Sunday, July 20, 2014

On "Sutton Impact" (KSS-782)

I have always admired people who stand up and fight for what they believe in. Bill Sutton is a wise and experienced man in the sport marketing world and offers his invaluable advice and opinions with his column called the “Sutton Impact” in the SportsBusiness Journal. In one of his recent articles, Sutton replied to comments made by Mark Cuban about sports marketing being a worthless major to study. Sutton explained how significant a sports marketing education actually is, and then challenged Cuban to visit Sutton’s sport and entertainment business management program at the University of South Florida to get a first-hand experience.
 
I am the type of person that usually stands neutral in a debate. I like to try to understand both sides of the story and see all of the positives and negatives. I feel uncomfortable with confrontations and provoking others for no good reason. However, there are a few circumstances that really ruffle my feathers.
 
I grew up on a farm and didn’t receive my first cell phone until I was a sophomore in high school. I didn’t get my first smart phone until a few months ago because my entire family did. Parents are now giving kids under ten years old smart phones. Honestly, I feel this is completely unnecessary and seriously annoying. Why is the world so dependent on technology and social media? Is this dependence only going to grow worse in the future?
 
I understand the significance of technology and social media for businesses and marketing, especially in the sport industry, but I don’t think that businesses should solely rely on social media or texting to communicate with their consumers and stay connected. Social media allows people to feel like they are connected to the rest of the world without a real, physical connection. There is no replacement for having customer service and communication skills and I feel like the technology craze is jeopardizing those skills for the younger generation.
 
There are several benefits that social media has contributed to the business world but it may also prove to be detrimental to those that consider it the norm to consume several hours on their cell phone every day. It seems there is no way around this because technology and social media websites will continue to develop. New media and technology seems to make some things in life easier but does it eliminate the learning process that may prove significant for other aspects in life?

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Sports and Snapchat (KSS-782)

When discussing sports and new media, the main topics usually involve Twitter and Facebook. However, Snapchat is becoming a more popular method for sports organizations to market to their consumers. In October 2013, the New Orleans Saints were the first team to create a Snapchat account (Burns, 2014). This allowed them to send a picture message to several ‘friends’ through its ‘Story’ function, which was available to be viewed for only 24 hours.
 
Snapchat differs from the other social media platforms because it does not store past content and is only visible for a brief time period. Twitter and Facebook both utilize a news feed to display content to followers, which can all be seen on their websites. Snapchat allows its users to create messages in a unique manner and it is more personal because it involves adding friends in order to view and send content to each other.
 
Social media continues to progress into developing more personal levels of communication. This is significant to sports organizations because this leads to a closer relationship with fans. I think that this will help Snapchat become a common platform for sports organizations to market their content and reach fans, but I know that there will be another new media platform that will overtake Snapchat sooner rather than later.
 
I also think about the issues that are created by Twitter and Facebook for sports organizations because they cannot control the content being shared on these websites by athletes, fans, and personnel. Snapchat diminishes this problem because the content is only viewable for a short time period and is not stored to be viewed in the future. It also doesn’t reach worldwide to the common public so it greatly decreases the chance of someone taking the information out of context and creating more negative publicity from it.

I am a new user of Snapchat so there are still many functions I need to learn about. I’m not sure if I would really use it as a sport manager but I understand how it could be a useful and practical platform for sport marketing. I know that pictures are a popular interest that appeals to many females so Snapchat may also help recruit more women as fans of sports teams by manipulating that feature. Either way, I will be interested to see how many teams eventually follow the Saints and join the Snapchat trend.

Reference:

Burns, M. (2014, March 7). Snapchat's rise as the 'it' social media channel in sports. Retrieved from Sporting News: http://www.sportingnews.com/sport/story/2014-03-07/snapchat-sports-social-media-digital-communications-login