Read on Twitter
Imagine you own a t-shirt company, and 1,000 reps offer to repair, repackage and sell your used and factory default t-shirts for marginally lower-income consumers in over 200 cities.
They also offer to customize the text in 40 languages, design culturally-specific shades and colourways for each customer demo, generate traction and promote the brand consistently, all for ABSOLUTELY FREE!
All you have to do is get the discarded product to them as frequently as you can.
If you're a growth-driven brand in a massively competitive market, chances are you'd take that deal.
You'd build your flagship store(s) as key revenue drivers, and manage your relationships with your reps as closely as possible to grow the awareness of the brand and aim to drive 10, 15, 20% traffic to your principle moneymakers.
You'd partition your reps by size, resources, penetration and cultural influence, and nurture those partnerships accordingly.
You'd measure traction by multiple verticals, identify the markets with the most spending power, and upsell them premium products directly.
You'd assign a break-off division to study the conversion rate from secondary to primary customers...
...and, hopefully, you'd quantify the role flooding the market with lower-cost, "culture-jam" inventory played in the rise of in-store sales so that the process of 'building' a consumer can be reverse-engineered in the future, when the economy inevitably shifts behavior again.
If all of that made even a little bit of sense, then please explain to me why so many sports rights owners (leagues, teams, competitions, federations etc.) still ignore, undermine, disregard and undervalue free press?
Small to medium size media publishers are free. reps. They build and maintain their own audiences according to the demands of each, independent subgroup so that you - the t-shirt brand - can focus on the commercial element of the business while they grow the brand for you.
The brand leverage you're so (prematurely) eager to monetize, is built and sustained by them. And there are literally THOUSANDS of them! Empower them and you empower the entire core of your content strategy.
And what's the point of that, again? Come on, guys. Pay attention.
It's CONVERSION! Conversion, conversion, conversion! Tomorrow's premium consumer is NOT in the 12.61%.
It's CONVERSION! Conversion, conversion, conversion! Tomorrow's premium consumer is NOT in the 12.61%.
She's on the mailing list of some random, independent French blog that's only engaging her at 20% of its potential because rights owners undervalue its impact. And therefore undervalue her. And all her college-educated, upwardly mobile friends.
I'm not wrong here, guys. You can listen to me or you can stay behind, but democratizing access is the only logical hypothesis at the center of the Venn diagram between COVID-19 and consistently ascending digital media penetration trends.
If you're concerned about reaching tomorrow's consumer today, you can ask me how at [email protected]. I'm going to bed.
