My New York Giants didn’t play this weekend – that’s one way to end a losing streak. I hadn’t enjoyed four consecutive losing Sundays of gesticulating wildly at my TV to no avail. But Fox, CBS, NBC, or ESPN didn’t quite care – I was watching.
As were about 17.2 million others any given Sunday, helping the NFL to their highest TV ratings in 20 years, a 15% uptick over last season. That’s an increase far beyond the 2% decline in stadium ticket sales, so much so that NFL national sponsorships are up. The pattern extends to baseball as well – World Series TV ratings were up 42% in 2009, which we can’t attribute solely to my Yankees’ return to dominance.
Clearly, we’re seeing not just changing consumer behaviors, but new, never-before-seen behaviors. A 15% viewership increase isn’t just former fans returning to TV. Our latest research on consumer behavior tells us that today’s winners are somehow helping consumers satisfy emerging desired outcomes – not the outcomes consumers say they want, but the latent (often emotional) ones that ethnographic research could uncover.
There are two bigger questions here, though. First, are our marketing communications teams equipped to fast-cycle changes to the touchpoint mix as quickly as consumer media consumption shifts? Second, can the NFL or MLB move these fans from a statistical, recessionary blip to long-term loyalty?
As my colleague Pat explored in a previous post, social media is upending our traditional touchpoint planning models. Rapid change to consumer behavior adds another monkey wrench to the tumult social media has created. With more control over media consumption than ever before, consumers’ behavioral shifts – like the mass movement to TV for the NFL – place an even heavier burden on marketers to move dollars quickly to maximize touchpoint value. Think about it – the millions now watching NFL for three hours on a Sunday afternoon are now not doing something else.
Marketers need to harness these consumer changes and make them permanent. The only way we’re going to do that is to establish higher-order, emotional connections with consumers, accelerating loyalty before the next wave of change hits. Because let’s be honest – another Giants loss or two, yard work might start to look attractive again.
MLC members, access our resources on building loyalty with your consumers by developing a shared value, the higher-order emotional connection shared by your brand and the consumer.
