Canadian Ad Insider

Guest Post:  Tara Kelly is a contributor with Profectio.com, she has worked with organizations such as Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, Research in Motion, Mosaic and Mattel in various marketing capacities. You can connect with Tara on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Bryan Johnston, CMO for Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) presented an interesting session at the 2012 IAB Canada MIXX conference. He described UFC’s current footprint as well as unique ways they are reaching out to their fans today.

MMA – fastest growing sport in the world, founded in 1993

Footprint

• Affluent
• Women are fans too – 38% women
• Global reach – 142 countries

Social Footprint

• 10 plus million likes
• Twitter 800k followers
• Google + 200k

• fans are very unique
• appealing to kids because of the Honour, Respect, Principle components
• competition
• training

UFC – Reach new fans

• The Avengers: used movie as a promotion tool
• 3200% engagement on website
• Create content for a specific group of people (comic book lovers)
• Grow the Brand

Dead Maus – Joel Zimmermen: partnered with him to create event in Toronto

UFC – Getting Smarter
Pintrest – retail buying opportunities, bigger then Google

• Making cakes/appetizers for every pay per view fight
• Awarding the best cake/appetizer

UFC – Listening to Fans

• Moved fan to a better seat after he tweeted about poor view from current seats

UFC – What they talk about

• Spotify
• Walkout songs (Cranberries – Zombie was used as walkout song and after received extreme amount of downloads)

UFC – Critical Mass

• Facebook – entertainment, trailers for fights

[adrotate banner=”6″]