Ethics From The Barrel Of A Gun

WHERE’S YOUR BEAN-POT?

I don’t do bandwagons

“A MONSTER ovation”

I think I just figured out who is behind the Pierre Maguire twitter.

I play hockey with a sports writer and an editor at the Sun and a guy from the Star sports section. None of them read or are even aware of a single sports blog and none of them twitter or use facebook. I work with several public affairs/PR departments around Toronto and all of them voraciously keep an eye on what social media sites are saying about their brands.

Look at who has real blogs and twitter accounts at the Globe. Matthew Ingram twitters so much I can’t believe he sleeps or has time for his day job. There are about 30+ personal blogs and counting at the Globe, yet the sports department has stuck with a standard newspaper approach to blogging: filling 150 to 500 word holes that don’t have a formal home in the print edition of the paper.

On the other side of this equation, the Leafs, Oilers and Rangers were the only teams that voted against the NHL building uniform team web-sites (the Rangers sued the league over the decision). And the Oilers were at the heart of that storm when someone live blogged from the press box.

The Oilers are sharks when it comes to their brand. They had a Calgary radio station take down a parody song (claiming IP rights) and then there was the whole Alan Watt v. Blogger from late last year. Watt came out and said that he wants Oilers.com to be the site that people come to for any and all information about the Oilers.

For most organizations, generating coverage/awareness is a key part of generating corporate revenue: increased sales, sales leads, raised profile, brand enhancement, etc.

This isn’t the case for pro sports teams. In fact too much external coverage represents potential lost revenue as eyeballs that go elsewhere for information deprive the teams of click-throughs and ad dollars; live-blogging and grey-market on-line streaming reduces audience numbers for TV and PPV. Declining consumption of traditional media means potentially less rink-side advertising from the media and fewer paid cross-promotions in the Sun.

MLSE/the Leafs knew full well the twitter account was fake, but ignoring it meant complicit acceptance and the loss of a possible avenue for MLSE to communicate, in a brand enhancing way, with their fans (there is a NHL_Leafs Twitter feed that provides in game updates). I would assume that the Leafs, like Alan Watt and the Oilers, would prefer their web-sites, daily insider emails (now with great video clips) and their twitter feeds be the primary source of information to fans, not alternative sites like this fine one.

I think if you connect these dots, you can see why Shoalts wrote the article that he did…he’s not an early adaptor of technology, it’s an easy 200 word piece he can put out on his “blog”, it sends the message that the Leafs will protect their brand, and it makes Shoalts – not the Leafs – look like the idiot/messenger who should be shot.

I meant to add:

=(

not like there’s going to be much to report over the next few days.

/sarcasm

According to the fine folks of Fan590

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I am not sure that Carlo should be so surprised. He was highly touted (rightly, he was playing 30 minutes a game for the Erie Otters in addition to everything else) but never got into the kind of shape that was needed.

Not to mention that he’s not called the glass man for nothing. I can’t remember a more fragile player other than Antro and even he pulled it together at some point.