KILIAN JORNET BORN TO RUN - Amer Sports

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Face-to-face dialog Companies’ presence in social media gives rise to many questions and uncertainty. There is no need for concern, however. “It’s simply word of mouth 2.0,” says Niclas Bornling, Brand Director at Salomon. F Antti Laiho t Mika Soikkeli Salomon does not see social media as a weird new animal. Instead, it tries to de-dramatize the phenomenon in many ways. According to Niclas Bornling, social media is ultimately about meeting people, even though the encounters are numerous and everything takes place very quickly. For Salomon, social media is part of a larger entity called community marketing. In this context, social media is an important tool but not an end in itself. Community marketing gives a key role to specialist shops, the sector’s traditional media and grassroots meetings. Salespeople working in stores are opinion leaders in their own area and thus important to the brand. 22 || 3.2010 It is also essential to be present in the traditional media, such as magazines, websites and movies, not to mention places where people gather to engage in or discuss their hobbies in earnest. Putting a face on the brand For the purpose of grassroots encounters, Salomon has trained its own community leaders, who represent the brand both online and in face-to-face meetings. They sound out people’s opinions and study trends, but also put a face on the brand. “You can’t just call people and ask them to work as Salomon’s community leaders. They need to be trained
first, and a decent reporting system must be set up for cooperation,” explains Bornling. Community leaders follow discussions and trends in the field. If required, they also take part in discussions and report on their observations and actions to Salomon. Salomon employs community leaders in the fields of freeskiing and trail running in France, Great Britain, North America, Canada, Germany, Austria, Finland, Denmark and Sweden. The range of sports and countries will expand in the near future. “We still need direct reporting to the headquarters so we don’t lose our feel for what is really going on,” says Bornling. There’s no way to deal with day-to-day events in different countries, however, so the headquarters in France provides guidance and support for the activities of individual countries. Importance of the story Everyone’s talking about content creation and distribution these days, and Salomon is no exception. However, what you offer customers can’t be trivial: the content must always be significant, unique and interesting. “It is no longer enough to put impressive skiing movies online. Way too many do that. The content has to tell a true story,” says Bornling. Salomon focuses on two disciplines in its content production. To date, freeskiers have enjoyed Salomon Freeski TV for three seasons, while trail runners have been able to follow Kilian’s Quest, focused on Kilian Jornet, a Catalonian trail running star. Salomon Freeski TV has proved to be extremely popular. The program’s twenty episodes are watched by some three million viewers annually. “Freeski TV is a huge success, no doubt about it. But it is also very expensive.” People often think that social media makes it unnecessary to purchase media space or sponsor athletes. They believe it is enough to hire someone to write Facebook updates. Niclas Bornling quickly dispels this belief. “Social media will most likely cost us as much or even more than traditional marketing.” Marketing in social media is labor-intensive. Many of the tasks, such as project management, cannot be outsourced. Learning process “Content production and distribution are nevertheless traditional push marketing. What we want to do is create pull marketing and enter into dialog with our customers,” says Bornling. He is satisfied to see that Salomon’s community leaders interact with real customers on a daily basis. One of the challenges of social activities is to figure out what to do with all the resulting information. This feed- Atomic wants to be prepared Ulrike Hartinger, Atomic’s head of brand communications, believes that the transparency of social media makes brand management in it complicated. Social media is about more than presence – it’s about participation. “Users are very critical. If you aren’t ready for open communication, don’t even try it,” says Hartinger. Atomic will launch its own social media solution in the near future. An international network of Atomic ambassadors will form an essential part of it. Known as the A-Team, the network will begin to build an online Atomic community. Atomic considers social media to be an essential part of marketing. The impact of word of mouth should not be underestimated, since people gladly share their experiences. Negative experiences, in particular, spread far and wide. “Brands must be ready to face the challenges of social media. It is more important to be the best, not the first, in social media,” says Hartinger. back from customers is called crowdsourcing. Salomon does not yet carry out social product development, but it is studying the opportunities it creates. Social aspects are anything but a diversion in business marketing; they must be taken seriously in every respect. “Fun can quickly turn ugly and social media can become a dangerous tool,” Bornling warns. “We are still beginners in this field, but it is something we are fully aware of. Having the right tools to practice and make mistakes enables us to learn new things.” Suunto set up its own community Suunto, another Amer Sports brand, has dived into the depths of social media. The sports computer manufacturer adopted basic services, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, some time ago, but its social presence rose to a whole new level in May, when the company introduced its own Movescount -service. Movescount enables exercisers around the world to share their experiences, called moves, with one another. The site’s analytical tools enable users to review their workouts, while summaries help them understand how to develop their training. Suunto sports computers collect huge amounts of data, all of which can be shared online with the help of Moves- → 3.2010 || 23
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KILIAN JORNET BORN TO RUN - Amer Sports

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