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RTM and Sports Sponsorship – The Next Big Thing?

RTM = Real Time Marketing.

RTM has been all the talk this week, mostly in connection with social marketing surrounding the Oscars broadcast. Here’s the basics if you’re not on top of this yet… You may already know how we got here, but if you don’t – the background is essential to get to my idea.

Remember the Superbowl blackout? Well, there were more tweets and social activity about the blackout than any other part of the event. A couple of brands jumped on the “opportunity”, most notably Oreo, who tweeted this “You can dunk in the dark” on the fly.

Oreo (and its PR team) was praised for its agility and willingness to pull this off, and was prepared with designers, executive buy-in and a good sense of timing. The background here of course, was that Superbowl advertising is extremely expensive, gets previews and hype before the game and is widely regarded as the height of broadcast advertising as you well know. But here was Oreo, leveraging “free” social media, and stealing the spotlight. The shark was jumped.

So RTM became the overnight forefront of social marketing (even though the concept originated in the 90′s).

Then, along come the Oscars – the next big, wide-spread event with real-time potential. And everybody was ready to see what brands were going to trot out and attempt to capture the moment and opportunity. At the end of the event, nothing really stood out – as the marketing pieces were not really ground-breaking by any means, and unlike a Superbowl blackout – there was no real-time “opportunity” to capitalize on.

But the Oscars RTM tweets did prove one thing. RTM is now, officially, part of a brand strategy mix.

Personally, I think this is really cool – and requires some innovative corporate culture, creative ability and risk – there is a lot of risk associated with RTM, and that makes it exciting – well, at least to me, and I hope for you as well.

So – what’s the tie in with Sports Sponsorship?

Teams and sponsors are always looking for innovative ways to activate sponsors. I’ve worked with teams to help monetize and package social assets and help train corporate sales teams on selling them – and I believe there is a great opportunity here for teams and sponsors a like.

Sports events are PERFECT for RTM. There are several real-time opportunities present here for teams and brands that are looking to innovate – and deal with risk. The benefits and the rewards are potentially great here, but this is not for team and for every brand (nor was it for brands during the Oscars). RTM Sponsorship is highly customized, within a high trust relationship – and needs to be mediated with both team and sponsor involved.

I believe this is a huge opportunity – one that I am looking to spend more time looking at, and hopefully – testing out. There are great dynamic benefits here for the right situation. I think this is an exciting opportunity, and one that could provide strong value for fans/customers when done correctly.

If you want to talk about RTM Sponsorship, leave a comment or send me a message.