Earlier this month, Simon Dumenco wrote in Ad Age MEDIAWORKS about a marketing campaign that was almost over before it even got started.
It turns out that Fox Sports in Detroit decided to try to improve fan support and interest, so two young women were hired to act as “ambassadors.” When the campaign with Lauren and Allison was launched in April 2011, the feedback that first month was not very positive.
While there were only a few emails complaining about the campaign, there were some rather nervous execs, who were concerned about the negative opinions about the girls being nothing more than “mannequins.” The complaints were taken seriously, but the campaign had not yet been put into full-action.
Lauren and Allison started making appearances at various events, as well as reaching out to fans via social media, and then things started to happen; they became local celebrities as the fans started to enjoy the efforts being made by the Fox Sports team.
But, just to get a better feel for how this campaign was really doing, Fox Sports started working with a company that focuses on analyzing social media, Bluefin Labs. There had been almost 6,000 comments about the Fox Sports Detroit Girls on various social media outlets (mostly Twitter and Facebook), and the results were much better than expected.
The breakdown of the comments includes the following: 16% mentioned actual sightings of Lauren and Allison; 13% stated that they loved them; and 53% were actual conversations with the girls on Twitter. The overall results were, 26% neutral, 73% positive and only 1% negative:
The Fox Sports team was very pleased, as this research showed that the effort to connect with fans was working, as the overall response was so positive.
It was stated that, without the analytics from Bluefin Labs, there might have been an early end to the campaign, based solely on the few negative remarks received within the very first month.
Fox Sports is so buoyed by the results that there has been expansion to include just such ambassadors in an additional eight markets, with sights on even further growth of this campaign.
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