Direct-to-fan is not Direct-to-consumer
Stakes are always higher with fans - resources usually don't follow.
Welcome to our first newsletter. We will do our best to hit your inboxes once every couple of weeks.
What will you find here? Our thoughts on how to build direct-to-fan brands and the transformation they will bring to the Sports & Entertainment industry - plus the news and trends we believe are shaping this movement.
For our first edition, we will start with a basic.
For once and for all – No, direct-to-fan is not the same as direct-to-consumer.
And eventually, all direct-to-consumer brands aspire to become direct-to-fan.
Fans are not necessarily consumers. Consumers are not usually fans of the brands they purchase.
Think about your soap brand. Even as marketers have been working on "emotional" communication for decades now, consumers have a "functional" relationship with most brands. They buy those brands because they need them to solve a problem but they don't love them (in most of the cases).
So, sports & entertainment brands want fans to also become consumers, and consumer brands would kill for consumers to become fans.
But neither of these two moves is easy.
A fan has an emotional attachment that gets distorted when the loved brand wants to add a transactional layer into it. They feel the organization, club or artist is taking advantage of those feelings. Almost like when a friend never pays for a round of drinks.
Look at the backlash a Spanish influencer received when trying to jump into NFTs. The community considered he was trying to make easy money out of them.
Disclaimer - we agree with him: eventually all influencers will use NFTs one way or another.
The best of both worlds? A consumer brand that is also a “love brand“ and has fans, not consumers. By the way, a really hard status to achieve (we will cover consumer love brands in future editions).
Your logo/crest is simply not enough
Getting back to our point – how do you make these engaged fan communities become consumers of your brand without breaking that magic? All you have to do is bring them value. And ownership.
Convert them into an active element of your brand and build stuff they really want.
So easy to say and incredibly hard to execute.
You know they will pay without hesitation for watching your games or attending your latest show. But outside of those core activities, it’s hard for them to pay for other products as most sports & entertainment brands are simply not doing a good enough job.
Most of the time, these brands consider the emotional connection will play its magic and ensure the fan buys almost anything they add their logo to. They usually prefer someone else building the product/experience for them and just take the minimum guaranteed and run.
We all know this doesn’t bring real value to the fans.
These brands must operate like a mixture of consumer and community driven brands.
They must put themselves in the shoes of these fans, understanding the who and their inner desires and needs. Data, analysis, insights. Also, they have to give the community tools to actively participate in shaping and evolving the brand.
This will help build a strong brand narrative that articulates the organization and ensures it matters, within the existing fans and beyond - so it can constantly attract new ones.
Once you know your brand is walking through the relevance path, build products, services, experiences, content, your fans would kill for. Stuff that lets your brand be relevant far beyond what happens on the pitch. And that brings the potential to reach new audiences that will help the brand to further expand and develop. Entering a virtuous circle.
With great power…
To do so, these brands have an enormous advantage and a terrible disadvantage.
The advantage: so simple and powerful - they have fans!
But with great power comes great responsibility. That’s why a consumer will never be the same as a fan.
Stakes will always be much higher when you deal with fans. Loyalty is higher, but also expectations. You can easily fail them (look at the tweet below). Also, the acquisition of new true fans is extremely hard. In sports, for instance, most of the times it happens during the fan’s early life.
A Manchester United fan not happy with the Club’s Twitter bio
Now, uh, the disadvantage. The direct-to-fan activities are often not the core business of these brands. They have other priorities: winning games or recording a new album.
That’s not ideal to secure the focus and prioritization that would facilitate the right level of resources and talent allocated in making that happen.
The result? Brands that are totally underexploited.
In the case of football clubs, for instance, they are well known and recognized, but make little B2C money if compared with consumer and entertainment companies who often are much less famous.
The big question: is this transformation possible with the direct-to-fan operation being under the same roof as the one in charge of sports? We will cover this topic in a future edition of the newsletter.
Direct-to-fan at its best
You can be a big fan or not care at all about Kanye West, but the guy really has an incredibly sharp direct-to-fan mindset. He has released his latest album, Donda 2, exclusively through his own speaker device, the Stem Player. So if you want to listen to his latest songs, you must pay $200 for the device. No middle men here. No Spotify or Apple Music.
But this is not a usual bluetooth speaker. As you can see in this video, the speaker enriches the listening experience and empowers the user as it lets them split the song into what they call stems, controlling vocals, drums, bass and samples through these four channels, isolating parts, adding effects, etc.
The Stem Player, which apparently made 1,3 million dollars in the first 24 hours it was on sale, is somehow an album that is always alive, as Kanye is uploading tracks beyond what was expected initially in the Donda 2 album.
But the industry has made clear that moving outside its norms has consequences: Billboard announced the Donda 2 will not be eligible for its charts as the album is available exclusively through the device.
The fans' response? Some hated it, others loved it, and a few turned to piracy to avoid paying the $200. Bold direct-to-fan moves will always generate strong reactions.
Remember they are fans, not consumers.
Thanks for reading. If you liked the post, feel free to share it so we can grow the community.
Also, we would love to hear from you! You can join the discussion leaving a comment or sharing some feedback.