Sports has an effective level of marketing to it if the popularity of American football and “soccer” are any indication. No matter the walk of life, it seems someone can enjoy these sports. But, I say “seems” because there are exceptions.  

Stating the obvious: I’m familiar with nerd culture. Stating the controversial: I don’t like sports.

The term “sportsball,” if one does not know the lingo, is a term used to refer to all ball-based sports by lumping them into one cluster—marking them as a nondescript blob of little importance. And, yes, as a term it’s a little dry and a little pejorative, but sums up the way some nerds and other dorkier members of society see most sports.

They don’t understand the appeal, and I can understand the mindset since I have it.

But, this article is not a smack down of sports. Far from it. One shouldn’t fault or put down those who enjoy the exploits of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers or the Rays. That would get us nowhere. Just widen the gap.

Instead, as a person who does not like sports, I will offer advice on how, anyone, regardless if they are a television producer, local event planner, or Tampa/Clearwater citizen who would just like someone to watch sports with them, can go about marketing to someone like me.

Because like how we nerds can’t understand how someone could not like Star Wars or Doctor Who, sports fans can have that same confusion for the same reasons.

So, let’s batter up some ideas.

·         Make Us Understand.

Seriously, this is the first step to marketing anything. Get the intended public to understand why they would want the product. In this case, why someone should care about sports. Try to explain the appeal, why, specifically, you like the sport. What this sport, or this team, means to you. But also, go one further. Because while you may take for granted that someone would know what a “touchdown” is, non-sports fans don’t necessarily understand any of the terminology.

And, as you can imagine, it’s hard to enjoy even watching a game when you don’t know the rules.

·         Give Sports a Personal Connection.

You know what humans are hardwired to connect with? Other people. You know what holds universal appeal across all of humanity? Stories.

People love a good story.

A group of men fighting another group of men over a ball in the shape of an oval, without context, is dumb. But if suddenly one team, the underdog, comes close to victory—then drama exists. And anyone can enjoy a good human story regardless of the setting.

Just by giving the potential sports fan a clear enemy, or a group to root for, or even a single player on a team which they can connect with, will make them care—when before it was all meaningless. The same way a movie studio goes about marketing the movie’s protagonist will work with a real-life player.

·         Tie It with Other Pleasant Experiences.

Just watching a game, is not enough for some people. Sure, perhaps someone with a long-standing interest in the team will remain entertained even if they are alone on a couch with some nachos.

But, we are not talking about marketing to those people. They are already in the “fan base.” You don’t have to convince them.

But you must convince the non-fan. And a party with friends, or going to a sports bar with friends, or even going to the physical game with friends, would be immensely helpful to the cause. Connect the sport to friendships, and general pleasant moments, and good food. Any piece of media (no matter how awful) is better if viewed with the right people.

Sports is no different.

Marketing through the wall of snide “sportsball” comments is not easy sometimes, but if you want more people to watch, then my three pieces of advice will help.

These things apply to all media. Applicable to all advertisements. Storytelling is a fantastic tool to having good, solid marketing.

So, if you want more sports fans, then you must go for the goal...or whatever other score systems you want to use for this metaphor.  

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If you liked this article, you can read more of Brandon Scott’s work over at The Hive, or on his website: www.coolerbs.com

Oh boy, here we go: stop marketing that science is lying to everyone.

Okay, let that one sink in for a second. Take a deep breath. Let’s keep this civil. I will try to keep this civil. Despite that being deeply difficult in current America.

Now, science is the process of coming to a workable conclusion after rigorous testing. It is drawing upon a body of tested, proven knowledge and using it so one can predict what will happen in situations like ones which already occurred.

It is quite literally the same way logical thinking works. If the first eighty times pressing a button made a ding sound, you can easily guess what might happen if you pressed it an eighty-first time. If, for example, the tides on Clearwater beach came in at the same rough time every day for the past one hundred years, then I see no reason for them to change now.

And yet...we have people who get rather up in arms about certain things. Allow me to clarify with two points: one, scientists by and large are not in the pockets of evil groups warping facts for the sake of...something, I don’t even know: mind control, maybe? And second: despite what I said, some people in the scientific discipline are indeed paid off. But it is not the majority.

Information being inconvenient does not make it false.

Sorry.

And the marketing of not listening to science is a baffling one. All this advancement, all this stuff we’ve worked so hard to do, all the technology that makes it even possible to have the kind of arguments against science that naysayers do: is because of the advances from scientific research.

I realize I am using the word “science” like I am conjuring a deity or some such, but that’s because science is a huge, sweeping thing. It is a way of thinking: an ideology. Not some group. Not some conspiracy theory.

