CMO: 3 Ways the Big Game Can Increase your Revenues

As a CMO in sports marketing, the Super Bowl can be seen as giant money and time suck for your company. As a student in graduate school at Northwestern University in the Medill IMC program, I have found two articles showing a few ways that you can leverage this event to increase revenues and make it worth your while.

The entire city of Houston, businesses and people, are spending more money during this time. The first article I found is called Super Bowl Billions: The Big Business Behind the Game of theYear discussed the three main ways any company or person will spend their money during this time. The first way is the spending in and around the game in Houston. The Super Bowl is expected to bring in $350 million for the city itself as people buy hotels, other entertainment, and food and beverages. Second, is the at home viewers who spend money party prepping. In the article, they say beer sales alone can approach $600 million. The last example of spending, of course, is the companies who spend millions on advertising during and around the big game. A 5 second spot during the Super Bowl will cost a company 5 million. Not to mention the investment they put in to create the commercial.

The second article I found is called NRFSays Consumers will Spend $14.1 Billion on 2017 Super Bowl and was actually a press release put out by the National Retail Federation focusing on how much and on what consumers will spend their money. The top type of items people spend their money on is food and beverages. 80% of viewers said they would be purchasing food and beverages. Although the amount of money people are spending on these items is down from last year, it is estimated that they will still spend $75 each on average totaling about $14.1 billion. NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay points out that now that the holidays have passed the Super Bowl is the next big event for families and friends to get together. The article also discusses that the commercials are the second most cited reason that people watch the game. 78% of viewers said they usually watch the commercials for entertainment.

Based on my review of these two articles and relevant studies I have done at Northwestern University, I have developed 3 ways the companies could see increased revenues surrounding the Super Bowl.

• Increased Sales for Party Prep - The Super Bowl means party time so celebrate with them. 

• High Revenues in City – The biggest party is thrown in the host city and you want to be invited.

• Advertising has some Impact – For some brands, a commercial is worth it but others should skip the big spend and celebrate in other ways.

As you prepare for the Super Bowl next year, think about how these 3 action items can help you leverage this time to your advantage and see increase revenues.  

Elle Bausch is a student at Northwestern University in the Medill IMC graduate program. In May 2016, she graduated from the University of Missouri, Columbia journalism school. Throughout her studies, Elle interned for the PR department of the Mall of America as well as the PR department of the Minnesota Vikings. She will graduate Northwestern in December 2017. 

CMOs: 3 Ways to be better ingrained in your consumers' mind

As a CMO, you've most likely wished that your potential customer thinks of your brand at the critical moment. During my studies at the Medill School of Northwestern University in the field of Integrated Marketing and Communications, two articles caught my attention which spoke about ways to keep a brand at the 'top of mind' of consumers.

The first article by Nir Eyal called "How to Manufacture Desire" (Publication: Psychology of Stuff) speaks about the Hook model and a loop process by which a brand can become a "habit" with the market it caters to. Each loop consists of a trigger by the brand, an action by the consumer, a reward for the consumer and an investment by the brand. The result: You become a habit! Don't think linear, says Nir, but rather cyclical. And with each cycle comes organic growth, both within the consumer's mind as well as the consumer's network.

Source: https://www.pinterest.com/source/garfield.com/

The second article, called "What Brands Can Learn From Pokémon Go" (Publication: Leo Burnett) is a case study of what is almost an execution of the concept presented in the first. John Dangles writes about how the game become a game-changer (pun intended) for digital platforms to capture the minds of the masses. And so too, could brands. It merged the digital and physical realms, giving brands a completely new playing field - particularly, restaurants, fast food joints and coffee shops. Going forward, the game's makers may be open to partnerships with such brands that are businesses with physical locations.

Reading these two articles and putting them in context to my studies in the field of IMC, here are three important and tangible things that you might consider:

• Enter their Routine - Make your brand part of the consumers’ everyday life. (Difficult? Yes. Impossible? No.)

• Loop! Don’t funnel - The age of the linear marketing funnel is gone.

• Leverage addiction - Being in the field of view is passé; become the unconscious choice.

As consumers become numb to traditional forms of marketing, so too must marketing and communication strategies evolve and seek ways to make the brand more ingrained into their everyday lives.

Anand Ramprasad is a marketer with experience on the agency as well as the client side of the table. He is currently an MSc. candidate at the Medill School of Northwestern University in the IMC program.
Reach out on Twitter and LinkedIn. 

CMOs: 3 Tips to leverage real time marketing and improve KPIs

As a CMO, you are always trying to follow trends in the marketplace and making use of new technologies and tools to drive up your marketing results. As a graduate student in the Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) program at Medill, Northwestern University, I keep digging into the cutting-edge field of digital, social and mobile marketing and have found 2 articles that may be insightful to you.

