Sponsor Presentation: ESPN
by Brian Reich | 27 Mar 2006, 2:00am
The iMedia Breakthrough Summit kicked off last night with some presentations by the conference sponsors. One of the first sponsors to present: ESPN Digital Media.
Instead of running us through a powerpoint presentation or talking about all the benefits of their digital media offerings, John Zaccario, the VP of Product Management for ESPN Digital, gave the microphone to us. He showed a short video highlighting the power of sports and the passion of fans and then asked the assembled crowd of media executives and creative folks to share their favorite stories.
A guy talked about having Redskins seasons tickets growing up and how spending Sundays became ‘Son Days’ with his dad at RFK Stadium. A woman talked about how her three-year old twins donned their Steelers Jersey and took on Cleveland Browns fan who tried to taunt them in a supermarket. A guy talked about sitting in the stands the other night watching ‘his’ UCLA Bruins advance to the Final Four. A woman talked about sitting in the stands watching her son hit his first grand slam in little league (the crowd applauded for that one). And one guy talked about Pedro Martinez delivering a bases loaded strike against the Yankees to claim a Game 7 win and the World Series for his belowed Mets – it hasn’t happened yet, but he can dream, right? I shared two sports memories myself — one from my tour of all the major league baseball stadiums in 1997 and the other from when I wrote a when the Green Bay Packers visited the White House following their NFL Championship that President Clinton read nearly all of, word for word.
Sports is important to me. And I am not alone – apparently more than 18 million unique visitors find themselves drawn to the ESPN.com website every month. ESPN has the perfect mix of content (news, information and analysis), distribution (the website(s), TV network(s), the magazine, the mobile service, a soon to be launched social network/community, and on and on), and integration (the story continues seemlessly across all the channels) - mix that with the passion of sports and you’ve got it made.
The focus at iMedia is how to leverage channels like ESPN to reach desirable demographic audiences. Of course, marketers wouldn’t need to use ESPN as a vehicle if they could find a way to bottle the passion and energy that sports provides to people’s lives. Good luck with that.
