The process of sports endorsement has always been linked to collaboration with multiple organizations, which often belong to industries other than the sports one. The specified attempt at reaching beyond the target area of interest allows combining two brands that already represent quite an object of interest to their target audiences in order to exploit the attention of a much larger crowd (Hwang et al., 2017). With the recent developments in the IT and ICT tools, as well as the resulting emergence of new industries, athletes and their managers can enjoy quite a range of options when it comes to collaboration for promotion. Combining the past experience with the newly developed opportunities, one should consider collaborating with the videogames industry due to the current fascination with the specified type of entertainment among the target audiences, specifically, Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha, which have been shaping trends in the target market (Dash et al., 2021). Given the previous stunning success of the endorsement offered to the U.S. sports industry by Nintendo and other videogame platforms, the idea of a sports event being supported by giants such as the SONY Entertainment is bound to attract an abundance of attention and help sports organizations gain new fans.
What Worked Then
The idea of combining sports and visual entertainment is not new since some of the most famous collaborations that took place in the 90s are still widely referenced and quoted in modern media. Among the most notable ones, the partnership between Warner Bros. and the NBA, with the following integration of the Nintendo brand into the mix, must be mentioned (Bragg et al., 2018). Despite the movie having been panned by critics multiple times, it remains an important and quite beloved part of many people’s childhood and adolescence, which shows the importance of collaboration between brands implemented properly. Therefore, it would be a rather interesting experiment to try using an opposite technique, namely, utilizing the influence and power of a videogame brand in order to promote athletes and specific types of sport among general audiences, thus, making the specified type of entertainment less insular.
Campaign
The campaign in question is aimed at attracting new audiences to sports and placing new and promising athletes into the limelight. For this reason, an event that will feature the athletes in question and receive the support of the SONY Entertainment Company will be organized. During this event, the sports games recently released by SONY will be promoted as the company will endorse some of the most promising sports people, featuring them as characters in their new videogames and offering the related modes and options in the games in question. Additionally, the event will include a short game with the endorsed players showing their skill, as well as the songs performed by local guest stars.
Industry Description
The videogames industry has recently been gaining a tremendous momentum in the global market, which suggests that the specified industry must be used as the platform for promoting sports to a larger audience. Due to the rise in the number of technological opportunities, videogames have been featuring an increasing number of breathtaking changes, particularly, regarding the realism of the environment and the characters (Johnson et al., 2019).
Fans’ Response: Justification
Given the increasing popularity of games as the products consumed by the target demographic, particularly, Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha, using the specified industry as the starting point for endorsing new athletes and teams with the help of a joint event must be recognized as an opportunity that should not be missed (Cha, 2017). According to the recent statistics, there was a 6.3% increase in the number of console gamers from 2019 to 2020, which indicates a spur of interest toward gaming over the past decade, partially driven by nostalgia, and partially due to the fascination with what innovative technologies have to offer (“Report: Gaming revenue to top $159B in 2020,“ 2021). Therefore, it is reasonable for the sports industry to consider the specified opportunity as the basis for endorsing athletes and teams.
Conclusion
By using a videogame organization with a massive following, such as SONY Entertainment, to endorse the sports event in question, one will be able to attract a plethora of new audiences of different ages (namely, Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha), since SONY has recently been in the limelight after releasing games such as “MLB the Show 21” and “Riders Republic.” Although the previous experiences of sports brands being connected to videogames ones have not been entirely successful, they did gain tremendous media attention, placing new brands on the map and encouraging new audiences to consider what the sports industry had to offer. Therefore, by using the support of SONY Entertainment to endorse the sports event in question and the athletes and teams featured in it, onef will be able to place each of the participants in the public eye.
Action Plan
In order to achieve the set target, reaching out to the SONY team with an offer that will suggest boosting the rates of their recently released videogames among sports fans by collaborating on a sports event, the development of a strong competitive advantage and a unique business strategy will be needed. Next, contacting the company representatives with a sales pitch outlining the major advantages of the proposed offer will be required.
Afterward, in the event of success, a plan for collaboration will be provided. Specifically, the roles in managing the event, as well as developing and implementing a marketing strategy that will allow both brands to be represented to the target audience to gain greater traction among the respective demographics will be designed. The process of building a marketing approach and the brand image that will link the two products together will require using a specific athlete or a team of players as the spokespersons for the two organizations and the endorsed product and team. At the specified stage, the public image of the person or team in question will have to be sculptured carefully so that it could remain appealing to general audiences while retaining authenticity.
Finally, an advertisement featuring the athlete or team in question and the target product will be created. Specifically, by using the tools such as deep learning and the development of artificial images inserting actual people, which, in the case in point, will be represented by athletes, will be utilized. Thus, athletes will be inserted in some of the most recent products designed by SONY, such as “MLB the Show 21” and “Riders Republic.” Thus, the event in question and the athletes featured in it will gain the publicity needed to launch their careers, while SONY will gain an opportunity to attracting the gaze of the sports audience, specifically, the people that usually ignore videogames. Thus, both the athletes in question and SONY will gain an opportunity for important exposure.
References
Bragg, M. A., Roberto, C. A., Harris, J. L., Brownell, K. D., & Elbel, B. (2018). Marketing food and beverages to youth through sports. Journal of Adolescent Health, 62(1), 5-13. Web.
Cha, J. (2017). Crowdfunding for video games: factors that influence the success of and capital pledged for campaigns. International Journal on Media Management, 19(3), 240-259. Web.
Dash, G., Kiefer, K., & Paul, J. (2021). Marketing-to-millennials: Marketing 4.0, customer satisfaction and purchase intention. Journal of Business Research, 122, 608-620. Web.
Hwang, Y., Ballouli, K., So, K., & Heere, B. (2017). Effects of brand congruity and game difficulty on gamers’ response to advertising in sport video games. Journal of Sport Management, 31(5), 480-496. Web.
Johnson, M. R., & Woodcock, J. (2019). The impacts of live streaming and Twitch. TV on the video game industry. Media, Culture & Society, 41(5), 670-688. Web.
Report: Gaming revenue to top $159B in 2020. (2021). Reuters. Web.