Blog: ESPN

Showing blogs: 1–4 of 4

3 Ways to Stave Off Digital Copycats

Aug 22 2011

One of the great beauties of digital innovation is how quickly and economically an idea can go into production. Whether a large corporation is seeking a digital renovation or a group of entrepreneurs is vying to launch the next million-dollar online startup, the time and investment involved is marginal compared to what they would have been in the brick and mortar world of the past. Making changes or upgrades is also easier and cheaper—plus they can practically be implemented in real-time.  In many ways, this makes business in the digital world less risky, and less encumbered by barriers to entry. But these same advantages can also become a major threat in a big way: in a digital world, how do you fight off copycat contenders?

copy catIn the digital arena, anyone can sit back, wait for someone else to come up with a potentially great idea, and enter as a deeper-pocketed rival only if it proves to be successful. Consider a financial institution that, after months of strategic meetings and painstaking deliberations, decides to invest in a controversial (not to mention pricey) online customer service portal that could present huge cost savings and provide efficient 24-hour service if successful, but result in huge losses if customers don’t embrace the new technology. As the company moves forward and makes headlines with its bold decision, competitors watch from the sidelines as the repercussions unfold, making internal arrangements to follow suit if the portal flourishes—and capitalize if it fails. This type of scenario has become a real hitch for digital pioneers: once a visionary executes the thought leadership, doles out the investment, and undertakes the risk and grueling implementation, anyone can come in and swipe the blueprint.

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ESPN: Maximizing Audience Data to Drive Revenue Growth

Mar 17 2011

WeESPN have partnered with ESPN for over four years to build a Fan Relationship Marketing (FRM) capability and culture within the organization.  What does this mean to them?  It means maximizing audience data to drive revenue growth for the benefit of marketing, ad sales, and editorial.  That's a tidy little sentence with a tremendous amount of team effort behind it.  But it is achievable, with the right plan, focus and discipline. 

Let's start with key drivers of value and Forrester's recent case study on our joint efforts. Then, in a series to follow I will cover the "what" and "how" of getting started.

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ESPN's John Kosner: "You are what your record says you are"

Feb 8 2011

Or perhaps more importantly, you are what you say you are. And that is, a digital powerhouse that captures more male fans 18-34 than 39 basic cable networks. In fact, the only digital properties that can claim more "total minutes" generated by this audience are Google, Facebook, all of the Yahoo sites combined, and all of the Microsoft sites combined. 

What has ESPN done here?  As the prolific Don Draper likes to say "If you don't like what's being said, change the conversation."  They can't compete with Yahoo on uniques, so they're creating a new currency.  While the rest of the industry continues to trade on reach alone, ESPN changes the conversation entirely with a new metric called "total minutes".  Uniques x time spent.  An engagement metric that speaks to the brand advantage of content consumption across platforms and bucks an industry perspective that often devalues audience duplication.

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Asset Management: the rebranding of AOL & NBC

Jan 4 2010

AOL spins off from Time Warner while Comcast picks up NBC.... as they both look to re-brand and boost ad income.

 

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