| 02 September 2010
Anyone who has been to Yankee Stadium in the past couple of years is familiar with the Zales Yankees Fan Marquee. If not, bless your lucky soul, but we're about to ruin your day:
The true level of annoyance doesn't come across in that video, but anyone who regularly visits Yankee Stadium cringes at the thought of the Zales Fan Marquee. In fact, it proved to be so annoying that the Yankees actually toned it down in the past month, with the announcer cutting out some of his ridiculous schtick. At the end of the day, the only fans who come away with positive thoughts about Zales after witnessing the "fan marquee" are the people who were featured on it - and they paid $100 out of pocket for it to happen. [UPDATE: As commenter "Crazy Karl" pointed out this money goes to charity (the Yankees Foundation). Definitely worth pointing out, but there is no way for anyone experiencing it at the game to know about the good cause.]
The point we're driving at here is that brands need to rethink their ad spending at live events (sports, concerts, etc). The first step is to make better use of mobile marketing and engagement. If you look around Yankee Stadium on any given night, almost everyone has a phone in their hand for large chunks of the game. Instead of wasting huge sums of money on disruptively loud ads, why not try to engage fans via the mobile devices that are ALREADY IN THEIR HANDS? Next time you are at a game, take note of HOW MANY PEOPLE have their smart phones in their hands for most of the game. If we're the marketing folks at Zales, we're looking at the negative reaction to the "Fan Marquee" and we're brainstorming ideas on how to connect with all of these consumers with smart phones at the ready.
MLB's "At Bat" app for the IPhone seems to be the most likely avenue for marketers to tap into this potential. The current version of the app has integrated "At The Ballpark" features that allow fans to see game check-in history, view final scores for every game attended, see a list of ballparks visited and see how well their favorite teams have fared when checking-in at a game. With location based services and social networks becoming more ingrained in culture with each passing day, it is only a matter of time until we are marketed to in completely new and hopefully more effective ways.
