helping you market sport quickly, cheaply and easily

The new interactive planning tool is now launched! You can access it at www.promotingactivity.com and then click on Strategic Planning.

I’ve been running workshops for the past two weeks with people using this tool. And the feedback has been fantastic. Lots of people are really excited about how much data they’re now able to access. This tool allows you to visualise the Sport England market segmentation down to a really small area.

You can see:

• Where the different segments live
• Where physical activity levels are likely to be lowest, or highest
• Where interest in a particular sport will be high

It takes about 10 minutes playing around to get used to how the tool works, and then it’s simple to create any map you want for any area you want. To help with that we’ve recorded a short video of how it works which you can see below.

You can watch the embedded video below or go to http://www.screencast.com/t/MTJiMjY2Z

You should now be able to register again for the Planning tool – just go to www.promotingactivity.com and click on Strategic Planning. Then click on register.

The promotingactivity.com planning tool registration is down at the moment. We’re looking into what the problem is and will keep you updated.

Interactive – disability equality in sport will be the new brand for London Sports Forum for Disabled People from the 6th April 2010.

The result of in-depth market research, Interactive reflects the organisations core remit to work across London in partnership with sport and physical activity providers, the health and disability sectors to achieve the vision of disability equality in sport.

The decision to rebrand concludes the organisations journey to become fully strategic. The organisation now works on a geographic basis inline with the five Pro-Active London Partnerships, to increase grass root sport and physical activity opportunities for disabled people in London.

Tracey McCillen, Chair of London Sports Forum for Disabled People soon to be known as Interactive said “Interactive is a memorable, energetic, modern and accessible identity. It encapsulates the organisations ethos and vision as we enter a new and exciting chapter in our work to achieve disability equality in sport.”

Stewart Lucas, Chief Executive of London Sports Forum for Disabled People soon to be known as Interactive said “We are very proud and excited by our new brand Interactive. It conveys our strategic remit to engage with partners to ensure disabled people are an integral part of all sport and physical activity opportunities in London”.

We will shortly be releasing a new, improved version of the planning tool on www.promotingactivity.com. The existing planning tool has already allowed people to target their marketing and interventions effectively and precisely without needing a big budget or a GIS team.

The new planning tool will continue to allow people to target their work using the fantastic Sport England segmentation. However it will also cover more sports and activities, which helps people working on anything other than the top 10 sports (which is what the existing version shows).

It will also load faster, allowing you to more quickly find the information you need and get out.

Last, but definitely not least, it will cover all of England rather than just London. This means that this powerful planning ability can be used by thousands more people.

For a 4-minute video of how the new planning tool will look watch the embedded video below or go to http://www.screencast.com/t/MTJiMjY2Z

Keep watching www.makesportfun.com/blog for updates on when this tool is going live.

According to Active People statistics 6.93 million people do enough activity to benefit their health. However 22 million people would like to do sport more often.

There’s a disconnect here. 15 million people want to do more sport but don’t. So why don’t they? According to the research that we’ve been doing with the Futures Company one major reason is because everything else in their life is more fun. They’d love to do it, but they don’t want to give up the time they spend with their families, their friends, going out to shows – it’s all too much fun.

How can we make sport more fun? How can we inspire people? How can we help people to enjoy sport more? We know it can be fun, so how do we communicate that?

It’s exactly these questions that Social Marketing was invented to answer. And that’s why everything that we do and everything in www.promotingactivity.com is based on Social Marketing principles.

sportEX health is a quarterly magazine targeted at individuals working in the promotion of physical activity for health.

sportEX health is particularly appropriate for:

• Physical activity health promotion specialists working in PCTs and local authorities
• Sports development officers
• Medical professionals including GPs and practice nurses
• Clinical exercise specialists working with special populations
• Teachers working to increase physical activity participation
• Individuals working in workplace settings

To see more and to find out how to subscribe go to http://sportex.net/newsite/common/mainframe.asp.

I’ve also put in some information direct from the horse’s mouth below, explaining what is included in the magazine.

Article sections include:

• FUNDING, MONITORING & EVALUATION – A regular feature in each issue based around funding applications, data collection, monitoring and evaluation to maximise funding success, making the business case for physical activity including identifying resources to support applications as well as ways of communicating this information effectively.
• COLLABORATION, COMMUNICATION & COMMUNITY – We have always featured case studies however these will become more focused on giving practical whys and hows and will now provide contact details of project leads so you are able to follow up these contacts where relevant. The case studies will also highlight projects which have sought to develop cross disciplinary and partnership working to show how this approach can help all partners involved meet their own specific objectives and in many cases increase their funding opportunities. This section will also profile inspirational case studies where PA has been shown to provide a positive effect in areas such as social regeneration, learning, employment etc.
• POLICY DIGESTS & KEY RESEARCH SUMMARIES – We will continue to provide our popular digests and analyses of policy documents, identifying key areas of importance and significance as well as providing practitioner-focused ideas and suggestions on how you may make use of the report to be more effective in your work. We will also continue to provide our highly popular roundup of key research from the clinical journals across the world.
• PHYSICAL ACTIVITY IN SPECIAL POPULATIONS – This is has been one of our most popular and enduring sections in sportEX health. Each issue features an article on a medical condition or special population detailing the benefits of PA in both the prevention as well as the treatment of a medical condition, provides an overview of the most recent evidence supporting this, and gives condition specific indications for contraindications of exercise in this group. Every article is accompanied by one of our widely respected advice leaflets which can be photocopied and given to members of the public.
• ADMINISTRATION TEMPLATES – Where appropriate we will work with practitioners to provide templates that you can modify for your own use. This might include letters, spreadsheets, professionally reproduced graphs or tables that can be incorporated into presentations, funding applications, or letters and as from July, every single patient leaflet we have ever produced, in high resolution printable format will be available on the internet to those with additional online access).
• CAREER PATHWAYS & TRAINING – Each issue will include the profile of an individual working in physical activity health promotion designed to offer inspiration and ideas on where your job could take you. We have also introduced a new section on training in GP referral including reviews of courses.
• CROSS INDUSTRY COLLABORATION – Each issue will contain articles on each of the following sectors of: workplace, young people (particularly but not exclusively around schools) and primary care. In some cases the issues facing each sector may be similar, in others not, but the articles will be designed with two goals in mind a) to show how each sector is tackling its own particular challenges with a view to offering ideas on how both the successes and failures may provide guidance for your own projects b) to identify opportunities for, and encourage collaboration.
• ROUNDUP OF EVENTS AND SIGNPOSTING OF RESOURCES – We will continue to include regular roundups from the key organisations involved in supporting your work, identifying new and ongoing projects and initiatives and signposting resources. These include relevant initiatives from government departments such as DH, DfT, DCMS, DFES as well as updates from NICE, BHF National Centre for Physical Activity, Sport England and the Youth Sport Trust along with many of the other charities and voluntary organisations involved in physical activity promotion projects.

Recently, I’ve been keeping my eye on a new London based online sports organisation tool called Schport. It is a free online service that helps team managers organise their squad, training and matches. The service aims to take the hassle out of organising team sports, so everyone (including the organisers) can focus on what really counts – playing!

The service has a bundle of really useful features that are very easy to use. So, anyone who organizes a sports team will now be able to have a single hub from where they can manage their squad and organise all their team’s activity. The Schport tour summarises all the major features.

I can see this being useful not only as a tool to recommend to clubs, but also as a tool for helping Sports Development Officers to organise sport.

I’ve met with Adam from the Schport team, and he’s really keen to make sure that they’re making changes based on user feedback. In fact I understand that they’re adding new improvements on a regular basis.

I’ve also been informed that teams using Schport will be benefiting from some really exciting promotions in the near future. The Schport team are being very secretive about this at the moment, but they let slip that one idea is to offer the opportunity for a team to have a professional recorded highlights package of a game of their choice. All sounds very exciting…

Research from Eurosport, ZenithOptimedia & Synovate indicates that investment in the grass roots of sport is of critical importance to sponsorship effectiveness during a time of recession.

A general rule of thumb used by people sponsoring large scale events (whether in sport or anything else) is that you have to spend 3 times as much on leveraging the sponsorship as on the sponsorship itself. In sport this means sport sponsors should spend a lot of time, effort and money on grassroots sports to make the most of their sponsorship investment. This grassroots work is also called Corporate Social Responsibility.

Some sponsors aren’t aware of this however, and so its always a useful tool in your arsenal to be able to remind them of the importance of grassroots sport.

This report, taken out in October 2008, interviewed 1,600 upmarket consumers and 10 leading sports marketers whose responses created a sports marketing code of conduct for companies during the difficult economic climate. 

The survey also revealed grass roots investment was considered an imperative and necessary component of a successful sports marketing campaign. Although expensive, it is valued by consumers who appreciate organisations which make a real contribution to sports development.

It found that 81 per cent of consumers believe “what companies do over what they say” and that 74 per cent believed CSR sports investment both helps sport to develop, and was essential as part of the marketing strategy for large brands.

I found out about this report from http://brooksportandleisure.wordpress.com/2009/05/22/grass-roots-sport-critical-to-effective-sports-sponsorship/

Original article was from http://www.sportbusiness.com/britsport/169464/companies-see-value-sport-social-change

I’ve been using Live Writer since it came out and I’m a big fan.

I’m a big fan of blogging. It helps with Search Engine Optimisation, it allows you to show that you’re knowledgeable on a subject, it’s an easy way of providing useful information to your potential customers and it’s an easy way to update your website. However, I’m not a huge fan of writing directly into blogging software. I’ve always found it a little cumbersome. I suppose it’s because I’m so used to doing everything using Microsoft software like Word and Outlook.

Enter Live Writer.

Live Writer is a free desktop application from Microsoft which you can use to write your blog posts. It makes it a bit easier to edit your drafts, change sizes, insert pictures and move them around, insert video and more. It doesn’t do anything magical or new, it just makes it easier to do your normal blogging. Download it here.

How much of a difference does this really make? Well I always found it a bit of a chore writing blog posts. Not because I wasn’t interested in the topic, but because I found the process a bit annoying. This was especially true for me because I travel quite a lot, and writing blogs is something I can do (in theory) when I’m on the train. However I had to have internet access to write anything, which you can’t always guarantee.

Since using Live Writer I’ve found it much easier to write blog posts offline and then post them whenever I’m back online. I’ve also found it much easier to edit everything I’m doing. As a result I’ve written a lot more often. Hopefully this additional content has been useful!