Science is about proof. Logical conclusions. You cannot “distrust” science as a concept. Because logically thinking about and wanting proof before trusting something, is science.

Oh, sure, we can disagree on some of the more “contentious” things. I believe in global warming but I get that somehow some people don’t. I don’t understand those people, but I can accept that certain aspects of science are still being argued at and that people want even more proof.

But, I mean this in general. I mean “science” as a concept. Stop marketing against it. Stop talking about it like you might say you don’t believe in “chemtrails”. It’s like saying you don’t believe in math, or language, or literature.

Science is a tool. And when applied well, and when we let people continue to try things and conduct experiments: then we walk on the moon, and we have cell phones, and we cure diseases, and we make strides into the future that so many ages of humanity worked towards.

Sure, question what you hear. I am not one to decide what you find to be the truth. But scientists are not someone you should just dismiss with a wave of your hand, even if the data is not comfortable.

Knowing is always more powerful. And denying a problem is the reverse of the first step to solving it.

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If you liked this article, you can read more of Brandon Scott’s work over at The Hive, or on his website: www.coolerbs.com

Do you promote that they keep the politics out of your *insert something you enjoy here*? Because, I am right with you.

Allow me to say something nice about Donald Trump (I am asking permission because some people on the internet do not want me to even do that) and point out how he is a president who made politics so interesting that it is creeping into other channels.

This is the first time I’ve seen so many shows which have nothing to do with politics add in their own two cents on the issues. People apparently cannot help but talk about what to do about this country—and who should oversee it. And, for some, this chatter has become rather annoying: me included.

Media and art (as the two do have a history of working together) exist to fill many human needs, but one of them is escapism. Some people need a way out of the stressful world for a stretch of time. And certain popular creations and services promote you do just that.

And you can’t blame those people. Life can need a little escaping from sometimes, even if you have a nice pleasant job in Clearwater like working at Kara Lynn’s Kitchen or Buzzazz Business Solutions. So, it is understandable why people get mad when all the stuff from the outside world comes right into their bubble of quiet.

But should we take stuff like that out of parts of the media and art? Should the world of books and movies and videogames and radio and such contain a section labeled like a new food product as “free of real life political drama and scandal”?

I guess, if you want to stretch my question’s implications out, I am asking whether trigger warnings, and safe spaces, and curated “safe media” and all the other things certain right-leaning people hate should exist. Should we promote a place free of “challenging media”?  

My answer: yes. Absolutely. I often shy away from digging in my heels and outright stating a political opinion, but yes: we should have places where politics and all other manners of upsetting things should be non-existent.

Now, ignorance is never a good thing. But I don’t fault someone who just wants to spend a night watching something happy, and free of stress. I promote someone can get some peace when it is truly needed.

As a caveat, I’ll be the first to admit this “safe media” idea shouldn’t find use all the time, in every place. Not an enforced rule on existing groups and productions. I don’t promote a dystopian “happy time”. But if we are a country built on the economic model of supply and demand, then clearly such a thing is in demand—and someone should supply if they don’t already.

Stress and the overwhelming stimuli inherent to a technological age can get to anyone. No matter how strong mentally someone is, they may one day want silence about all that is happening in Washington or on Wall Street.  

And yes, you could simply disconnect from all technology for a little while. It’s not like that’s not a choice, and that is fine if someone needs it. But how hard is it to produce one or two things, or offer a room, or a special day, created with someone getting a grip on life and being calm in mind.

What I’m saying. What I am trying to promote: is our minds, like our bodies, deserve an occasional vacation.

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If you liked this article, you can read more of Brandon Scott’s work over at The Hive, or on his website: www.coolerbs.com

Of the places in the world which advertise for physical CD’s by stocking them, I only know of the ones you can find in little wicker baskets in Starbucks, like perhaps the ones in Clearwater Mall, or the ones you can buy at Best Buy or Barnes and Noble, usually in their own area away from everything else but miscellaneous items and DVDs.

And... this is an obvious change from the old world. Physical storage of music is now kind of silly. When we are a society which has iPhones, there’s no understandable reason to prefer those cluttering, outdated storage disks (barring, perhaps, some subtle sound quality changes). Same goes for movies now, and to a lesser extent, video games.

But, though the actual machines of music are thoroughly moving toward the department of the digital, you still get people who’d like to own a record player (or already do). And, perhaps more interestingly, you get people who want the previous sounds.

Oh sure, you’ve got the older generations who say music is not what it used to be. Which, by the way, is a statement totally accurate: because it is different now, and I can understand the want to get back to the old ways of sound. But this is a level deeper than that.

