With the rise of blogs, video-sharing sites, and social networks and communities, information and news now travels faster than ever. That means bad news, too. Recently teams and leagues have felt the repercussions of this, with the NFL (player conduct, Michael Vick, etc) and NBA (ref betting scandal) both experiencing problems that aren’t able to be kept under wraps. Both leagues, however, have done a good job at not trying to hide the fact that they have problems---they’ve confronted them head on and have been open and honest with the public.
It’s good to see sports brands becoming transparent. But, they really don’t have a choice. Sports, more so than other businesses and brands, are in the public spotlight. People will talk about them, regardless of if the leagues/teams present an open façade.
In the spirit of transparency, I have to commend the Colts and Pat Coyle (Executive Director of Digital Business for the Colts) for being so open with their efforts to create their fan community--MyColts.net. Coyle’s blog, Sports Marketing 2.0, chronicles the effort to build this community, the challenges they’ve faced, and the status of the project. The best part about this is that Coyle has solicited others’ input the whole way and has been willing to accept feedback and criticism—even from complete strangers—about various aspects of community.
MyColts is off to a great start, and so far over 8,000 people have registered for the community. Based on their willingness to adapt and change their plans based on what is best for the fan, I’m sure the community will only grow and become even better.
Other businesses should take a lesson from Coyle and the Colts when building new products and services. Specifically, they should:
- Be open about what is being created
- Build it for the people
- Solicit customer feedback throughout the development process
Check out Coyle's blog and his most recent post about tracking the number of active MyColts users. Besides blogging about the development of MyColts, Coyle also discusses social networking and other topics you might find interesting.