With vivid examples, Peter Miller stressed in his article, “Five lessons learned from leading brands' real-time marketing efforts”, that by using real time marketing marketers must differentiate their brands, add value to customers and brands, consider the long term value of every content, keep to beconsistent if not outstanding, and last but not least, stick to their strategy and show off the brands’ personalities and humors.

Source:http://www.juanmarketing.com/

Anne-Marie Kline played with the concepts of real-time marketing and right time marketing in her article “Failed at real-time marketing? Try right-time instead”, but what she meant by “right time marketing” is to provide right content at the right time to right customers, which is making good use of real-time marketing. Her insights about real-time marketing can be concluded into 5 parts: people don’t share ads, events can make temporary great content, data prevent waste, content can come from everywhere and the entire web is social.

Based on these 2 articles and my graduate education, here are 3 tips from me to help you leverage real-time marketing and better reach your target customers:

• Create Relevant Content - Make sure your content is really relevant to customers so you can better trigger their interest.
• Use data wisely – Leveraging data can help to personalize the content you would like to send out to your prospects and optimize timing.
• Deliver consistent content - Keep your content consistent to your market strategy and your brand image, otherwise your target market might be confused.

The 3 simple tips will help you to avoid send irrelevant content to your target market and cut down costs as well as eliminate any possible harm to your company’s reputation. Follow the 3 tips and you can deliver the right content to right audience at the right time. Sounds great? Then just start from now!

Junhui ‘Jenny’ Zhu is a full-time M.S. candidate in Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) at Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University, focusing on digital marketing and data analytics. She is interested in how market research and big data can help in optimizing marketing plans. She will graduate in Dec. 2015 and would like to work in the market research field. You can contact her at:

LinkedIn: Junhui Zhu   Twitter: @jennyjunhuizhu

Journalists: New social platforms mean new ways to connect with readers

Today, most people get their news from social outlets but that doesn't mean you can't connect with your audience. New platforms and apps can you get you pretty close to reaching people where they already are. As a graduate student at Northwestern’s Integrated Marketing Communications program with a background in journalism, I am studying how journalists can use an integrated marketing approach and digital platforms to engage audiences with their content and I have found two articles that I think you may find interesting.

In the first article, Remarkable new data on the power of chat apps for sharing news stories from the Nieman Lab, Joshua Benton explains how more and more data is indicating that chat apps are one of the primary ways people are sharing stories--potentially even more than they are sharing stores on Twitter. Previously, sharing on chat apps like WhatsApp has been hard to track, leading people to create the term "dark social." However, recently a Spanish soccer team, Valencia, added a "Share on WhatsApp" button to their online content and the breakdown of clicks was as follows: Facebook 35%, WhatsApp 33%, Twitter 19%, and Google+ 13%. Benton points out that these results are even more significant than they initially appear because the WhatsApp button only appeared on mobile platforms, while the other three appeared on desktop and mobile.

Source: Tech Infographics

In the second article, Snapchat Launches Discover from Tech Crunch, Jordan Crook looks into Snapchat's recently announced "Discover" feature.  The feature is the newest content platform that allows people to see articles, photos and videos from brands like ESPN, CNN, Vice and Vox.com. In addition, users can also watch stories compiled by participating artists, publishers and Snapchat's own (very new) editorial staff. Crook mentions that this is a shift in Snapchat's traditional model that relied on user-generated content. Now brands and media companies can use their platform to deliver content and information to its enormous user base.

Based on these two articles and my graduate studies at Northwestern, here are three things I recommend you consider as journalists:

1. Pay attention - It may seem like you were just signing up for Twitter but digital platforms and technologies are updating every day. Pay attention to where your audience is and how they are using these platforms. This is where you want to be.
   
2. Don’t dumb down your content - Your content is good, that's why you are a journalist. People still want good reporting and accurate information, they just want it faster and in a digestible format. Compliment your content—even (especially) longer and denser pieces—with short videos, graphics and key pull out quotes that capture the main points and can be easily shared.
   
3. Be innovative - The good news about these platforms is they’re easy and free. Why not add a “Share with WhatsApp” button to your story and see how many people use it? Or create a Snapchat form video that promotes your story? It may be the added element that transports your story to more people.

Given the changing nature of the field, you no longer have an automatic audience. Journalists now need to have a marketing strategy to engage people and digital platforms provide that opportunity. Try it. If it doesn't work, there will be something new tomorrow. 

Jordan Vita is pursuing an M.S. in Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University, focusing on media management and data analytics. She is passionate about journalism and how the field can capitalize on new technologies and available data to do its job even better.

Follow her on Twitter @jordan_vita