Nostalgia is not just a product the movie industry wants to cash into—to advertise the newest and most appealing ways to jump back in time: the music industry can and does on occasion seek and succeed to hit that sensation too, in several ways. And not only for the sake of the previously mentioned older individuals.

It’s not always even difficult. Sampling, for instance, is not hard at all to work with (assuming you can get the legal rights). You can rip old songs apart as easily for spare parts as anything else.

The practice of paying homage to old songs in other ways is also a growing popular choice. Bruno Mars, for instance, is moving his way into the old decades. Remind someone of the old world, and you got eyes on you.

It’s so easy to advertise what has already come before.  Because someone already did some of the work for you.

And, again, those people who moan about music not being the same, are right. We don’t even always use instruments anymore.

Sometimes, deep in the soul, you want to hear things which sound like the rock and roll of your childhood, or the blues long ago faded in glory. And that’s okay.

The past had a sound. But the world of today is like nothing before in human history, by a wide margin, so it lacks a definitive sound: but it can cannibalize everything that came before it to become more appealing.

You could call that stagnation. You could call that the death of creativity. But originality is a rare thing in a pure form: most is a remix. And we now can, with the right access, remix everything.

No matter what time you grew up in, the musical industry will attempt to cater to what you want to hear. That’s capitalism. They are a business. It’s an artistic “market.”

So, dance to the tune, as they advertise for you to reexperience any decade’s dance floor you want to boogie on all night long (forgive me for that slang). Just bring a wireless device and your best pair of shoes.

Because the old is new again. And musical genres and eras will only get less and less well-defined.

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If you liked this article, you can read more of Brandon Scott’s work over at The Hive, or on his website: www.coolerbs.com

Just when it seemed like Marvel was the king of cross-promotion with its roster of characters, the Lego company goes one deeper. Because, well Marvel has all the characters in its back catalogue to draw upon, Lego now has not only one franchise, but nearly all the big franchises.

Within days of watching the excellent The Lego Batman Movie at Cobb Theater in Countryside Mall (which you should totally go see even if you don’t have kids) it occurred to me that while it was both a pseudo-side story to the Lego Movie and a Batman movie, it was also...a Doctor Who movie, a Harry Potter movie, and a The Lord of The Rings movie among many others. The list, if you look, goes on—but also includes Gremlins of all things.

And with that set as a precedent: knowing that the studio making the Lego movies can draw upon that many franchises (all at once if desired) and with apparent plans to do so...we can predict the Lego franchise never needs to stop, ever.

Sure, Marvel also plans to keep going for the rest of time as it is, but the Lego movies can go anyway they want—they can take any character and cross-promote—and they don’t even have to keep things neat and tidy for the sake of the timeline.

They established that they can do anything.

And...at any other time in history, making a film series about the cross-promotion of characters from many universes would seem insane, and not feasible.  But this is a different world now. And with the endless wit and charm and a surprising (if a little ham-fisted) moral messages the Lego movies up till now have shown, with no flinching or backing off, they have no discernable reason to stop. And no reason for us to ask them to do so if the quality keeps rising—or even just stays the same.

This is another evolution of the media landscape. Everything connected. Sequels, prequels, midquels, etc. we already had an abundance of, but now, crossovers are possible and encouraged.

I’ll admit I fear, with the sheer level of audience’s knowledge of media’s “grammar” and the proclivity of linking everything to anything we are getting in modern day, we may make it impossible for the next generation to even hope to consume the required media it would take to get the context of any single movie.

I mean, you’ll need like a twelve-week course to catch up to modern stuff. Not including franchises across multiple mediums. No wonder some elderly people are flabbergasted by it all.

But, simultaneously, for what it is, and for however long it lasts: this will be the most intensely creative time in our history as a species. From a less serious standpoint, the very tip of the iceberg is all the joking things we might say about who would win in a fight, or an argument, or “wouldn’t those two make a cute couple.” Those questions will not be hypothetical anymore if the movie studios feel like exploring. It’s like the internet spilled into theaters.

As lofty (and as funny) as it is to say: The Lego Batman Movie of all things is a sign of the next wave of what we will get. Not only the sprawling franchises self-contained to their ever-expanding cinematic universes we’re growing used to seeing. But, also, all the franchises co-mingling and cross-promoting themselves to the point they exist as one, super nerdy technicolor mass.

I suppose this is what we wanted. This is what we’ve been building toward. I never imagined a world where I’d see Batman go against King Kong and Daleks at the same time while everyone was plastic bricks.  But here we are. And everything about it is awesome.

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If you liked this article, you can read more of Brandon Scott’s work over at The Hive, or on his website: www.coolerbs.com