I did it. In a past Waxing I wrote about how I’m trying to climb the social media ladder. Well, I moved up a rung by caving in and accepting Twitter as a social media avenue worth exploring for professional development. In particular, for sports marketing and sponsorship activation. You can find me @SportsMarkGuy.

As I try to stay afloat in the twitterverse, I’ll be analyzing how teams, sponsors and athletes market themselves through Twitter. Shaq (@THE_REAL_SHAQ) and the Phoenix Suns (@PhoenixSunsGirl) are among the leaders when it comes to using Twitter as a marketing tool. What can we (consumers and corporate communicators) learn from Shaq’s Twitter popularity, and when will the NBA’s popularity with Twitter spill over into the other major sports leagues? It’s difficult to find players or teams in the NHL using Twitter, but NBA players are Tweeting at halftime!

What I DO think is that Twitter will become the new handshake, or even autograph, between fans and athletes. Will it be just as cool to have Shaq wave to you as he gets into his car after a game, as it is to tell your friends that you are following Shaq on Twitter and he’s eating a pizza in downtown Phoenix right now? Twitter brings these bigger-than-life athletes down to the same level as their fans and allows a connection to be made that has been lost over the years.

Cool Tweets

It’s been about 48 hours since I joined Twitter. Here are two cool Tweets I’ve come across that are great examples of the continually evolving media landscape,

1. Pardon The Interruption (PTI, @PTIShow), a daily ESPN show, has asked people on Twitter to submit ideas for guests on their show.
2. David Schwab @david_schwab, VP and managing director for First Call (a division of Octagon) “twitterviewed” Billy Bush via Twitter and posted the transcript on his First Call blog.

Sponsorship Madness

Notice anything different behind the benches and in the hands of the players in the NCAA basketball tournament? It’s not Gatorade, it’s Vitamin Water. While it would have been thrilling to be a fly on the wall during those sponsorship negotiations, my question is how could Gatorade/Pepsi let this happen?!

It shows up as a clear sign of defeat to consumers when you lose your staple sponsorship to your competitor – all types of questions are begging to be answered. I’d like to know the figures paid, but it shouldn’t matter. Whatever Coke offered to pay for the sponsorship, Pepsi should have beaten it – no matter what. What’s Pepsi’s philosophy behind this? Coke paid $4.1 billion for Vitamin Water a couple of years ago. If that’s not reason enough for Gatorade to be scared and be sure it holds and expands its sponsorship marketing, I don’t know what is. By the way, what’s happened to PowerAde? Is the writing on the wall for the slow discontinuation of the brand?

Matt Hansen

Beehive PR

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at 4:16 PM and is filed under Brand management, Social media/social networking community, Sports marketing, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.