I was having dinner with my friend Carlos last night and we got to talking about things we liked. Being a huge soccer fan, Carlos mentioned this piece that NBC Sports released back at the beginning of the month…

Now I think Jason Sudeikis is hysterical and certainly laughed out loud a few times at this piece. But to me, it was the same joke for four minutes. Admittedly, it was a good joke and you certainly couldn’t fault the delivery but still, I thought it outstayed its welcome and only made it to the end because it relates to my work.

Then again, I will never watch a minute of Premier League soccer broadcasts. Not my thing.

Carlos however, loves soccer. Loves watching it on TV, loves watching his son play, loves everything about the world’s most popular sport. So Carlos is hugely pumped about NBC’s commitment to airing Premier League matches to American audiences. He said he forwarded this hundreds of times.

Think what that means–a soccer fan forwarded an ad that’s important to soccer fans to every other soccer fan he knows. Meaning this piece reached the perfect target audience, the one’s most likely to be persuaded by its message and tune in on Saturdays when NBC airs Premiere League matches.

To a soccer fan, this doesn’t go on too long; it celebrates everything they love and so much of the rest of America doesn’t seem to get about their sport. And so simply by releasing and promoting this piece, NBC reached their most important viewing audience. And it worked. The ratings for their first broadcasts on August 19th were very impressive, up 67% over Fox and ESPN’s coverage last year.

This is why I so fervently believe Shareworthy content is the future of brand advertising. It uses all the emotional engagement of TV to reach and engage audiences, but thanks to sharing, its audience quickly self-selects to only the most ideal viewers. Making shareworthy content remarkably efficient and undeniably effective.

Of course, anyone who disagrees may simply be someone who, as Jason says, “… doesn’t mind being alone, likes to sit with his thoughts.”
By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Olson