CBS has released a new promo for the Strikeforce Nashville event taking place on April 17th. The footage for this promo mostly featured interviews from the open workouts Strikeforce held at the Legends MMA Training Center in Hollywood, CA.
For the sake of contrast, here is the opening video for DREAM.13, which has been well received by most fans and even though the event has passed, still creates some great promotional material for DREAM, HDNet, and Strikeforce.
Here is a different aspect of viral marketing, a fan-made promo for the upcoming Gegard Mousasi vs King Mo bout:
Payout Perspective:
In the MMAterial Facts (3/23/10) feature, MMAPayout introduced the 26 second ad spot on CBS to the MMA fanbase. That video alone was able to garner almost 20k views in the span of a day, and hence jump started CBS and Strikeforce’s efforts into viral video marketing for the Nashville 4/17 event.
Criticism to Strikeforce’s promotional efforts relate mostly to the lack of promotional material, the effectiveness of that material, and the reach outside of their fan-base. Promotional videos were made available in the past leading up to the events, but that material was, for the most part, available only on the Strikeforce or Showtime websites, or in their YouTube channels, which fans don’t regularly frequent.
Creating a viral promotional effort, highlighted by the effective use of marketing tools like Twitter, Facebook, and becoming accessible to the MMA media can pay dividends in the long run. As of yesterday, CBS created and launched the Twitter feed CBS_MMA, which is already being utilized to assist the current marketing push for April.
In analyzing the video, the lack of branding Strikeforce receives as the key product being sold to fans is still apparent, and is something that needs to be enforced in future ad spots. I feel they are putting a better effort in recent promos, where they zoom in on the Strikeforce logos, make sure the brand was visible in the background, and vocalize it to the audience a couple of times during interviews. Focusing on multiple fighters is definitely a positive and considering that three title fights are being put on this card, its a great selling point. Regardless of what method they decide to use, juggling between promoting “Saturday Night Fights on CBS” and “Strikeforce” as different entities definitely creates some viewer uncertainty regarding which product they are taking in, which in the long run may hinder the Strikeforce brand.
CBS does the worst MMA promos. Promo #1 can’t be found anywhere on the net after everybody laughed at it.
jj:
The link to to the 1st promo is above, I had to re-post the video. I also feel that they are doing promos for a CBS audience. If you look at the promos for Survivor and other events, they have that same feel, which is completely different than what the UFC or other MMA promotions do.
Dan Henderson was never a UFC champion, he merely won the UFC 17 tournament. I may be a stickler for numbers, but if MMA ever wants to be a mainstream sport, the numerical and chronological statistics of its past must be correctly presented to the fans. Writers are constantly misnumbering what events certain fights happened at, the presentation of fighters’ records vary depending on the promotion they are fighting in, the measurements for fighters’ reaches seem to be constantly changing, fighters names are confused (Thiago Silva IS NOT Thiago Alves, Dana, get your fighters’ names straight before you call press conferences). I may be in a minority with my concern for these anomalies, but nobody can argue that in the mainstream sports leagues (NFL, NBA, MLB, etc.), the die hard fans make it a point to memorize statistics and histories. If MMA can’t even present a fighter’s correct height, weight, or even name on a consistent basis, it will ultimately confuse fans and make the sport seem less legitimate.
This is not as big of a deal in some cases, but when UFC writers misnumber events and misname fighters in articles ON ITS OWN WEBSITE, that is a problem. If anyone wants to hire a proofreader/fact checker, I don’t have a family yet and have a little spare time.
Machiel Van: I completely get where you are coming from, but unlike other sports, there is no easy way for promotions to acquire official fighter records. If you ask most fighters, they will tell you that whatever they have on Sherdog is incorrect, and they actually have more fights than what is recorded due to fighting in unsanctioned events, events in other countries, or events that just didn’t get any attention from the media. I feel that in the future, our statistics will become more reliable, but without having one official body recording this information, all that will be emphasized in the near future are the statistics within a promotion, and most promotions don’t retain any specific stats other than W’s or L’s.
Well, that responds to one of the many things I brought up.
While agree that the top video comes off as pretty weak to us. I have to wonder what audience they are targeting it at and where they are going to use it? The truth is there is no point in creating a video for the people who live on the MMA web sites because they have already made up their minds about whether they are going to watch the fight before it is announced. Any one that can call the Aoki v Melendez fight a stupid, meaningless, bullshit fight isn’t going to change their mind no matter what video you put up. So the question is who are they going after? Some reporter pumping Coker for more info on what they learned from the surveys they did in Miami and Sacramento might help us there. Hint, hint.
As for the 3rd video I personally like it. But it also has the benefit of not having to worry about copy right violations. Strike Force and CBS aren’t in that position. If you put up a video of great fight stuff but you don’t have the star of the card fighting any where you might have people asking WTF?
jv:
The top promo is most likely promotional material that CBS sends out to their affiliates to be used in special segments, local news, etc, which are sometimes voiced-over with their own narrator. The purpose of these promos, just like the first one I posted a few days ago are for the CBS TV audience. Posting them online gives (which was not done before), gives them another medium of exposure. You and I may have already made up our mind, but these videos may be seen by thousands of people, some who have no idea who Aoki or King Mo are.
Machiel Van:
Dan Henderson won the UFC tournament and was considered a UFC champion when he jumped to PRIDE, so, labeling Hendo a UFC champ is okay by me, not to mention he fought Rampage to “Unify” the PRIDE and UFC LHW belt, which he did end up losing on a very close match.
I agree with your other points, promotions must get other details correct, like your fighter names, statistics, etc, a portion that the UFC and other promotions have been very relaxed in. I don’t think there will be stat geeks in MMA as there are in other sports, but it def helps legitimize our sport. Again, all sports have one body that maintains official stats, something that is devoid in MMA at the moment.