>> So we're joined here today by Josh Mora who has been working in sports marketing and media for over 20 years as an anchor, a reporter, a marketing consultant. And he's worked with the LPGA, Chicago Blackhawks, WWE Entertainment, ESPN, NCAA and Comcast. And he is also the Program Director of the Sport's Marketing and Media Program, and Full Sail University in Winter Park Florida, and he is also a hell of a guy. So [LAUGH] thanks for joining here, Josh. So basically, first question I'd like to ask you, you've been an expert and professional in sports, marketing and media for over 20 years. Why would you say sports marketing is becoming such an important industry today? >> Sports marketing is becoming an important industry in and of itself for a couple of different reasons. One of the biggest is that in this day and age, entertainment and sports, which used to be sort of separate entities are all converging and all colliding. And so, there's incredible competition for the entertainment dollars and the eyeballs that are associated with those dollars or with that money. So whereas it used to be you had sports fans and you had entertainment movie fans, and music fans. There is so much more cross-pollination of that. That there's also more opportunity and the reasons that it's happened is because the ability to produce, and create content, and create media is so much less expensive than it used to be that those organizations that are involved in both sports, and entertainment can reach the consumer much more directly than they used to be able to previously. And so, that's one aspect. Another big aspect of it that's really important is the fact that because of technology, the world has gotten so much smaller. And so entertainment companies and sports properties in the United States have much more reach into Europe, and to Asia, and to South America, and vice versa. And so, there are more audiences that are opening up around the world and sports is a very universal language. I mean, European football is one of the most common denominators around the globe. And there's the ability to transmit and translate American sports to the rest of the world, and the sports of the rest of the world back to North America. >> So, would you say that there's anything unique with sports marketing or vice versa with entertainment marketing that the two can learn from each other? >> I do believe that people who are practicing sports marketing and who are practicing entertainment marketing can learn from each other. I think one of the main reasons for that is there is a commonality between the two. Fans who are passionate about sports. Fans who are passionate about entertainment. They love what it is they are in to. They love sports. They love basketball. They love rock music and they love it with all of their fibers of their being. And the reason that is, is because when you're a fan of something that is your hobby or your passion in that way, it tells something about who you are and it gives you a greater opportunity to connect with other like-minded people. I could have nothing in common with somebody other than the fact that we're both big fans of Jay Z or Manchester United or whatever it might be and we have that in common, and that bonds us, and binds us, and that's a big part of the human experience. So what those two industries have in common is both about monetizing that passion whether it's a passion for sports and the passion for entertainment, and the different organizations, the different aspects of the industry I should say have different ways or have historically had different ways of reaching that fan or reaching that consumer. And now because those that part of the industry has converged, those part of the industry can learn from each other and learn better practices about how to reach that fan and that consumer. >> I know you've had hundreds of speaking engagements, I've seen quite a few of them. In a lot of them, you seem to emphasize media fluency. Can you explain what that means and why it is important in sports marketing? >> Media influence he is a really important concept, because especially in this day and age, there are so many different platforms where a media organization or property can its fan or its consumer. It used to be, I'm old enough to remember when a day in the United States. There are basically, three main channels. There was CBS, NBC and ABC. And then around the time I was leaving to go to college, you started to have the Fox network as well. Four main networks, but three for most of my life. And then we started to have the emergence of cable television and then satellite television, and now there's all the digital platforms. So whether it's an actual digital network like Crackle or any of over the top networks, or whether it's just content that is created for that television, or cable television and now has a digital aspect as well. So as a company, you can't know what your audience is going to prefer. In fact, your audience, its' going to be very diverse. If you're going to gather the largest possible audience that you possibly can, you have to be fluent in all of those different platforms. It doesn't mean that something that you create for one platform has to be created exactly the same way as the other platform, but you do have to develop some kind of other content and understand that there are going to be consumers who are going to try to reach you through those other platforms. >> And what about story telling and content creation? Would you say that they're important as well in sport's marketing? And if so, why are they so important? >> Absolutely. The content creation is really the easier answer and that is because we have become a very visual society. I believe that's true in all parts of the world. It's definitely true in the United States and in most Western civilizations. Our kids today, everything they do is on a screen. It's funny if you watch really little kids, they'll go up to a television, a traditional television and they'll try to change the channel by touching and swiping. [LAUGH] There's still some that don't do that. So, the ability to reach your audience visually is exceptionally important. And especially because you can have TV anywhere, anytime. We have TVs now on our glasses, on our watches, on our phones. So the ability to create content and be able to reach that consumer and that fan wherever they are, whenever they are is crucially important. Storytelling is still important, because there is a narrative to everything. If we're talking about sports, seasons have narratives. The careers of our favorite athletes have narratives, but being able to put an achievement whether it's a game or a play or a season or a career into that context is very important. We all have stories about where we first touched and fell in love with some aspect of sports. Again, whether that's an individual athlete or our favorite team or a particular sport and the evolution of that story is crucially important to who we are as fans. And so to be able to reach a fan not just on a one game experience, but in the broader context of the story. Means that you can create a fan of your brand and a passionate fan of your brand, perhaps as far as life. >> Great and you briefly mentioned about Western societies, and the global context as well with sports. And personally, I recently worked on a project for a NASCAR racing team in which they were trying to get more corporate sponsors from overseas in the eastern side over in Asia and one thing I really noticed is that how NASCAR is one of the most popular sports here in America. Yet, it still doesn't really have that huge global reach and the same can almost be said of the NFL. So where do you see like international marketing going in sports today, as far as, like behind the scenes where are they trying to