I’m glad to joining the great team of SportsCloud and Techonomy. My new role: Digital Development Manager Belgium.

In this post I want to give an introduction and mention some fields we’re working in. 

We’re of course in a very special time and the so-called digital transformation push got accelerated. A recent report of the European Investment Bank EIB stated that digital companies ‘perform better and are more dynamic’. And research by Agoria (Belgian Federation for Technology Companies) showed that 83% of Belgian industrial SMEs see opportunities in digitisation – but, and this is key of course, we shouldn’t forget to act upon it.

One thing I must make clear is that in all those digital projects and digital transformation processes, people are still at the centre. Is it by educating or attracting the best digital skilled people. It doesn’t make any sense to create dashboards when you can’t interpret them. Or it would be strange to have the best possible technology and tools in place, but then not using them to their full potential.

Digital skills

I already used the term ‘digital skilled’ here above. What does it mean? A definition from the UNESCO website: “Digital skills are defined as a range of abilities to use digital devices, communication applications, and networks to access and manage information.” 

A recent study named Do young people in the EU have digital skills?, saw that ‘In 2019, four in five young people (80%) aged 16 to 24 in the European Union (EU) had basic or above basic digital skills.’ When looking at the overview, we see Belgium not performing that well, even below the European average. 

You can of course divide digital skills in different levels and there’s no need for everyone to get into the most advanced category, but it certainly will help in today’s and the future work environment. It’s no surprise that there were some recent initiatives by Agoria and Samsung to offer Artificial Intelligence courses in Belgium. 

Going back to the digital skills part, ‘They enable people to create and share digital content, communicate and collaborate and solve problems (UNESCO)'. This fits perfectly in the environment we - SportsCloud and Techonomy - are working in. 

Creating digital content to tell stories, improving internal and external communication, collaborating (think of project management and brainstorming) and solving problems to reach targets. And we do this by carefully selecting the right tools for your organisation. Again important to remember, tools and technology are an enabler, they help you, but you should also have the right mindset. Switching one tool for another doesn’t necessarily mean an improvement if you just want to work like you’ve always done.

Digital Marketing Course at Home

Education is an important part at SportsCloud and Techonomy, this by organising events for instance to share best practices and get the main messages out there. By coming together as a community we want to improve together.

A recent initiative was the Digital Marketing Course at Home – of course no surprise in these current times – a 10 part online programme to tackle several topics in the marketing space, think of: actionable use of data, data-driven email marketing, advertising, social media and journey management, chatbots and video marketing to name a few. It’s a perfect example of ‘doing our part’ to increase the skill level of marketers out there. Make sure to keep an eye on this programme in the future.

The great thing is that with a big team as SportsCloud and Techonomy, we can learn so much from each other because there are people specifically focussing on for instance ecommerce, on data science, on campaigning and creative concepts, and on development. It thus creates a symbiosis and projects can only benefit because we can have several perspectives to one briefing.

This is also our approach for projects. When we integrate or work on something, we also want to give training sessions to up the skills within the organisation.

Our four pillars

In short, we’re focussing on:

1. Data
2. Marketing Technology
3. Content Creation
4. Campaigning

Looking at the four pillars above we can say that they are all intertwined. Data is sometimes described as the new oil or gold, we want to get insights to serve our audiences in the best possible way and to make informed decisions.

There’s such a big marketing technology landscape. I think most of you now know the visual where 8000 tools are plotted in different categories. It’s – and that’s an understatement – easy to get lost in this world that will continue to grow, but that’s why we are here of course to pick the right tools and build your personal stack.

Content creation, I already mentioned it, we all want to tell stories and people like to listen to them. With today’s noise and content overload, you need to stand out. Creativity still works.

And with the use of data, the right marketing technologies and the message(s) you created, it’s time to put it out there and do the campaigning part. Key here is to do it not just as a 'one shot' push, but to think how messages on different channels can support each other and to have different sub steps available to guide people in the right direction (where they can take a specific action or actions and you can then again start a new flow). 

New concepts

I said it in the introduction, we’re living in another world now where we simply can’t do the things we could last year. We all hope this will change quickly of course. It can also be a time to transform, to start projects and to offer your services in another way.

I’m thinking of ecommerce for instance, much has been discussed about this and you also see more and more social platforms integrating this functionality. 4 years ago, Google published a series on their Think with Google website discussing how retail changed because of mobile phones. It was also interesting to read that shoppers are omnichannel, meaning that we can start and finish shopping on different devices. Tools are one thing of course, like building your ecommerce store using Shopify or Magento, integrating SEO (which is a craft of its own) and activating for instance is another part.

We’ve seen sports organisations getting creative in the ways to reach their fans and getting to know your audience is a focus and should be (part of) your goal(s). It’s about the quality and value of your data, not only for yourself but also for possible partners and the proposition towards them.

Another field is the education part which you could link to the Digital Marketing Course at Home we organised. The idea here wasn’t new, but thanks to the situation it all accelerated and a successful first edition was a fact. Take a look behind the scenes:

Hier komt zometeen het eerste live college 👨‍🎓 met 500 deelnemers vandaan. Dit zien jullie straks allemaal niet, dan is het alleen maar een perfect studio plaatje. 🎥 Tot zo! pic.twitter.com/8MkKuNz4yv

— Peter Sprenger (@Petersprenger) April 30, 2020

Schools had to offer online education, we’ve seen one webinar after another and conferences, summits and other events going virtually. Although you can think of some aspects like catering or crowd management you shouldn’t focus on for virtual events, a good preparation and briefing is still key of course.

Another aspect we’ve seen booming is esports: 'The consequence of COVID-19 on gaming has been a massive enlargement of the audience available to publishers. Gaming is typically an at-home activity, and a steady stream of headlines has shown that it is flourishing during the pandemic (weforum.org)'.

Next to that, we’ve also seen a bigger focus on gamification of sports. In 2016, Road Cycling UK wrote an article named The gamification of cycling: how Zwift has revolutionised indoor training. During the last months we’ve seen virtual races like the Ronde van Vlaanderen, Tour de Suisse and the Tour de France where professional cyclists participated and competed against each other. It wasn’t new as the UCI for instance signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the governance and development of cycling esports last year, but it all boomed now.

The organisation behind Formula 1 also acted quickly and introduced the F1 Esports Virtual Grand Prix Series in March which proved to be a big success. More than 30 million people watched F1’s live streams on different platforms and they received almost 700 million social media impressions. 

Talking about getting creative and thinking of new concepts, we recently announced the Rotterdam Summer of Esports (having a mix of several categories).

Get in touch

I hope you got some insights in who we are and how we can be of value for your organisation. We worked with clients like Ziggo, PSV, KLM, Coca-Cola, KNVB and Opel to just name a few. We like to work on projects big and small, don’t let these names mislead you of course, we’re here for everyone.

We’re always open to listen to your specific challenges and we like to think with you. Make sure to keep on eye on our future initiatives and simply get in touch with me via jonasbogaert@sportscloud.nl.