what’s on your sort of wish list?
McDermott: Well I keep looking at all the possibilities coming through digital media and what’s next. I’m fascinated by some of the augmented reality concepts that are coming out there. And really excited about what might be and just how quickly some of these augmented reality concepts have come to fruition. You can have a print ad in a newspaper, and all of a sudden you can have that ad be the full 30-second TV commercial through augmented reality. So every year we send out tickets to people with an image on those tickets. Now through augmented reality you could actually bring that ticket to life.

Neisser: How do you rationalize this kind of experimentation from a strategic point-of-view?
McDermott: Strategically, I think sport teams are really media companies. We aggregate millions and millions and millions of impressions.: where the people who look at us at games, come to our games, watch us on TV shows, websites, Facebook, Twitter all the different vehicles that are out there. And at the end of the day, we can aggregate communities of people through all these channels. And as a result of that I think you’ll see us acting, and executing in ways that more of a media company. And again, just the way we produce content, the way we distribute content is just one example of that.

Neisser: Do you have any words of wisdom for other marketers?
McDermott:Any time I tell somebody outside of my area of expertise, on what they can do I want to give that a little extra thought. I know that there are very bright very smart marketers out there, and quite honestly I think that often times, we in the sports world are borrowing and stealing the ideas that we see from other people so.

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The Expansive Role of Marketing Part I

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Tim McDermott, CMO of the Philadelphia Eagles makes a compelling case that marketing a sports team is not all that different from marketing other products like consumer packaged goods.  After spending over an hour with him on the phone, I not only came to see his point but also realized that he’s a marketer who really understands how to build a successful brand.  (By the way, I met Tim through The CMO Club.)

Having spent a number of years marketing sports teams (both hockey & football) Tim also did a stint at Comcast and earned an MBA from Harvard along the way.  Here are the highlights of my conversation with Tim broken into two parts that I think you’ll find most enlightening even if you aren’t an Eagles fan!

Neisser: is there anything keeping you up at night?
McDermott: Insuring that we are providing value for season ticket holders. We need to continue to find ways to add value to being a season ticket holder. Find ways to invest with our fan base, and continue to market why it’s a great experience. Why it’s fun to come to the games. Why it’s great to watch us on TV or to be part of purchasing our merchandise…

Neisser: And that’s an interesting place to start, in that there are things that you can control as the marketer and then there’s what happens on the field.
McDermott:  I think there are a lot of similarities between marketing sports property and marketing for other companies. Whether it be the jean companies or the entertainment companies. The reality is we’re probably doing the same things that the marketers are of other retail oriented companies. We’ve got “widgets” to sell in the form of tickets. And we go through the exercise of segmentation, targeting, and positioning our products and our brand the same way that other marketers do. We build brands. We engage in all the different forms of marketing, and advertising as other companies do. So we’re doing everything from market research to CRM implementations, to automated emails; to managing social digital campaigns to direct marketing, to direct response. You name it and I think we do it.

Neisser: So what are the key differences in marketing a sports team?
McDermott: Everyday my product can fluctuate–it can change. And as much as I want to or want our fans to have an undefeated Super Bowl season, I can’t control that. Whereas when you walk in to the McDonald’s or when you purchase Tide, it can be consistent. And that is certainly a challenge to the sports marketer is that you have to able to accept the fact that it is inconsistent. You have to accept the fact that at the end of the day, you can’t control your product. And yet still be able to create demand for your product and create engagement, and create interest in your product.

Neisser: What about your fans?
McDermott: Then the one thing that we do have going for us, which some of those other types of companies don’t, is the tremendous amount of passion that our consumer has for our product. And you see that displayed in a lot of different ways. You should see the letters that we get and the emails that we get. People write stories, poems, music about our product, and they’re willing to sit down and spend time with you, for free of course, to tell you all about how they feel about your product. And to wear your logo on merchandise and they’re walking around with your product. When I step back I know I’m very fortunate because we have such a passionate consumer base. There are many companies out there who would love to be able to have consumers who are as passionate as ours.

Neisser:  A losing season must be a sort of torture test of brand loyalty.
McDermott: There’s obviously some level of correlation between winning and off the field success. How much that correlation is, and how much the causation is between the two, is probably open for debate. And probably depends on a lot of different variables, from the city that you’re in to the kind of the winning tradition or how much success your team has had over an extended period time. To the sort of marketing and brand engagements that you do, all the way up to how people perceive your ownership group. I think if you look at the best sports brands though, all of the ones that have crossed that threshold, where independent of wins and losses, they create a brand that fans want to be associated with. And even in times that aren’t so good on the field, or on the ice or on the court, fans are still showing up. And they’ve created a connection with that fan base. They’ve made being a fan of that team something that does cross the threshold of just wins and losses. So that is something that all sports marketers are trying to do, is build that equity so that when the rainy day occurs people don’t leave. The fans don’t depart.

Neisser: What can the team do off the field to build loyalty?
McDermott: One of the biggest things we can do as team marketers is to create transparency and real trust with our consumer base. I think you can create trust through creating that transparency; and so having ways and methods on processes in place to listen to your fan base, to engage your fan base; to talk with them, but also provide them an avenue to share what’s on their minds. That’s something that we’ve been very successful with.

Neisser: Can you give me a specific example?
McDermott: We’ve created a season ticket holder advisory board. We’ve got a 35-person board that we started a year ago. The board membership runs two years. And it’s not just a glorified focus group. The people that have signed up to be part of this board, signed up to be solutions providers. They are very passionate about the Eagles. At the same time they would tell us what we’re doing right. They will tell us what we’re doing wrong. And they provide or I should say the quid pro quo is, they as being part of a sports membership they also have to provide us or help us come up with solutions to the problem.  Don’t just tell us what we’re doing wrong, but be an extension of our marketing department, and help us create the solution. So we’ve been very successful with doing that. And I think it’s truly a concept of listening, and engaging, and developing trust with them.

Neisser: What measures do you have in place from a brand health standpoint?
McDermott:  We look at TV ratings, website traffic, overall traffic on Facebook and Twitter accounts among other metrics. Merchandise sales is generally another sign of brand health. And of course, season tickets and how well you’re doing with ticket sales. If you’re sold out as in our case, then it’s a matter of monitoring your wait list and seeing if your wait list is growing. And then there are more scientific research based brand tracking studies. We do our own brand tracking study every year to see how we’re performing. And then are third party brand trackers, ESPN Sports Poll is an annual brand tracking study. And some others that are out there as well.

Neisser: And how is your brand doing?
McDermott: Our brand is doing well. Going back to early 2006, we were the fastest growing brand in sports according to a poll by Forbes. You can see some correlation there between how we were performing on the field as well. We had gone to a Super Bowl in January 2005. We lost in the Super Bowl to the Patriots in 2004-5 season. So there was some correlation obviously between on field success and off the field success. Overall today if you look at our website traffic, if you look at merchandise sales, if you look at the TV ratings, all of them are doing extremely well. In the 2010 season, we set TV ratings records. We set website merchandise sales records. 2010 was a very strong season for us. Last year, we saw a little bit of a dip. Again we were an eight and eight football team last year. We didn’t live up to some of the expectations. But when you look at most of the metrics, we performed well. We’re an extremely a strong brand, and you can see that even in a not so great on the field year, that our brand has been built in such a way that it can withstand a not so great year.

Be sure to read part 2 of this interview.