be more global? Are they doing something wrong that's not equating to success overseas in like more Asian and Eastern markets, as opposed to the Western societies? >> It's a really involved question. >> [LAUGH] >> That you just asked and we could do a whole semester on that for sure, and we do in our program. Part of the difficulty is cultural. I mean, the rest of the world has not grown up with baseball. Baseball was in the United States for a hundred years before it really translated to some of the Asian countries first, but football has not yet translated in the same way. By the same token, soccer is only now in its sort of second generation really starting to catch on as an American game. Why is India still very much about cricket and field hockey and badminton, but not soccer and not any of the other sports. So some of that is that, here's what changing. First of all, we are seeing other games coming to the United States. Soccer being first and foremost, and part of it is media-driven. There are so many sports networks now that, that's a property that some of the networks were interested in. So, NBC here has a partnership with the Premier League. Fox Sports has a partnership with I believe the Brazilian League. So we're seeing more and more games here, and there's a cult following for that. Actually, it's grown sort of beyond cult, because it's more a part of the mainstream dialogue. It's still low on the mainstream dialogue, but it's gone from this thing that only a few people liked to being more of a topic of conversation. And because of that, soccer has become more expected. And I say soccer, American soccer the MLS has become a more popular and just had its best year ever in 2015. So, we are starting to see other games come to the United States. We now have cricket on television. We have rugby on television. Similarly, we're seeing sports. There is a change in the way sports are being marked overseas. So in the past, the NFL, National Football League and the NBA, the National Basketball Association have tried to market their entire leagues to other regions of the world. The NFL still does that to some extent. They play three games every year in one minute and there is going to do for games across the world, but now they have one team that is going on a regular basis. The Jacksonville Jaguars. The NBA has done the same thing. The Sacramento Kings were purchased by Indian owner. And so rather than market the entire league to India, the NBA is marketing the Sacramento Kings to India. There's a natural affinity and it's easier to root for one team than an entire league. The Orlando Magic, Orlando's the team closest to us here in Warner Park is being marketed in the same way to Brazil, because there's a huge Brazilian population in Orlando. And so of course, Orlando City soccer, which is in the MLS, big Brazilian following for the same reason. So, we're starting to see those changes where american teams not just leagues are being marketed overseas and international sports are coming to the united states. >> Great and you also argue that sports marketing should be platform agnostic. Can you please explain what that means? >> Some organizations and this is true not just in sports, it's true for brands of all kinds. Believe that they should change what they do to reach the audience in different pathways, that they need to change. Well, our younger followers are following us through Twitter and through Instagram and our older followers are following us on network television. So, we need to change all of that messaging. I think you can change the content, you can have different marketing campaigns for the different age groups, gender demographics, social, economic demographics. But ultimately, you're going to succeed in reaching your fan base by staying true to who you are. Your first question has to be not how do I reach my fans, how we use Twitter to reach our fans? It has to be who are we and who is our audience on the other side of that particular platform? So, that's the most important part is that you stay true to your own brand. The other reason why you need to platforming cast is that the platform that is hot today is going to be gone tomorrow. The technology, the evolution of the evolution of the technology is so quick that Facebook. You can't find an 18-year old in the United States that uses Facebook, it's an older platform. So Facebook, begets Twitter, begets Pinterest, begets Snapchat, begets Instagram, begets Periscope, begets Meerkat and there's always going to be a next thing. And so if your brand is locked in to those certain content channels, you're not going to be available for the next one that's coming and you're going to spend a lot of money chasing your own tail. >> Great and what are some industries that sports marketing can learn from in terms of becoming more innovative? >> Sports marketing can learn from just about any industry on being more innovative. Part of what's happened in sports marketing is that the technology has changed the entire way, almost flipped the way in which sports companies do business. So, much of the growth in sports marketing from the 1980s through 2005ish the late first century of the first decade of the 21st century was about retail one on one relationships. Understanding your clients. Trusting the person that you're doing business with. There was a lot of handshake, wink and nod. And that makes sense, because that was how the consumer absorbed the product as well. It was still very top down. What's happened since the middle of the last decade over the last ten years is that brands are no longer what the organization says it is to the audience. The brand is what the audience says it is to each other, because there's so much two way communication. So if a fan comes to an organization and has a bad experience or a good experience, they're going to share that with their community. And that's going to have not just a multiplication effect, but an exponential effect on the potential of the audience to receive that product or that brand favorably. So, sports was very slow to embrace the change in business in that way. So, it's now starting to understand it better. They started to understand that fan shape the brand rather than vice versa. And so, it's still very young. When we started our program a few years ago, most sports properties, most sports organizations were not comfortable with that fact. Today, sports properties and brands that can have gotten their head around that from a cerebral standpoint, from an intellectual standpoint. They're still struggling to figure out exactly how they're going to apply it, but there are lots of other examples out there of how to do it and how to do it well. >> Great and the other way around, what are some industries that benefited from learning from sports market? >> I think there are a lot of brands that have not previously focused so much on passion, they've focused on the efficiently of their product to recruit and maintain loyal customers. And I think they are starting to understand that some of the elements that are germane to sports, even crucial to sports can apply to their brand. The notion that you can create a community of loyal and passionate supporters, early adopters who are going to follow everything that you do and Apple's probably the best example of having created this from its origins. A lot of companies are looking at that kind of community building, community creation to develop a loyal fan base. If you can understand who your loyal fan base is, that's a fan base or a supporter base that you can count on for your business and they can be the bellwether of your new innovations. If they don't like it or it's not eventually going to make its way to the great middle of people who are going to interact with your product on a more occasional kind of a basis.
