PR 101

I am a soccer fan. I grew up the playing and watching the game. I only quit playing because I dislocated my right shoulder for the second time.  I was glued to my television during the entire World Cup, watching every game I could.

So, I was really happy to find out how active FIFA and ESPN were in their use of social media to push the beautiful game in the United States. I think it definitely increased interest in the entire tournament. It was an impressive effort that paid off.

For you non-fans, FIFA is an acronym that stands for The International Federation of Association Football in English. In French it stands for the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, hence FIFA. The word soccer comes from the word Association. The English shortened “Association” to soccer. Don’t ask me why, I’m Irish by descent.

ESPN stands for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network. Enough with the language lesson.

Overall, viewership was up 41 percent from the English-language World Cup telecasts four years ago, according to the WorldCast website. Coverage on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 averaged a 2.1 rating, 2.3 million households and 3.2 million viewers for the 64 World Cup games. The rating was up 31 percent from the 1.6 posted four years ago, while households increased 32 percent from 1.7 million and viewers rose from 2.3 million, the site said.

“Viewership in the U.S. was at its highest when the home team was playing in the tournament,” WorldCast said. “Through the first 50 games, the rating was up 48 percent, households increased 54 percent and viewers increased 60 percent.”

I should note that attracting viewers in the rest of the world is not an issue. According to ABC News 700 million people watched the championship game between Spain and the Netherlands. Show me any American television event that attracts even 25 percent of that kind of worldwide audience.

FIFA would like to make more inroads into the USA. We are, after all, the wealthiest country on Earth. Soccer is growing in popularity as a youth sport. We would seem to be a natural place for FIFA to focus.

FIFA and ESPN are run by very smart groups of marketing people. They knew if they encouraged the use of social media good things would happen. They apparently do not worry about things like trademark infringement. The results speak for themselves.

ESPN’s Facebook World Cup had over 600,000 people who “liked” the page. I know don’t where that ranks among Facebook sports fan pages, but it is impressive number. The Facebook soccer page has over two million fans. I didn’t count because who has that kind of time, but there has to be over a thousand pages of tweets with the hash tag “worldcup.”

Googling the term “world cup soccer blogs” produced 49 million hits. Now, as a blogger myself, I am willing to bet that there are not 49 million blogs about the World Cup. But, if there is even 10 percent of that number, that is impressive.

A quick YouTube search found just over 800,000 videos that somehow mention the World Cup.

You get the idea. As I said in a blog last week, FIFA knows what use to work won’t necessarily work anymore. So it moved on to a new method and it worked.

Although this wasn’t a rant, I do have one note. On Sunday, a friend and I rode our bikes to Port Washington, Wis. – 26 miles north of where I live. We stopped to enjoy that small city’s wonderful lakefront and marina.

Like any public area, there are posted rules of public conduct. What brought me up short was a sign that read: “Violations Will Be Enforced!”  So apparently rule breaking is required?

There’s a song by the late Jim Croce where the refrain goes:

“You don’t tug on Superman’s cape.

“You don’t spit into the wind.

“You don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger

“And you don’t mess around with Jim.”

© 2007 Ingrid Croce

The point of the song is that you don’t stupid things – or mess with things you know nothing about. I think that last line could be to paraphrased to: “And you don’t mess around with social media.”

ESPN, a number of pro football teams, some college football leagues, and a number of companies are messing with social media. The companies and leagues are banning fans, players and employees from using social media during games and work hours. In fact, the web security company ScanSafe has found that more companies ban the use of social media than ban weapons, according to a study it released Aug. 19.

According to Scan Safe’s study: “An analysis of more than a billion Web requests processed by the company each month confirms a 20 percent increase in the number of customers blocking social networking sites in the last six months. Currently, 76 percent of companies are choosing to block social networking and it is now a more popular category to block than online shopping (52 percent), weapons (75 percent), alcohol (64 percent), sports (51 percent) and Webmail (58 percent). Surprisingly, employers don’t take the same stern approach to online banking and less than half (47 percent) of our customers block this category.”

So, there are companies that allow their employees to drink and pack heat, but not update up their Facebook page. ScanSafe opines that companies think social media reduces productivity. Frankly, I think a three martini lunch will have a much greater effect on productivity than tweeting about what one’s dog did on his morning walk.

As for blocking social media use on the job, it is harder than it seems. While a company will know if an employee is using a company computer to access social media – what are they going to do about smart phones? If it is not a company supplied smart phone, how are corporate executives going what their employees are doing? More and more social media apps are moving onto smart phones. How is a company going to know what an employee is doing on their own smart phone?

Plus, I would want my employees to access social media to talk about my company. Several studies have shown that employees are  the best brand ambassadors. If the price to be paid for employees talking up a new product is having them look at their Facebook pages once in a while, so be it. Remember, social media is about a building a community. That community building should start with your own employees.

On another front, the NFL has banned coaches, players, other personnel, or anyone representing them, and journalists from updating their status on Twitter, Facebook or other social media during games and up to 90 minutes before and after, according to TechDirt. Referees are banned from ever using social media while the league employs them, the site said. Apparently, this stems from an online apology from a ref over a blown call. We cannot have the refs admitting they are human, now can we?

I am not sure if this applies to the NFL itself, as it has its own Twitter account. The ban does not extend to players and other personnel when they are on their own time. The NFL is understandably trying to protect its lucrative broadcast outlets. Frankly, I happen to enjoy seeing a player tweet during a game. To me, it’s better than some sideline interview done with the coach where he hands out canned responses.

(On an unrelated note, just once I want to hear the coach of team who won by a huge margin not say something like: “the game was closer than the score indicated.” What I want to hear them say is what I suspect they are thinking: “what was that other team thinking even being on the field with us today? We wiped the turf up with them.”)

What is particularly troubling to me is banning journalists from using social media during a game. A very long time ago – when print media ruled the world – sports reporters would do inning-by-inning updates of the game they were covering. These updates would be read on radios and posted in newspaper offices for people to see. If it was particularly big event, say the Dempsey-Firpo fight in 1923, a newspaper might print extra editions to tell people what was going on.

No one had a problem in those days about giving out information during a game. The practice lasted until television came along. Then there was no need for it because everyone had access.

Now, with more and more sports events moving to cable and pay-per-view, many people no longer have access. Social media is way for fans to stay in touch and feel connected to their teams. Don’t teams want people to stay in touch? Fans are no longer willing to wait until the next day – or even until the late evening news – to find out what happened.

I think this policy is going to backfire on them – as it has with so many other companies.

Companies from Comcast to United Airlines have found out the hard way what happens when you mess with social media. I think a lot of other organizations are about to find the hard way they are in a fight they cannot win – just as Big Jim Walker found out when he messed with Willie McCoy. Big Jim thought he was the toughest man on 42^nd Street, until he ran into Willie. A lot of organizations are liable to find themselves in the same fix – in a figurative way – the Big Jim did.

And when the cuttin’ were done

The only part that wasn’t bloody

Was the soles of the big man’s feet

Yeah he were cut in bout a hundred places

And he were shot in a couple more…”