Can you think of an industry that has to deal with a more constant barrage of PR-related idiocy than sports? OK, maybe politics, but that’s not so much an industry as a giant trainwreck, constantly in progress.
But I digress.
Sports. An industry that is in as dire need of some good PR and social media juju if ever there was one. So, why are so many organizations doing everything they can to shoot themselves in the feet when it comes to social media?
Last week, San Diego Chargers’ cornerback Antonio Cromartie (@crimetime31) was fined for what the Chargers organization (@chargers) deemed “inappropriate tweeting”. Now, I can understand that teams want to maintain their competitive advantage and seek to be careful when it comes to divulging team secrets. In the case of Cromartie, however, he was simply talking about nutrition, not spilling the team’s playbook. The Chargers use Twitter as a promotional tool ONLY. They’ve forbidden players from tweeting while in the team facility and, certainly, have said tweets may not be critical of the organization; “we don’t want to be too honest.”
The Miami Dolphins (@MiamiDolphins) have forbidden their players from using Twitter at all.
Yesterday, the SEC (Southeastern Conference) announced its new media policy, which says that “Ticketed fans can’t “produce or disseminate (or aid in producing or disseminating) any material or information about the Event, including, but not limited to, any account, description, picture, video, audio, reproduction or other information concerning the Event.” In other words, no Twitter. No Facebook. No TwitPic or yfrog or YouTube.
Maybe it’s just me, but if I saw a tweet or a status update from a friend at an exciting sporting event, I’d be pretty likely to tune in. But no Tweeting without their “expressed, written consent”? Seems a wee bit counter-intuitive to me.
Information has a desire to get out. It always DOES get out. Whether you fully embrace social media or subscribe to the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” way of life, why can’t organizations, such as these, understand that? When will they grasp that people are going to talk about you, whether you want them to or not; that it’s not something over which you have any control?
Dive into the discourse.
Follow the lead of the New York Jets (@jets). The team not only supports Twitter, it actively encourages its players to get involved. “We really made a conscious decision that we were going to embrace social networking because it’s an outgrowth of our motto that we talk about internally: Remove the barriers,” said Matt Higgins, the Jets’ executive vice president of business operations. These guys have got it exactly right.
Are they nervous about it? NO. “Never say anything you’re not comfortable with being on the front page of a newspaper,” Higgins said. “And don’t say anything that’s going to reveal competitive secrets or compromise your competitive advantage. Beyond that, to be honest, we don’t see it as a risk.”
Remove the barriers. Embrace the medium. Dive in.
You can’t stop the flow of information. You can only hope to contain it. Even then, it’s not gonna work.
